Accepting people not as we imagine them but as they are has never been easy, but it is an irrevocable prerequisite for the fullness of the civilizing process. People with a modicum of decency are accustomed from an early age to suppress their outbursts of intolerance, their outbursts of prejudice, their natural tendency to make judgments of all kinds, and to police themselves so as not to be affected by the poison of racial segregation to be corrupted.
Showing others the respect we expect from them is much more than good manners. It must be an exercise, a practice that frees us from the condemnation of anger, an emotion that almost always attacks people without justification. This inglorious but comforting task of understanding others, giving them a word of encouragement, an open, disarming smile, and a friendly look, often requires such sacrifice from us that it is as if we are embarking on a seemingly endless journey there plunge lives in which the circumstances that we consider truly absurd are the most trivial things that can exist.
People will never be able to free themselves from the many questions that concern them. Racial discrimination remains a structural problem in many countries today and gives rise to much debate all to some extent related to the inability to recognize what may be so dark in the mind, in our spirit, that it prevents us from being human beings to recognize those who are worthy of this racial discrimination equal as equal. Respect those who suffer and sweat like us.
Director Denzel Washington, a performer extraordinaire, makes “The Limit Between Us” (2016) a cry for help from a sad man cornered by the memories of failures that continue to plague him and send him spiraling into anger and panic imprisoned by himself, reducing him to a pale image of what he was, a legacy that will be remembered by those he cannot love and whose love is gradually killing him. That is perhaps the big question in a story whose axis has always been the debate on social issues of central relevance, but which becomes all the more painful when one points to such an unusual outcome, full of subtleties and small, very complex decisions.
Washington already has some directing experience and does a good job of transferring the powerful script by August Wilson (19452005), author of the play of the same name, to the screen. Wilson wrote “Fences” in 1983, a huge success on Broadway, and just four years later, in 1987, his work took shape on the world's most famous commercial theater stage. These included three montages; Washington was the protagonist of the second season in 2010 when he received ten Tony nominations, the highest honor for theatrical productions in the United States, including Best Actor and Best Actress and the show returned to New York's most popular spotlight scene in 2014.
In 2016, “Fences,” the partnership between Wilson and his male protagonist, produced one of the most talkedabout films in Academy history, which was also remembered as a possible winner in 2017 (it lost to Barry's “Moonlight.” Jenkins). , which confirmed the grace trend (a storyline that focuses on racial issues).
At first glance it seems that it is Washington's character who really plays a role in the plot, but as Wilson's writing gains depth and a major turning point is reached, Viola Davis is the one who begins to dominate the narrative. The two are Troy and Rose Maxson, a middleaged couple in Pittsburgh, western Pennsylvania, in the turbulent 1950s. Troy, the garbage collector played by Washington, wanted to be a baseball star and would have even had a chance if he had. That's because it started at age forty, when professional athletes were either already retired or on the fast track to the end of their careers.
Every halfway normal person sees his own limitations, but Troy always finds a way to twist the truth in his favor, make himself a victim, and, even worse, shift the responsibility for his failures onto those around him. At this point, Wilson's text illuminates a psychopathy that increases over time and is confirmed at the very moment when Davis, winner of the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for this role I have my doubts as to whether SHE would not be the main character , both in the play and in the feature film receives the climax that breathes new life into “Um Limite Entre Nós”.
Rose's increasing arguments with her husband are second only in terms of drama to the arguments that Washington's character has with Cory, the youngest son, played by Jovan Adepo, which is presented with an almost didactic emphasis. The only people Troy seems to get along with are Russell Hornsby's eldest son Lyons from a previous marriage and his friend Jim Bono, Stephen McKinley's oddball replacement for Henderson, whom he met under less honorable circumstances.
Wilson manages to make racism as thorny a discussion as machismo, misogyny, ageism, and mental illness, embodied in Gabe, Troy's younger brother, who became neurologically impaired after a serious injury on the front lines in World War II (19391945). The overall shot of the final scene, which opens to the cloudy Pittsburgh sky from the backyard of the modest home where the Maxsons live out their years, lightens the patriarch's family burden, but does not absolve him of all the insults and all I'm ashamed, but I still love him.
Movie: A boundary between us
Direction: Denzel Washington
Year: 2016
Gender: Theatre
note: 9/10