If Beale Street Could Talk
(2018)Trust love all the way.
A Harlem woman scrambles to prove her fiancé's innocence while carrying their first child in this drama from Oscar-winning Moonlight writer-director Barry Jenkins, based on the novel by James Baldwin (whose observations on civil rights and American racism formed the backbone of Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro).... More
Co-star Regina King picked up an Oscar and Golden Globe for her supporting role, and is nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar along with the film's other potential Academy Awards, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score.
"Tish (KiKi Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James) have known each other since childhood, but only latterly discovered that the safe, easy familiarity between them has bloomed into a love so intoxicating it promises everlasting joy and happiness. But life is not destined to be so easy for a young black couple living in 1970s Harlem. Fonny is falsely accused of a rape and an unjust judicial system refuses to acknowledge the impossibility of his having committed the crime. Tish and her family struggle to exonerate him." (London Film Festival)Hide
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Best Supporting Actress (Regina King), Golden Globes 2019 & Academy Awards 2019
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Directed by Barry Jenkins ('Moonlight', 'Medicine for Melancholy')
Starring KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Regina King, Colman Domingo, Teyonah Parris, Michael Beach, Aunjanue Ellis, Ebony Obsidian
Written by Barry Jenkins (based on the novel of the same name by James Baldwin)
Flicks Review
BY Aaron Yap Flicks Writer
Every bit as quietly rapturous as his breakthrough 2016 Oscar champ Moonlight, Barry Jenkins’ follow-up adapts James Baldwin’s novel If Beale Street Could Talk into a stirring, compassionate, beautifully performed expression of communal struggle in 1970s Harlem. It’s told via the quotidian framework of a budding romance between two childhood friends—19-year-old Tish (KiKi Layne) and 22-year-old Fonny (Stephan James)—that’s derailed when a false rape accusation lands Fonny in prison.... More
“The game is rigged,” Tish ruminates in her wise, plainspoken voice-over, devastatingly aware, as the couple are expecting a child, that the cards have been stacked against them since birth. But amid the dehumanising social injustices, pockets of humour, hope and tenderness endure, and it’s this layered emotional palette that Jenkins colours the black experience with. It’s a work powered by a resilient, humane glow that complements the courage and ache of its source prose.
While looser in construction than Moonlight—it’s more prone to temporal and tonal hopping—Beale Street never loses sight of its dramatic throughline, with Jenkins navigating spaces of intimacy, memory, family and adversity with a profoundly empathetic eye. For a film with the indelible effects of racial oppression coursing through its veins, it doesn’t feel shackled.
The formal elegance on display fills, and sometimes overwhelms, the heart. The lush bursts of Sirkian colour. James Laxton’s gorgeous camerawork, rhapsodic in its celebration of black portraiture. Nicholas Britell’s sublime score, swooning to the lovebirds, steeped in a time and place. Jenkins imbues the text’s polemic contours with the richly pulsating sensations of a life not upended by pain and hardship, but strengthened by the will to adapt and overcome.Hide
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If Beale Street Could Talk
BY Bobwill nobody
An over-rich, sentimental telling of an ugly tragic story. It lacks Balwin's acid irony - the film only comes to life when he is directly quoted. It looks gorgeous, the cinematography faultless, the soundscape is brilliant, the acting committed but whereas I wanted Moonlight to go on forever, I just wanted this to end.
BY GDAldridge superstar
This movie is well-acted by every member of the cast, but it is kind of slow and drawn out. It also jumps about quite a lot and leaves out some important details, which kind of make it feel like something is missing.
BY amydaisy superstar
beautiful story and also very heartbreaking, but as some good funny parts also. and definitely a story we need to see and hear of more often.
BY SweetP nobody
Very true to life. Gets you thinking. Great acting.
Showing 5 of 8 reviews. See all reviews
The Press Reviews
You can see the broad outline of what Jenkins wanted to accomplish with If Beale Street Could Talk, but the inside is hollow. Full Review
If Beale Street Could Talk becomes a chronicle of crushed innocence and systemic injustice, but also a poetic paean to the healing power of love. Full Review
The strength of KiKi Layne's performance is in how wonderfully it toes the line between youth and wisdom, helplessness and self-determination. Full Review
Are you in the mood for love yet? Jenkins' movie will put you there. Full Review
If the movie's slow burn seems to build toward a powerful release that doesn't materialise, the sheer beauty of its craft and the heartfelt feeling behind every scene nonetheless command attention. Full Review
A work of social realism elevated to poetic heights by the sheer beauty of its voice and the humanism of its spirit... Full Review
It's a film with love at its root, both familial and romantic, and Jenkins fills so much of it with a radiating warmth. Full Review
Strip away the stylistic flourishes and the result is a familial and political drama that's dramatically the equal of Lee Daniel's Precious or Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit. Full Review
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