Holy Love

Movies: If Beale Street Could Talk

I recently read a review of Barry Jenkins' transcendent film If Beale Street Could Talk that said the film "carves a holy place in a hard, hard world". Indeed, just like Jenkins' deeply humane portrait of a gay, black man in 2016's Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk seems too good for this terrible world.

Set in 1970s Harlem, Beale Street follows 19 year old Tish (newcomer KiKi Layne) and 22 year old Fonny (Stephen James, who wowed in Sam Esmail's Homecoming earlier this year). Tish and Fonny are childhood friends who grew into lovers. "There was no cause for shame between us" Tish narrates. The two are planning to find an apartment and get married when Fonny is accused of rape, despite having a solid alibi. He is jailed and the trial date keeps getting pushed back when the woman who accused him leaves the country. Meanwhile, Tish finds out she's pregnant.

The plot weaves back and forth between the present (Fonny in prison) and the not too distant past (the lovers struggling to find a place to live in a city that won't rent to two black people). Much like Moonlight, Jenkins is able to infuse suffering and injustice with beauty--not because there is something inherently beautiful about suffering, but rather because love and family and beauty keep happening despite suffering. It's really remarkable what Jenkins has created in his portrayals of black life in the United States. Even I can't fully quantify it in words.

Beale Street is heartbreaking, though not devastating. It shows that life goes on despite hardships. People fight, adapt, and step up to help each other--in particular, the black community of families around Tish and Fonny do what they can to give help, or at least hope, to the two young people who are forcibly separated for no reason other than the authority of a racist cop (Ed Skrein) who claims he saw Fonny at the scene of the rape. The audience knows that Fonny is innocent and that the cop went out of his way to fuck Fonny over, but it doesn't stop the injustice from happening.

A group of white women sitting in front of me visibly bristled during a scene where Danny (Bryan Tyree Henry, in a brief but powerful role), a friend of Fonny's who was recently released from prison after serving two years on a false car theft charge, says that after being in prison he understands why Malcolm X called the white man "the devil". This scene, more than any other, is deeply upsetting due to Henry's acting--his haunted, sad eyes as he insinuates the violence he faced in prison without giving details. But the audience knows, or at least the smart ones do. Pair this film with Ava DuVernay's 13th and you'll be ready to step up for prison reform.

That's all there is to say about Beale Street. The acting is out of the world, particularly Byran Tyree Henry, but also Regina King as Tish's mother, Sharon, who goes on a heartbreaking journey of her own. The cinematography is sublime and dreamy. The soundtrack is gorgeous. The plot is simple, yet profound. Just go see it.

Grade: A