I realize there are threads more generally discussing this year’s Best Picture nominees, but I think that each deserves its own thread (both for the short term and for people wanting to discuss each sometime down the road).
Of the four nominees I’ve seen so far (Arrival, Hell or High Water and Hidden Figures being the others), this one impacted me emotionally the most. I can’t recall the last time I had tears streaming down my face at the end of a movie. I will grant that some of the impact for me came from connections to my own life, but I really felt these were incredibly powerful acting performances portraying some incredibly complex emotions. I didn’t think there was a weak link on the screen.
I’d be curious to see whether other folks feel like Troy’s son would ultimately have become like Troy.
Fences was a very intense flick. At times it seemed like a Denzel monologue. And I was wishing for a break from that, but it never happened.
Troy’s wife stood up for their sons. At times going against Troy.
After Troy’s death, his wife seems to deify Troy. This shocked me. She becomes just like him. Even vowing to raise the daughter in the same manner as Troy did to the sons.
That is the real tragedy.
As to the OP’s question will Troy’s son turn out like him. I don’t think so. His son was smart and seemed to question life.
But his mother, perpetuating this Troyness was tragic.
Interesting. I don’t agree with the idea that she deified him. I saw it as her trying to say that despite his numerous flaws (which impacted her more than anyone else), he was not an evil man.
She herself had her breaking point with Troy when she effectively ended her romantic relationship with him, and there was no indication at all that she criticized her son for rebelling against Troy. Troy had a strong conviction that he should always do right by folks, though his execution was severely lacking at times. I think she forgave him for a lot (and probably too much) because of all that he’d been through in his own life. But she wanted her son to also carry with him that strong conviction about duty to the people you care about and the desire to do right. She didn’t want her to son to reject everything about Troy.
In what ways do you think that Rose herself becomes like Troy?
I really don’t think that was supposed to be the takeaway from what she said to her daughter or to her son. To me, the point was that all three of them (Rose, son and daughter) had reason not to like Troy, but Rose felt strongly that it was inappropriate to use that particular day to disrespect or vilify him. He had given each one of them valuable things despite all of his flaws, and she wanted them all to be focused on that for his send-off.
I don’t believe for a second that she suddenly became blind to the things Troy had done.
I think I tend to agree with harmonicamoon that Rose deifies Troy late in the film, and she explicitly says she’s going to bring up the daughter the way Troy brought up Cory. I don’t think Rose is unaware that Troy brought up Cory through intimidation and threats and bullying.
I don’t think she’s blind to what he was, there are hints there that she is embracing his ideas. I definitely took it that her opinion changed after his death.
I’m struggling with that because she wasn’t “raising” Cory any longer. So if she felt that Troy’s hardness was the “right” way to do things, why would she care so much about Cory attending the funeral? I didn’t sense any reverence in anything she was saying on the day of the funeral. Something about this doesn’t fit for me.