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Washington's 'Fences' is a gift to audiences Denzel Washington plays Troy Maxson and Viola Davis plays Rose Maxson in "Fences" from Paramount Pictures. Directed by Denzel Washington from a screenplay by August Wilson. Thursday Jan 5, 2017 at 12:01 AM By Chris Honoré for Revels Fences; 133m; Rated PG-13   Denzel Washington and Viola Davis have offered to filmgoers not only a master class in acting, but Washington, as director and actor, has created a startlingly fine film adaptation of August Wilson’s 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Fences.” For the actors, it’s a tour de force bringing to bear their immense talent. They are remarkable in their ability to so completely inhabit the characters — Washington as Troy Maxson, a 53-year-old trash collector who carries with him a stone of embitterment, and Davis as his wife, Rose, who has invested 18 years of her life standing besides him, shoulder to shoulder, unwavering, while remaining undaunted. The place is Pittsburgh. The year is 1957. The setting, in great part, is the backyard of the Maxon’s hard-used brick row house. It’s summer and it’s there, to that enclosed space (recall that “Fences” was written for the stage), that Troy and his friend, and fellow trash collector, Bono (Stephen Henderson), return each day after work and while sipping gin reflect on life as they know it to be. Troy, once a gifted baseball player in the Negro league, laments the color barrier that kept him from breaking into the majors. He insists — reaching deep down, into a well of anger and regret — that his color kept him from fulfilling a dream that was all but within his grasp. Jackie Robinson shattered that ceiling of bigotry in 1947, but it was too late for Troy. Rose has heard this story for years and futilely points out to her husband that it wasn’t ever meant to be because history and his age betrayed him; now his life is what it is. That racial and personal intersection that haunts Troy frames his life and follows him like a dark, bitter shadow. He had the right stuff, he says, defiantly. He brought the heat, better than all those white boys in the majors ever dreamed of doing. August Wilson’s gift is not only his ability to create a time and place, but he also relies on language for texture, meaning authentic dialogue that is colloquial and powerful and true. Wilson, through Troy and Rose, burrows deep into his characters and their lives, both noble and flawed, always tinged with regret even in their best moments. Troy, his sentences filled with provocation and power, are always dense with meaning and rhythm and often reliant on baseball metaphors. Rose is his counterweight, softer, wiser, yet steely in her understanding of this man she so deeply loves. Troy’s 18-year-old son, Cory (Jovan Adepo), has far less insight into his father, so their encounters are often a battle of wills and hardheaded confrontations. It is Washington’s intention to produce/direct what is referred to as Wilson’s 10-play cycle, each capturing an aspect of the African-American experience. “Fences” is the first. As well, the film, in every way, pays homage to a gifted writer who created a panoply of stories and characters that capture the human condition in all its pain and tenacity from a point of view not often revealed or understood for reasons that are both historical and cultural. “Fences” is extraordinary.