Tag Archives: If Beale Street Could Talk

I Don’t Want to Go Out – Week of March 25

Whole bunch of yes and one very big no coming home this week. Allow us to walk you through your options.

Click the film title for the full review.

If Beale Street Could Talk

Capernaum

(DVD)

Dragged Across Concrete

Stan & Ollie

Aquaman

(DVD)

Second Act

Screening Room: Beale Street, Escape Room, Liyana

We crash into the new year with a mixture of Oscar contenders and off-season studio mediocrity: If Beale Street Could Talk, Escape Room, Liyana. We also cover all that’s new and interesting in home entertainment.

Listen in HERE.

Voices of Experience

If Beale Street Could Talk

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Writer/director Barry Jenkins follows up his 2016 Oscar-winning masterpiece of a debut, Moonlight, with the ambitious goal of translating the work of a beautifully complex writer to a cinematic narrative. By respecting the material with a stirring commitment to character, If Beale Street Could Talk meets that goal with grace.

Based on the novel by James Baldwin (and the first English-language adaptation of his fiction), the film follows a struggling couple as a means to illustrate the intersecting forms of oppression facing African Americans.

Tish (KiKi Layne in an impressive feature debut) and “Fonny” (Stephan James, from Selma and Race) are a young couple in Harlem who embraces their unexpected pregnancy while struggling to prove Fonny’s innocence in a rape case.

As the surface tension is driven by the potentially dangerous chances Kiki’s mother (Regina King) takes to clear Fonny’s name, smaller, more quiet moments around the neighborhood cement Baldwin’s incisive take on what it means to be black in America.

Baldwin’s writing – a mix of brutal honesty, brilliant clarity and weary outrage – is understandably daunting as a film adaptation. Themes which breathe with life on the page can come to the screen in an awkward rush and land as heavy handed melodrama.

Jenkins, whose early script got the blessing of Baldwin’s estate even before the triumph of Moonlight, brings an elegance to the story which fits comfortably. A poetic camera, authentic characters and tender, fully realized performances—especially from the glorious King—weave together to sing the praises of Baldwin’s prose in hypnotic, and often heartbreaking fashion.

Amid a story of grim realities and American resilience lie bonds of love and family that the film never loses sight of, even in its most sober moments, which may be the most miraculous aspect of If Beale Street Could Talk.

It is a film without illusions, but one that carries the unbowed spirit of its characters on a deeply felt journey that honors its origins.