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A
BLACK NAVAL OFFICER FINDS PEACE SEARCHING FOR HIS PSYCHOLOGICAL
ROOTS
 Antwone
Fisher, a young African American in the U.S. Navy decided
one day to write the story of his life. Ten years later, his
autobiography, with some fictionalization, has now been portrayed
on the screen. The story so deeply touched Denzel Washington
that he decided to direct a biopic, Antwone Fisher,
in which he also plays the role of the psychiatrist, Dr. Jerome
Davenport, who did so much to help Fisher to resolve problems
which not only prompted him to enlist in the navy but also
threatened to get him a discharge for misconduct. When the
film begins, a five-year-old is dreaming about eating pancakes
with his family. When Fisher (played by Derek Luke) wakes
up, a white sailor on a ship in Pearl Harbor soon ribs him
about the color of his face. After Fisher explodes with rage
and his fist, he ends up reduced in rank, restricted to the
base, and required to take three sessions with a naval psychiatrist.
Since he does not believe himself to be "crazy,"
the usual stereotype of a psychiatrist's patient, Fisher at
first shares very little information with Dr. Davenport. To
his credit, and contrary to much current psychiatric practice,
Dr. Davenport decides not to prescribe pills. Fisher, Dr.
Davenport eventually learns, was born in a correctional facility
in Ohio where his mother was incarcerated, and his father
died of a gunshot wound from a girlfriend two months before
he was born. He was then assigned to a foster African American
mother, Mrs. Tate (played by Novella Nelson), who mentally
and physically abused him, calling him "nigger."
His foster mother's teenage daughter abused him sexually,
and one day he ran away to the home of a friend on the block,
but rejecting his foster parent meant that he was next reassigned
to a reform school. When he completed reform school, he was
taken to a shelter, then slept on park benches, and went to
see his boyhood friend. His friend, however, asked him to
accompany him to a foodstore, which his friend unexpectedly
tried to rob; when the proprietor shot his friend, he fled,
and Antwone soon enlisted in the navy.
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Dr. Davenport sees a connection between his childhood experience
and his rage, which emerges twice again while with his navy
buddies. Dr. Davenport also links Fisher's insecurity in courting
an attractive young woman, Cheryl (played by Joy Bryant),
with the childhood abuse, and talking about the problem helps
as much as being with Cheryl, who is very understanding. When
Dr. Davenport feels that therapy sessions are no longer needed,
he implores Fisher to search for his birth-mother so that
he can dissipate the anger that he appears to be reenacting.
Fisher and Cheryl then fly to Cleveland and visit his foster
mother, who supplies him with his birthfather's surname, Elkin;
then the two telephone every Elkin in Cleveland area phonebooks
until they locate Fisher's aunt. His aunt invites him over,
and a family member drives him to meet his birthmother in
perhaps the saddest encounter in the film. His birthmother,
speechless during the meeting, cries after he leaves. When
he returns to visit his aunt, the dream that began the film
comes true--a table set for a king, surrounded by many of
his long-lost relatives and his girlfriend Cheryl. Returning
to Honolulu, he thanks Dr. Davenport for all his help, but
the psychiatrist surprises him by thanking Fisher for enabling
him to save his own marriage. When the film ends, amid audience
applause on an opening night screening in Hollywood, a title
tells us that Antwone dedicated the film to his deceased birthfather.
Few in the audience knew until seeing Antwone
Fisher how locating birthparents (the term used
by adoptees nowadays, rather than the film's passé
terminology about "real" or "natural"
parents) can be so important to someone who feels that he
was once abandoned. The film indirectly can be seen as a plea
for governments in the fifty states to open up records so
that those who suffer psychologically can become whole. More
explicitly, the film is an exposé of what Dr. Davenport
calls "slave mentality," that is, the tendency for
generations of African Americans to engage in ethnic self-hate
by abusing one another, just as they were once abused by their
white masters, a masochistic "identification with the
aggressor" that was identified by Theodore Reich as an
explanation for the transformation of ordinary Germans into
militant anti-Semites after Hitler came to power. Accordingly,
the Political Film Society has nominated Antwone
Fisher as best film exposé and best film
on peace of 2002. MH
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