It’s material that demands much of its cast - almost all of whom starred in the Tony Award-winning 2010 Broadway revival - and while Washington holds the first hour exquisitely, Golden Globe winner Viola Davis, initially tiptoeing the landmines that circle her husband, ultimately moves towards the heart of the story. A narrative that arguably has more resonance and relevance than ever. It’s a narrative that playwright August Wilson - who receives the only screenplay credit - mined beautifully, Fences being one of the ten plays in his ‘Century Cycle’ exploring 100 years of everyday family life in black America.

But it’s also one with a singularity of perspective, it being that of a working-class African-American family in the 1950s. It’s one of the creaks and cracks and tiny hairline fractures that deepen and expose within a family, almost without notice, until they’re beyond repair. It’s not an epic story, but it is a story told epically. You’ve got to work hard for this film, but by god, it’s worth the graft. It’s felt in every decision, every spat word, every harboured resentment from his flagging relationship with Rose to the dysfunctional dynamic with youngest son - himself a promising athlete - Cory (Jovan Adepo). This is only one welt he carries close to the skin (see also the fact that there is no black sanitation truck driver in his company), but the one that continually raises to the surface, as fresh as when it was first made. Troy is a man stitched together from the hurt of his first five decades on earth - a promising ballplayer who, through institutional racism (and potentially, you later discover, his age, due to spending years in prison for killing a man) was robbed of the chance to go pro. Here, Washington is tilling the earth by hand, laying the soil even for the story set to unfurl before us.

With little in the way of action in that stark yard - or even physical movement - it’s a first act Washington delivers pretty much single-handedly, dense dialogue tripping from his tongue with the beat and the bounce of poetry. It’s Friday, it’s payday, and as their shift hauling trash ends, Troy ( Denzel Washington, who also directs) and best friend Bono (Stephen Henderson) do what they do every Friday: sit in Troy’s back yard and weave intricate, bawdy stories, half-drunk bottle of gin in hand, before being joined by Troy’s wife of 18 years, Rose ( Viola Davis).

Fences play denzel washington