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Antwone Fisher, 2002
Antwone Fisher (Derek Luke) is a young man working in the Navy. After attacking a fellow seaman, Antwone is sent to a Naval psychiatrist named Dr. Davenport (Denzel Washington, who also directed the film). While Antwone is at first reluctant to open up, Dr. Davenport is eventually able to get Antwone to discuss his childhood and the traumas that still haunt him and fuel his anger and fear.
The majority of the respect that I had for this film has to do with a plot element that is revealed about a third of the way into the film, thus I will spoiler tag a lot of this review, but will not give away the ending or anything like that.
This movie struck a lot of chords with me. In my years as a teacher, I have worked with many victims of abuse--physical, mental, emotional, neglect, sexual--and just in the last month had to make a call to Child Protective Services (about a child in my community, not one of my students). Even the smartest, kindest children carry a heavy burden when they have endured such treatment. Something that this movie captured incredibly well was the way that Antwone's anger is a two-headed beast: one part he knows is his direct anger at those who hurt him, but the other part is more obscure. It is the unknowable possibilities of a better childhood. It is the lack of understanding of why these things happened to him. It's an inability to see a way forward.
Luke and Washington are both solid in their performances, and their scenes together are good. Novella Nelson is appropriately terrifying as Antwone's abusive foster mother.
I had only two hangups about the film, one from a craft point of view and the other from a personal logic point of view.
From a craft point of view, I had mixed feelings about a subplot involving Davenport's own past and issues. While it was a good way to make his character more dimensional, it felt like that part of the story was a bit half-hearted. And because there are some inevitable parallels with the therapist/angry-young-man relationship in Good Will Hunting, it's hard not to see how the subplot falls a bit flat where it could have been much deeper. There were a few parts in the film that seemed to lose momentum, and way too many times that Davenport seems almost on the edge of saying something and then doesn't, leaving me wondering "What was that all about?" several times.
And this is a little personal qualm, but it bothered me that apparently they did not report Antwone's foster family? This is a family that has at least three people in the household willing to abuse children in a variety of ways. And who is to say they haven't been cycling through children for the last 15 years? I don't even think this needed to be a significant part of the plot at all, but it bugged me a little that it was never even addressed.
This was an interesting and emotional film with a unique central conflict for the main character. It is inspiring to know how much of it was lifted from the real experiences of the film's writer, Fisher himself.
Antwone Fisher, 2002
Antwone Fisher (Derek Luke) is a young man working in the Navy. After attacking a fellow seaman, Antwone is sent to a Naval psychiatrist named Dr. Davenport (Denzel Washington, who also directed the film). While Antwone is at first reluctant to open up, Dr. Davenport is eventually able to get Antwone to discuss his childhood and the traumas that still haunt him and fuel his anger and fear.
The majority of the respect that I had for this film has to do with a plot element that is revealed about a third of the way into the film, thus I will spoiler tag a lot of this review, but will not give away the ending or anything like that.
WARNING: spoilers below
There are, in my opinion, far too films that address the way that children who have endured abuse and trauma cope as they get older, and the way that those traumas can manifest themselves. Stories about boys and trauma more often feature as explanatory backstories for brutal killers in horror or thriller movies. Even more rare is seeing a film in which a male character has a history of sexual abuse.
Stories about women who have experienced sexual trauma fit with a lot of what we are comfortable with as a culture. It makes sense that girls are abused because girls are not as strong. It makes sense that women might be afraid of men because men are stronger than women. Women-centered narratives about sexual abuse fit into our notions of the structure of power and align with our cultural "logic".
The portrayal of a male character coping with physical and sexual abuse inflicted by female "family" members (maybe it would be better to say "members of his household") is something that doesn't fit as easily. We don't tend to think of men as being victims of sexual violence. We don't square the idea of a man being afraid of sex the way we might square a female character with the same fear. I really applaud this movie for portraying such a narrative, and for normalizing what Antwone goes through. It's not even a line of dialogue, per se, but rather the way that Washington's character doesn't even flinch when Antwone admits he has never had sex or seen a woman naked aside from his abuser. And I really appreciated that the way through Antwone's fear wasn't to "man up"--it was to find a person, Cheryl (Joy Bryant), who is patient and understanding and doesn't flinch when he admits his inexperience and hesitation. Antwone does get a "stand up for himself" moment more toward the end, but I liked that he and Cheryl cemented their bond before this.
Stories about women who have experienced sexual trauma fit with a lot of what we are comfortable with as a culture. It makes sense that girls are abused because girls are not as strong. It makes sense that women might be afraid of men because men are stronger than women. Women-centered narratives about sexual abuse fit into our notions of the structure of power and align with our cultural "logic".
The portrayal of a male character coping with physical and sexual abuse inflicted by female "family" members (maybe it would be better to say "members of his household") is something that doesn't fit as easily. We don't tend to think of men as being victims of sexual violence. We don't square the idea of a man being afraid of sex the way we might square a female character with the same fear. I really applaud this movie for portraying such a narrative, and for normalizing what Antwone goes through. It's not even a line of dialogue, per se, but rather the way that Washington's character doesn't even flinch when Antwone admits he has never had sex or seen a woman naked aside from his abuser. And I really appreciated that the way through Antwone's fear wasn't to "man up"--it was to find a person, Cheryl (Joy Bryant), who is patient and understanding and doesn't flinch when he admits his inexperience and hesitation. Antwone does get a "stand up for himself" moment more toward the end, but I liked that he and Cheryl cemented their bond before this.
This movie struck a lot of chords with me. In my years as a teacher, I have worked with many victims of abuse--physical, mental, emotional, neglect, sexual--and just in the last month had to make a call to Child Protective Services (about a child in my community, not one of my students). Even the smartest, kindest children carry a heavy burden when they have endured such treatment. Something that this movie captured incredibly well was the way that Antwone's anger is a two-headed beast: one part he knows is his direct anger at those who hurt him, but the other part is more obscure. It is the unknowable possibilities of a better childhood. It is the lack of understanding of why these things happened to him. It's an inability to see a way forward.
Luke and Washington are both solid in their performances, and their scenes together are good. Novella Nelson is appropriately terrifying as Antwone's abusive foster mother.
I had only two hangups about the film, one from a craft point of view and the other from a personal logic point of view.
From a craft point of view, I had mixed feelings about a subplot involving Davenport's own past and issues. While it was a good way to make his character more dimensional, it felt like that part of the story was a bit half-hearted. And because there are some inevitable parallels with the therapist/angry-young-man relationship in Good Will Hunting, it's hard not to see how the subplot falls a bit flat where it could have been much deeper. There were a few parts in the film that seemed to lose momentum, and way too many times that Davenport seems almost on the edge of saying something and then doesn't, leaving me wondering "What was that all about?" several times.
And this is a little personal qualm, but it bothered me that apparently they did not report Antwone's foster family? This is a family that has at least three people in the household willing to abuse children in a variety of ways. And who is to say they haven't been cycling through children for the last 15 years? I don't even think this needed to be a significant part of the plot at all, but it bugged me a little that it was never even addressed.
This was an interesting and emotional film with a unique central conflict for the main character. It is inspiring to know how much of it was lifted from the real experiences of the film's writer, Fisher himself.