10s Movie Review - If Beale Street Could Talk

Director: Barry Jenkins
Genre: Drama/ Crime
Runtime: 120 minutes
Year: 2018
Starring: Kiki Layne, Stephan James, Regina King, Michael Beach, Bryan Tyree Henry, Pedro Pascal, Diego Luna, Ed Skrein

Description: A young woman (Kiki Layne) embraces her pregnancy while she and her family set out to prove her childhood friend and lover innocent of a crime he didn’t commit.

Review: The moment at the 2017 Oscar ceremony when “Moonlight” managed to walk away with the top prize after all is still vividly remembered by many film fans. The win means a dream start for the career of then still debutant director Barry Jenkins. It raised expectations for his next project, but with a breathtaking adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel “Is Beale Street Could Talks”,  Jenkins more than lived up to them.  
Baldwin’s novel describes the tragic romance of two young African-America lovers from Harlem. Nineteen-year-old Tish and twenty-four-year-old Fonny are head over heels in love with each other and ready to build a future together, but are suddenly brutally separated when the latter is unjustly detained on suspicion of a brutal rape. And as if that fact wasn’t wry enough, Tish also turns out to be pregnant. Whether the father will ever be able to see his child grow up outside prison, however, remains to be seen
Baldwin has a past as an activist. “If Beale Street Could Talk” contains the necessary social criticism of the unjust treatment of black citizens in the American legal system, which despite its setting in the 1970s still feels painfully relevant. On the other hand, a rock-hard indictment is not Jenkins’ film. Rather than a grueling legal drama, his film is primarily a tragic yet hopeful love story. Although the run-up to and repeated postponement of the trial may be the red line of the story on paper, the film regularly flutters back and forth between loving memories from the past and present.
This non-chronological structure immediately forms a nice stylistic break with Jenkin’s debut film “Moonlight”, which was neatly divided into three separate acts. The nice thins is that in some respects “If Beale Street Could Talk” is almost a direct counterpart to Jenkins’ predecessor, but in other respect it manages to further perfect his recognizable stamp as a director.
Starting with the chose color palette. Where “Moonlight” was characterized by many cool, blue tones, symbolic of the state of mind of its main character, “If Beale Street Could Talk” is full of warm autumn colors, with many shades of yellow, red and brown. The musical accompaniment by Nicholas Britell also fits in seamlessly.
What hasn’t changed is Jenkins’ tender and empathetic directorial style. This guarantees once again a number of eye-catching camera performances by his cinematographer James Laxtn. For example, the impressice overhead show with which the film opens. But it’s mainly the close-ups that make the biggest impression. Using a number of clever tricks, such as slowing down time or zooming in on small details of someone’s face. Here he created intimacy. By of the having his characters look straight into the camera without saying anything, Jenkins regularly treat you to a kind of lifelike mini-portrait. It feels almost as if the person on the screen is sitting right across from you.
Extra clever is that Jenkins also succeeds effortlessly, without dialogue, in allowing the viewer to empathize with the emotional world of his characters. Jenkins is able to translate the story on paper into visual language in an extraordinary way without having to lose any of its power.
Just as effortlessly, “If Beale Street Could Talk” captures viewers with the sincere love of Tish and Fonny. So much so, that at times you would almost forget what a desperate premise the film opens with. The injustice stings, but at the same time Jenkins’ portrait remains as hopeful as it is heartbreaking, showing that love can survive even the most difficult obstacles.

Rating: 4,5 / 5