If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)
Directed by Barry Jenkins
Written by Barry Jenkins
Starring Stephen James, Kiki Layne, Regina Hall, Colman Domingo
Release Date December 14th, 2018
Published December 10th, 2018
If Beale Street Could Talk is one of the best movies of 2018. This deeply affecting drama from the director of the Academy Award winning Moonlight, Barry Jenkins, is one of the most human and thoughtful films about life, love, and race we’ve seen in some time. Jenkins, adapting the work of the late, brilliant author James Baldwin, having cultural renaissance with this movie and last year’s documentary on his life, I Am Not Your Negro, gets to the heart of the cultural experience of racism like few films ever have.
If Beale Street Could Talk tells the story of a young couple in love, Tish (Kiki Layne) and Fonny (Stephen James). Tish and Fonny have known each other since before they could remember. Their earliest memories are of baths together at an age when sex was merely a gender. They’ve spent their entire lives falling in love until finally they are old enough to understand it. Unfortunately, for their love story, they are torn apart by hatred.
We meet Fonny when he is behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. We will come to know what happened but for the earliest part of the film we must trust that Trish’s entreaties about how she is working to get him out of jail center on his innocence. Just as important however, as Fonny’s incarceration is the news that Tish is pregnant. At just 19 years old and with Fonny behind bars, they are going to be parents.
Given the circumstances, it falls to Tish to inform their families of their situation. Tish’s mother Sharon (Regina Hall) is practical but also loving and deeply compassionate. Her father, Joseph (Colman Domingo) is unpredictable but deeply loyal. The trouble comes from Fonny’s divorced parents, the deeply devout Mrs Hunt (Aunjanue Ellis) and her hustler ex-husband Frank (Michael Beach) who is prepared to do anything for his son, if only to make up for having been an absent father.
That’s the set up of sorts but the heart of If Beale Street Could Talk is not in a linear narrative but in the flashback structure that builds brilliantly toward the reveal of how Fonny ended up in jail and how that reflects the moment in which the film is set, the early 1970’s in Harlem and how that reflects on America in 2018. At that time, it was as if all young black men in Harlem had to spend time in jail by some predetermination of racist police activity. It’s as if it was merely Fonny’s turn and that seeming inevitability is devastating.
The incredible Bryan Tyree Henry plays a supporting role in If Beale Street Could Talk as Daniel, an old friend of Fonny’s. We come to know Daniel’s story of having similarly been recently in jail and his story provides a gut-wrenching prologue to what is lurking in Fonny’s near future. Daniel could provide an alibi for Fonny in the crime he is accused of but his recent stint in jail is seen as disqualifying of his credibility and an awful cycle of such things emerges to deepen the tragedy.
I’m painting a bleak picture of If Beale Street Could Talk but the film is not entirely what I have described. Much of what I mentioned here is subtext, the front of the story, the bulk of the narrative and the beauty of If Beale Street Could Talk is the remarkably poetic and thrilling love story between Fonny and Tish. Much like the story of how Fonny ends up in jail, director Barry Jenkins layers in the love story of Fonny and Tish using flashbacks to the beauty, innocence and romance of their burgeoning love story.
If Beale Street Could Talk contains one of the best, if not the absolute BEST scene in any movie in 2018. Having just looked at an apartment together and Fonny having charmed Tish into taking a risk with him on a place that isn’t quite finished being built, the two walk down the street holding hands and basking in the moment. It’s an almost wordless scene, gracefully filmed and knowing that this is the scene that immediately precedes how Fonny ended up in jail only serves to underline the beauty of the moment. It’s a perfect scene, gorgeously cinematic, heart fluttering romantic and haunting.
The score also underlines the perfection of this moment. Composer Nicholas Britell’s gorgeous string symphony is at its most moving and evocative in this moment. It’s one of the finest moments of score and image that I have seen in any movie in a long while and it was this moment that made me completely fall in love with If Beale Street Could Talk, a film that combines image, story and sound in breathtaking fashion.
If Beale Street Could Talk is a masterpiece, a lyrical, lovely, exceptionally acted masterpiece. Stephen James, Kiki Layne, Regina Hall and Colman Domingo deliver perfect performances and director Barry Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton capture the performances in immaculate fashion. Few films in 2018, and indeed, the last decade or so, have moved me as deeply as If Beale Street Could Talk.
