“Remember love is what brought you here. Don’t panic now. Trust in it all the way,” says Sharon – the mother of Tish – one of the lovers at the center of “If Beale Street Could Talk” – the transfixing and timeless romance based on the classic novel by James Baldwin and adapted and directed by the Academy Award winning filmmaker Barry Jenkins. The couple’s as well as the family’s love that envelops around them is the unifying force that binds them together against the bigotry toward African Americans in 70s Harlem. This spectacularly lyrical and lush follow up to “Moonlight” – is at times painful but leaves you inebriated with the optimistic pronunciation that love can get you through the most difficult of times.
James Baldwin – the American writer and activist and one of the most important authors of the last century – explored the racial and sexual divide in our country. His writing grapples with his place as a black man in the United States, and he details the injustices and the contradictions in American life. He published his novel “If Beale Street Could Talk” in 1974, and it was his first work to focus on a Black couple’s love story – as well as the only one to be narrated by a woman. The novel came out towards the end of the Black Arts Movement which started in 1965 and through art and activism delivered a message of Black pride. While Mr. Baldwin’s books have been adapted for television and overseas, his vivid and essential representations of African-American life had not been done by an American filmmaker prior to this movie.
“Every Black person in America was born on Beale Street, born in the Black neighborhood of some American city, whether in Jackson Mississippi, or in Harlem,” are Baldwin’s words that open the film. It tells the story of Tish as she’s vibrantly recalling the strong bond between her and her artist fiancé Alonzo “Fonny” – whom she’s known since they were both toddlers. Her narrative – just like memory – is not linear. Kaleidoscopically, we will find out that she’s pregnant – and that Fonny is in jail – wrongly arrested for a crime he did not commit. Tish knows that Fonny is innocent, and is mindful that his good friend Daniel Carty has only recently been freed after an unjust incarceration and the scars of his experience are unbearable. While Fonny’s mother and sisters condemn the relationship and the birth of a baby to an unmarried couple, Tish has the steadfast support of her father and her sister Ernestine. More determined to clear Fonny’s name is Tish’s fierce mother Sharon (Regina King in her Academy Award-winning performance), willing to to put herself at risk on the couple’s behalf – even if it means traveling to Puerto Rico on an almost impossible mission.
Barry Jenkins is an evocative cinematic poet. I used the adverb kaleidoscopically above for his work is a twisting wave of visuals, colors and sound. There’s a heightened sense of sensitivity and wisdom in his work that is genuinely exhilarating to watch. Tish and Fonny’s story takes place in 1970 and unfolds in flashbacks and flashforwards – the way our brain recalls things that have happened to us. That effect makes the tale ripple into the present – into our current condition. From the opening scene, it’s evident you’re dealing with lyricism. The camera hovers birdlike above our lovers as they descend the stairs in a park. Instantly we understand we’re treading into allegory – this shot is the arc of their journey. Fonny wears a yellow shirt with a blue jean jacket, and she’s wearing a blue dress with a yellow coat. Holding hands they are in a bond that compliments and defines one another. In only a few films (including his Academy Award Best Picture winner “Moonlight”) Jenkins has coalesced into a very distinctive voice: his repeated shooting of actors looking straight into the camera – creating an intimacy and connection with the audience. His scenes in slow motion. His sensuous and expressive use of color. He also has a way of eliciting great lived-in performances from his actors. He has shepherded two back to back Best Supporting-winning performances in the unforgettable work of Mahershala Ali in “Moonlight” and in the aredent work of Regina King in “If Beale Street Could Talk.”
The art direction is impeccable. The socioeconomic realties of how the characters live and what they wear define each and every one of the characters – it is palpably represented. The music is so redolent. The score by Nicholas Britell is poignant – featuring cellos that underscore the love of Fonny and Tish as well as the injustice that surrounds them. Listen as Tish and Fonny first make love, the sound of the rain blends with cellos and the rumbling of the subway train.
Ernestine: “Unbow your head, sister.”
Love,
Roger
Available to stream on Hulu and to rent on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime, Microsoft, iTunes, Redbox, Apple TV and DIRECTV.
Screenplay by Barry Jenkins. Based on the book by James Baldwin
Directed by Barry Jenkins
Starring KiKi Layne, Stephan James,Colman Domingo, Teyonah Parris, Michael Beach, Dave Franco, Diego Luna, Pedro Pascal, Ed Skrein, Brian Tyree Henry and Regina King
119 minutes
Writer and Director Barry Jenkins on Bringing “If Beale Street Could Talk” to the Screen
When Barry Jenkins took off to Europe in the summer of 2013, he wrote two screenplays: one for “Moonlight,” an adaptation of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s semiautobiographical book about a young African-American gay man struggling with his identity, and the other for “If Beale Street Could Talk,” based on James Baldwin’s delicate love story about a pregnant woman whose boyfriend is falsely accused of rape and imprisoned. At the time, Jenkins had the rights to neither book, but the plan was to make “Beale Street” first. But you know what they say about best-laid plans. “Moonlight became the first locomotive out of the station,” says Jenkins…The $1.5 million film would go on to make Oscar history when it won best picture in 2017…After the critical acclaim and the Oscar wins (he also shared best-adapted screenplay honors with McCraney), it would seem that Jenkins could take on any project, at any budget, that he’d want to pursue. But it turns out he’d already been quietly moving “Beale Street” forward before “Moonlight” had won a single trophy. “I didn’t want to be held to the success or failure of “Moonlight,” and so even before the movie came out, I decided I wanted to make this film next,” says Jenkins, who adds that there were offers for other interesting projects, but “I had to make this film first to complete the cycle of the two films.”
So when Jenkins reached out to the Baldwin estate, known for denying requests to adapt the late author’s work, he simply sent along a DVD copy of his first film, 2008’s “Medicine for Melancholy” (the love story, made for $15,000, follows 24 hours in the lives of a young black couple in rapidly gentrifying San Francisco), along with the script he’d written for “Beale Street.” The estate approved the adaptation, and Jenkins began reworking the script while at the same time going through the awards circuit with “Moonlight.” In retrospect, Jenkins says making “Moonlight” first gave him the extra time he needed to get the script right for “Beale Street.” “I think the first draft of the adaptation was maybe faithful in the extreme. Making Moonlight gave us time to find a script.” There was a sense of urgency for Jenkins to make his next film, in part because of his experience with “Medicine for Melancholy,” which was seen as a strong debut in 2008, earning the helmer a Spirit Award for best first feature and solidifying his status as a filmmaker to watch. But then he couldn’t get another feature off the ground for the next six years. “Can you imagine being a chef and you don’t cook for six years?” says Jenkins. “It’s really a difficult thing to get back into.” So no matter what happened with “Moonlight,” Jenkins was not going to slow down again. “Part of wanting to make a film immediately and not to spend time between films was just out of PTSD from my first experience,” says Jenkins. “I know what I want to do next, I’m doing it. I’m not going to be proven or disproven as a filmmaker of worth based on just this film. I want to have a career — I’m going to keep making things.” But because Moonlight became such a runaway success, Jenkins says his decision to quickly move into another project has had an unexpected result. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve made this film so quickly after that film that it can’t help but exist in the shadow of the previous film.’” (hollywoodreporter.com)
Jenkins on The Making of “If Beale Street Could Talk”
“The budget for Beale Street was larger than Moonlight — which cost around $1.5m — but not by much. “We still qualify for the Spirit Awards [open to films costing less than $20m]!” he laughs. And, indeed, after speaking to Screen International, the film has garnered three Spirit nominations for best feature, best director and best supporting female for Regina King. The modest budget meant Jenkins, his production designer Mark Friedberg and cinematographer James Laxton needed to be creative on set. “[We] didn’t have an abundance of resources so we just prioritised certain things,” he says. “There aren’t a lot of locations. Pretty much everything is a build if it’s not an exterior. James was really smart about what we needed to see for it to fly, and being shrewd about making the money work for the film.” For one pivotal scene…the production saved money by building her family’s snug flat inside a real-life brownstone house awaiting renovation. “To make the budget work, we just gutted it and said [to the owners], ‘We will do the demolition work for you, build our set and when we’re done we’ll take everything out’,” says Jenkins, who describes the scene, featuring nine actors in one small living room, as the hardest of the film to shoot.
“[It was challenging] for a guy like me who, in his two previous films, had shot maybe two scenes with more than two people. We can’t take the walls out, the actors can’t sit outside the stage, everyone’s just there. The trick for me, even with such tight quarters and such little time, was allowing the actors to have the space to play, to let the scene breathe and to explore and have fun. I think when you watch the scene you don’t feel that challenge at all. It feels like an organic conversation that suddenly explodes.” While firm about keeping the film’s 1970s setting, Jenkins hopes that the film’s portrayal of institutionalised racism (Fonny is set up on a false rape charge by a racist cop played by Ed Skrein) has a contemporary relevance for audiences. “One of the earliest decisions we made was to allow the film to be set in the time period [of the novel],” he says. “To me, there was more power by allowing that to happen but still saying, ‘These things are still happening today’. It goes back to the prescience of Baldwin. “Being on set, it was clear to me how delicate it was,” he continues. “Trying to strike this balance between making [the social commentary about racism] clear but still preserving the sophistication that Baldwin put in the text. Some things are just black and white. You don’t want to obfuscate the actual things you are saying.” (screendaily.com)
About Author James Baldwin
James Baldwin — the grandson of a slave — was born in Harlem in 1924. The oldest of nine children, he grew up in poverty, developing a troubled relationship with his strict, religious stepfather. As a child, he cast about for a way to escape his circumstances. As he recalls, “I knew I was black, of course, but I also knew I was smart. I didn’t know how I would use my mind, or even if I could, but that was the only thing I had to use.” By the time he was fourteen, Baldwin was spending much of his time in libraries and had found his passion for writing. During this early part of his life, he followed in his stepfather’s footsteps and became a preacher. Of those teen years, Baldwin recalled, “Those three years in the pulpit – I didn’t realize it then – that is what turned me into a writer, really, dealing with all that anguish and that despair and that beauty.” Many have noted the strong influence of the language of the church, the language of the Bible, on Baldwin’s style: its cadences and tone. Eager to move on, Baldwin knew that if he left the pulpit he must also leave home, so at eighteen he took a job working for the New Jersey railroad. After working for a short while with the railroad, Baldwin moved to Greenwich Village, where he worked for a number of years as a freelance writer, working primarily on book reviews. He caught the attention of the well-known novelist, Richard Wright – and though Baldwin had not yet finished a novel, Wright helped him secure a grant with which he could support himself as a writer. In 1948, at age 24, Baldwin left for Paris, where he hoped to find enough distance from the American society he grew up in to write about it. After writing a number of pieces for various magazines, Baldwin went to a small village in Switzerland to finish his first novel. “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” published in 1953, was an autobiographical work about growing up in Harlem. The passion and depth with which he described the struggles of black Americans were unlike anything that had been written. Though not instantly recognized as such, “Go Tell It on the Mountain” has long been considered an American classic.
Over the next ten years, Baldwin moved from Paris to New York to Istanbul, writing two books of essays, “Notes of a Native Son” (1955) and “Nobody Knows My Name” (1961), as well as two novels, “Giovanni’s Room” (1956) and “Another Country” (1962). The essays explored racial tension with eloquence and unprecedented honesty; the novels dealt with taboo themes (homosexuality and interracial relationships). By describing life as he knew it, Baldwin created socially relevant, psychologically penetrating literature … and readers responded. Both “Nobody Knows My Name” and “Another Country” became immediate bestsellers. Being abroad gave Baldwin a perspective on the life he’d left behind and a solitary freedom to pursue his craft. “Once you find yourself in another civilization,” he notes, “you’re forced to examine your own.” In a sense, Baldwin’s travels brought him even closer to the social concerns of contemporary America. In the early 1960s, overwhelmed by a sense of responsibility to the times, Baldwin returned to take part in the civil rights movement. Traveling throughout the South, he began work on an explosive work about black identity and the state of racial struggle, “The Fire Next Time” (1963). This, too, was a bestseller: so incendiary that it put Baldwin on the cover of TIME Magazine. For many, Baldwin’s clarion call for human equality – in the essays of “Notes of a Native Son,” “Nobody Knows My Name” and “The Fire Next Time” – became an early and essential voice in the civil rights movement. Though at times criticized for his pacifist stance, Baldwin remained an important figure in that struggle throughout the 1960s. After the assassinations of his friends Medgar Evers, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, Baldwin returned to St. Paul de Vence, France, where he worked on a book about the disillusionment of the times, “If Beale Street Could Talk” (1974). Many responded to the harsh tone of “If Beale Street Could Talk” with accusations of bitterness – but even though Baldwin had encapsulated much of the anger of the times in his book, he always remained a constant advocate for universal love and brotherhood. During the last ten years of his life, he produced a number of important works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He also turned to teaching as a new way of connecting with the young. By 1987, when he died of stomach cancer at age 63, James Baldwin had become one of the most important and vocal advocates for equality. From “Go Tell It on the Mountain” to “The Evidence of Things Not Seen” (1985), James Baldwin created works of literary beauty and depth that will remain essential parts of the American canon. (pbs.org)
About Writer and Director Barry Jenkins
Barry Jenkins is a writer, director, and producer who is best known for his widely acclaimed film “Moonlight,” which he co-wrote and directed. The film took the award for Best Picture at the 2016 Academy Awards and Golden Globes, and Jenkins received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, among many others. Jenkins also directed the Academy Award nominated film “If Beale Street Could Talk.” He was named one of TIME magazine’s “Most Influential People” of 2017 and Fast Company’s “Most Creative People” of 2017. Jenkin’s feature film debut was an independent romantic drama, “Medicine for Melancholy,” which was hailed as one of the best films of 2008 by The New York Times and received several Independent Spirit and Gotham Award nominations. It was eight years before Jenkins released his second film, “Moonlight,” a drama set in his hometown of Miami, which was immediately hailed by critics as one of the best films of the year. Indeed “Moonlight” went on to win Best Picture at both the Oscars and the Golden Globes, and Jenkins, along with playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film earned a total of eight Academy Award nominations, six Golden Globe nominations, ten Broadcast Critics Choice Awards nominations, and four BAFTA nominations, as well as Best Picture and Director at the Gotham Awards and Best International Film by the British Independent Film Awards. Jenkins was also awarded the NYFCC and NBR Best Director Award, Best Director by LAFCA, a DGA Best Director nomination, and the WGA Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Most recently, Jenkins directed an episode of the Netflix Original Series “Dear White People.” Upcoming projects include an adaptation of National Book Award winner Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad” for television, which he will pen and direct. He’s also writing a script for a coming of age drama based on the life of the first American Female Olympic boxing champ Clarissa “T-Rex” Shields. In addition, he will direct a biopic about iconic choreographer Alvin Ailey. Barry Jenkins was born and raised in Miami, Florida and graduated from Florida State University with a BFA in film. Currently residing in Los Angeles, Jenkins is a curator at the Telluride Film Festival and a United States Artists Smith Fellow. (caa.com)