“When your daddy walked through the house he was just so big,” Rose Maxson (Viola Davis) tells her son toward the end of “Fences.” “He filled it up.”
Rose is absolutely correct — Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington) fills every corner of the small house in which he and Rose live, just as Washington himself fills every corner of “Fences”. Troy is a black garbage collector and former baseball player, embittered because his heyday came before baseball’s color barrier was broken. “Fences” follows him and his wife Rose as they raise their family in 1950s Pittsburgh.
Troy is fast-talking, smart and occasionally enormously funny. But, from the very first moments of the film, it is clear that an explosive frustration lies just below his surface. In Washington’s expert hands, Troy expands into his surroundings, crowding out the people who love him while crackling with latent rage. Every twitch of the eye, every slurred spurt of vernacular and every exhausted slump is masterful and engaging — painting a picture of a deeply frustrated and conflicted man.
The tension Washington creates with the impeccable Davis makes “Fences” as suspenseful as any murder mystery. Watching Troy reach to embrace Rose is like watching a car crash in slow motion, and seeing Rose let her guard down and smile provides relief.
But the smile disappears with every rough-and-tumble hug, and each crude flirtation painfully inches the characters closer to an impending disaster. When catastrophe hits, Washington shakes the very earth around him. He is the greatest actor alive, and in “Fences,” he delivers the most powerful performance of the year.
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