Fences -August Wilson ( play script) 1985 / Fences- Denzel Washington ( Director) 2016

 August Wilson, The Theater Poet of Black America.

I now learn, that he was best known for a series of plays called The Pittsburg Cycle, or the Centenary Cycle, with each play aimed at presenting one decade of Black experience of the 20th century. He won the Pulitzer award for drama twice, once for the Piano Lesson  (1987), and Fences ( 1985). Fences aims to represent the 1950s, an era when the new black generation was becoming more hopeful, for a better life. We see that in the person of Cory, aspiring for greater things, only to be dampened to some level by his bitter father Troy, who still believed that the whites didn't give the black man a fair chance. But the whole mood of the play, other than with Troy, suggested that the times were changing for the better, for the black man. Troy himself should've recognized that, for he was able to present his case, and get a promotion as a driver, instead of a "lifter".

In a sense Troy is mix of his own brute of a  father for whom he had no sympathy, the bitterness of being denied to play the major league ( the racial barrier had not broken through in his heyday of playing the negro league baseball ), and in his own insecure way to protect his loved ones, namely his son, Cory, from the hurt that he endured by denied success at the highest level. Through his rigidity, his son loses an opportunity to go to college and play football. Even his elder son Lyon, wayward he may be, aspires to do what he likes by way of being a musician - and not toil over for years doing something that he doesn't enjoy, just so that that he can make a living.

Troy is convinced that he gives all he got for his family, and he is not sensitive to the fact that he takes a toll on his family too - especially his son, Cory, for not allowing to live the way that he wants. Cory, thinks it is a matter of his father denying him opportunities, whereas it is possibly Tory's fixed mindedness about how correct he reads the situation, and the ghosts of own father visiting him, on how he managed his children.

CORY: Just cause you didn't have a chance! You just  scared I'm gonna be better than you, that's all.

I felt, that Tory's own betrayal to his wife was over his attempt to vent his pressure - a pressure that he had set upon himself , mostly - through a moment of forgetting life's pressures. 

As a play script, it was most complete, catching most nuances in everyday life with an apt sentence or two.

The movie: There are few differences between the play script and the movie.  For example, the episode where Rose asks Tory to come back home direct after work, a suggestion which infers that he give up Alberta for good, happens on the exit of Tory's workplace, with Rose coming to meet him there. In the  play it happens at the Maxson house. Some of the script is edited out in the movie. Despite the few added changes of scenes, the feel of a play sticks since it mostly dialogue which runs the movie, and the scenes are few - and they happen mostly on Maxson back yard, or in their house. DW has attempted to give it a more cinematic feel by adding different scenes to where the dialogues take place (e.g. above referred scene; Tory and Bono meeting at a pub, a few scenes where Tory feeds Gabe at the hospital etc., but the feel of the play has stuck. I didn't feel it in a negative sense though. 

Denzel Washington gives out true life representation of a black man accepting his lot  in the 1950s, up to each of his facial expression. The rest of the cast compliments him, and the movie is a wonderful, complete work of art. The sole reason for me to start reading the play script was upon my first viewing of the movie, and the recognition that it contains nuances as I've attempted to highlight above, which are best captured in a close reading than on a movie.

Genre - Play ( Script) ( 1985)
Rating - *****