It’s the most wonderful time of the year: IT IS AWARDS SEASON Y’ALL. And the movies that get released in the next month are the Oscar hopefuls, some of which are gonna be great and some of which are gonna be, “Well, you tried.” This season, there’s a bunch of Black stories that I’m looking forward to, and one of these is Denzel Washington’s adaptation of August Wilson’s play (with a screenplay also written by Wilson himself before his death).

Denzel and Viola Davis (aka the Queen in whose world we are lucky to walk) played the roles of Troy and Rose Maxson in the 2010 Broadway production that won both of them Tony awards. The couple live in in 1950s Pittsburgh. Troy is a garbageman, and the story follows him and his relationships with his wife, his two sons, his best friend, and his brother.

One of the things that makes a film adaptation of a play difficult is the total change in medium. In a play, the setting is generally very static, and modern film isn’t, simply because it doesn’t have to be.  Denzel direction opens the setting up a little bit but mostly keeps the story contained in the house and backyard. He makes a couple of weird cuts, I think to break up the monotony of a shot, but if I’m noticing that you made a cut and I don’t know why you made it, maybe you didn’t need to. (Hire me, Denzel.)

August Wilson’s strength is in his language. He gives his actors such words to play with, and Denzel and Viola are just AMAZING. They played these roles on stage, so they know these words, but they are also skilled in making it fresh each time. They are masters at this craft. Masters.

Wilson’s other strength is in his depiction of Black life. Fences is one of ten plays in Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle” that explores Black life and race relations. There’s a bare handful of White people in this movie, and they’re all basically in the background. This is about the lives of Black people when they aren’t being guarded in the presence of white people, when the tension is still there (because it’s always there) but they can at least be themselves amongst themselves. Honestly, this is a facet of Black life that’s so rarely depicted in media because most media is made by White people. I don’t think a white director would have been as sensitive and understanding about what these characters were going through.

August Wilson’s weakness is that he gives Rose the short end of the stick in this story. It’s about how Troy copes with his life, and he makes a MASSIVE error in judgment, and while we get some of Rose’s reaction to his choices and her management of their lives afterwards, we do not get anything beyond a mere hint of how she copes and what her community is like. A companion play could be written about the strength of Black women, how so much weight is put on their shoulders, about the communities they make and why the expectation of holding up the world is unfair. Seriously, I would pay good money to see the flip side of this story.

But when Troy yells that doesn’t Rose think he’s frustrated by standing in the same place for 18 years and she wallops him back with “AND I’VE BEEN STANDING THERE WITH YOU,” she lets him HAVE IT, giving him EVERYTHING he deserves save a nut punch. I got chills. It’s Viola’s world; We’re just living in it.

(Yes, I am on the “Give Viola Davis her Oscar already” train. GET ON BOARD PEOPLE.)

What I like about the mix of Denzel’s performance and his direction is that he knows this is a story of a man who has gotten old, so Denzel seems comfortable enough with who he is (and who Troy is) and he’s not afraid to show it. This isn’t a vain performance. It’s an honest one. Troy is not a great guy, but he’s a real one.

I know I keep talking about these two and their skills, but there’s something profound about watching film actors play roles they played on stage in a completely different medium, and how deeply they inhabit these people. It’s a GIFT, y’all.

The second act is a little choppy – it’s been at least 15 years since I’ve read Fences, and I don’t remember how it works in the play, but the pacing gets kind of draggy, and that’s why I knocked it down to an A-.

When we talk about Own Voices this is exactly what we’re talking about. A Black story, written and directed by Black people, and starring Black people. Both Viola and Denzel are up for Golden Globes, and Oscar nominations will be announced later this month. FINGERS CROSSED.

Fences is in theaters now and you find tickets (US) at Fandango and Moviefone.