Review: If Beale Street Could Talk
"Unbow your head," one character says early on in If Beale Street Could Talk, the statement serving as a rallying cry for Barry Jenkins' heartbreaking yet hopeful adaptation of James Baldwin's novel, which explored the weighty and complicated theme of race through the prism of a love story.
The lovers in question are Tish and Fonny, embodied with incandescence and ardour by KiKi Layne and Stephan James, and scenes of their love are as swooning and rapturous as anything one can find in a film by Jacques Demy or Wong Kar-wai. Tish is 19, Fonny is 22, and they have fallen deeply in love after knowing each other since childhood. They are about to have a baby but are unmarried, the latter not mattering much to Fonny though Tish is anxious about breaking the news to their parents. The scenes in which she does quickly demonstrate and reaffirm Jenkins' mastery of narrative nuance. He's strongly assisted by his sterling cast, particularly Regina King and Aunjanue Ellis, who deliver different sides of mother love. King's Sharon intuits the news before it's articulated - her delivery of "Yes, baby?" is nearly all one needs to cement an Oscar nomination, if not the actual accolade - and the rest of Tish's family, her father Joseph (Colman Domingo) and older sister Ernestine (Teyonah Parris), are shocked but ultimately supportive.
With the exception of his father Frank (Michael Beach), Fonny's family are not quite as sanguine. His mother Mrs. Hunt (Aunjanue Ellis), in particular, rains down on Tish with biblical fury: "I always knew you'd be the destruction of my son." Whatever fragile peace has been brokered is replaced by a deliciously vicious battle between the women as Sharon and Ernestine come to Tish's support. Underlying the scene is the harsh reality that everyone on both sides realise but never fully say out loud: life will not be kind to this baby, who is coming into a world where they will instantly be judged and condemned by the colour of their skin. One only needs to look at Fonny's own situation for that to be painfully clear.
"I hope that nobody ever has to look at anybody they love through glass," Tish laments, speaking from firsthand experience. Fonny is imprisoned, accused of a crime he didn't commit. His friend Daniel (Brian Tyree Henry) underwent a similar situation, agreeing to a charge of car theft rather than marijuana possession even though he doesn't even know how to drive. "I'm lucky I only got two years," he tells Fonny, "because when you're in there, they can do whatever they want. Whatever they want." There's no such thing as an innocent black man in the eyes of society, and everything in the system is rigged to perpetuate that ill.
If Moonlight's portrait of masculinity and the politics of identity had a certain universality, If Beale Street Could Talk is a wholly specific commentary on how being black is both personal and political. Hardship is part and parcel of the lives of black Americans - one is fighting before one is even born - so to survive is already a form of defiance, to possess a deep and abiding faith in the power of love, whether it be romantic or familial, is an act of resistance. Searing, achingly romantic, and absolutely transfixing from start to finish, If Beale Street Could Talk further proves that Jenkins is a singular and essential voice.
If Beale Street Could Talk
Directed by: Barry Jenkins
Written by: Barry Jenkins; based on the novel by James Baldwin
Starring: KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Regina King, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Brian Tyree Henry, Ed Skrein, Emily Rios, Michael Beach, Aunjanue Ellis, Ebony Obsidian, Dominique Thorne, Finn Wittrock, Diego Luna, Pedro Pascal, Dave Franco
