Antwone
Fisher, a young African American in the U.S. Navy decided
one day to write the story of his life. Ten years later, his
autobiography, with some fictionalization, has now been portrayed
on the screen. The story so deeply touched Denzel Washington
that he decided to direct a biopic, Antwone Fisher,
in which he also plays the role of the psychiatrist, Dr. Jerome
Davenport, who did so much to help Fisher to resolve problems
which not only prompted him to enlist in the navy but also
threatened to get him a discharge for misconduct. When the
film begins, a five-year-old is dreaming about eating pancakes
with his family. When Fisher (played by Derek Luke) wakes
up, a white sailor on a ship in Pearl Harbor soon ribs him
about the color of his face. After Fisher explodes with rage
and his fist, he ends up reduced in rank, restricted to the
base, and required to take three sessions with a naval psychiatrist.
Since he does not believe himself to be "crazy,"
the usual stereotype of a psychiatrist's patient, Fisher at
first shares very little information with Dr. Davenport. To
his credit, and contrary to much current psychiatric practice,
Dr. Davenport decides not to prescribe pills. Fisher, Dr.
Davenport eventually learns, was born in a correctional facility
in Ohio where his mother was incarcerated, and his father
died of a gunshot wound from a girlfriend two months before
he was born. He was then assigned to a foster African American
mother, Mrs. Tate (played by Novella Nelson), who mentally
and physically abused him, calling him "nigger."
His foster mother's teenage daughter abused him sexually,
and one day he ran away to the home of a friend on the block,
but rejecting his foster parent meant that he was next reassigned
to a reform school. When he completed reform school, he was
taken to a shelter, then slept on park benches, and went to
see his boyhood friend. His friend, however, asked him to
accompany him to a foodstore, which his friend unexpectedly
tried to rob; when the proprietor shot his friend, he fled,
and Antwone soon enlisted in the navy. Dr. Davenport sees
a connection between his childhood experience and his rage,
which emerges twice again while with his navy buddies. Dr.
Davenport also links Fisher's insecurity in courting an attractive
young woman, Cheryl (played by Joy Bryant), with the childhood
abuse, and talking about the problem helps as much as being
with Cheryl, who is very understanding. When Dr. Davenport
feels that therapy sessions are no longer needed, he implores
Fisher to search for his birth-mother so that he can dissipate
the anger that he appears to be reenacting. Fisher and Cheryl
then fly to Cleveland and visit his foster mother, who supplies
him with his birthfather's surname, Elkin; then the two telephone
every Elkin in Cleveland area phonebooks until they locate
Fisher's aunt. His aunt invites him over, and a family member
drives him to meet his birthmother in perhaps the saddest
encounter in the film. His birthmother, speechless during
the meeting, cries after he leaves. When he returns to visit
his aunt, the dream that began the film comes true--a table
set for a king, surrounded by many of his long-lost relatives
and his girlfriend Cheryl. Returning to Honolulu, he thanks
Dr. Davenport for all his help, but the psychiatrist surprises
him by thanking Fisher for enabling him to save his own marriage.
When the film ends, amid audience applause on an opening night
screening in Hollywood, a title tells us that Antwone dedicated
the film to his deceased birthfather. Few in the audience
knew until seeing Antwone Fisher how
locating birthparents (the term used by adoptees nowadays,
rather than the film's passé terminology about "real"
or "natural" parents) can be so important to someone
who feels that he was once abandoned. The film indirectly
can be seen as a plea for governments in the fifty states
to open up records so that those who suffer psychologically
can become whole. More explicitly, the film is an exposé
of what Dr. Davenport calls "slave mentality," that
is, the tendency for generations of African Americans to engage
in ethnic self-hate by abusing one another, just as they were
once abused by their white masters, a masochistic "identification
with the aggressor" that was identified by Theodore Reich
as an explanation for the transformation of ordinary Germans
into militant anti-Semites after Hitler came to power. Accordingly,
the Political Film Society has nominated Antwone
Fisher as best film exposé and best film
on peace of 2002. MH
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