Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 59 minutes
Director: Barry Jenkins
Quick Impressions:
I’ve never read James Baldwin’s classic novel If Beale Street Could Talk, but I will soon. Inspired by The Favourite, I’m currently reading a biography of Queen Anne, about whom I was previously indifferent thanks to deliberate ignorance. Now that I know a little bit more about the woman I find that I both pity and despise her more and more by the page. The poor Princess of Denmark can’t possibly cling to life much longer, so I guess I’ll go ahead and order a paperback of Beale Street after I write this review. (I couldn’t find a copy at the public library, although they did have Bird Box, another book I should probably read based on the number of bitter complaints I’ve heard about it being so much better than the movie.)
Director Barry Jenkins definitely has a recognizable style. Moonlight is such a powerful film. I first watched it at home, by myself at night with the volume low as my son slept on my lap. (After he was born, I took a two year hiatus from this blog and wrote zero reviews because slipping off to a new movie every week just wasn’t possible. I found other ways to fill the time, but I can’t lie. I reviewed 77 movies in 2018, and that’s the life for me.)
Even though I’d seen none of the films nominated from 2016, I still watched the Oscars that year. But my daughter had to go to bed early for school and begged me to wait for her to finish watching the ceremony.
“No problem,” I thought, “we’re DVRing it. I just won’t look at the internet while she’s at school.” But, of course, the Academy Awards always run long. The next day, to my dismay, I discovered that our recording had cut off just after they announced the Best Picture winner. But it’s pretty much over at that point, anyway, right? I mean, the winner has been announced. What more is there to see?
So yeah, I’ll pull my daughter out of school completely before I ever DVR the Oscars to watch later again. (The one time something exciting happens!)
My point is, by the time I was able to see Moonlight, it had already (eventually) won Best Picture. And I’d heard everyone on Earth raving about how amazing it is. (Star of the pretender to the Best Picture Oscar Emma Stone called it “one of the best films ever,” and she was far from the only one.)
So when I watched Moonlight, my expectations were through the roof and my first thoughts were, “Okay, this is very good. But is it really a masterpiece?”
With a little time, I have decided that yes, Moonlight is a masterpiece. (I’m sure Barry Jenkins is heaving a huge sigh of relief as he reads these words.) For one thing, I have never seen another film like it. The story the movie tells feels extremely necessary, like it has always been missing from our body of acclaimed films, and we’ve unknowingly felt its absence even though we never suspected this consciously. (I also like Naomie Harris in general, and Mahershala Ali gives such a powerful performance!)
This new Barry Jenkins film is not as good as Moonlight (in my opinion, though keep in mind, I just saw Beale Street, and I’ve had some time to ruminate on Moonlight which did not immediately draw the degree of praise I now give it). But it’s still a powerful film, an important and well told story. (Again, as with Moonlight, what seems most important is that the story is told.) I can’t comment on how faithful an adaptation of Baldwin’s novel it is since, as I said, I’ve not yet read the book. But If Beale Street Could Talk is certainly a stirring, provocative, well acted, carefully crafted film.
The Good:
I won’t lie. The story on my mind as I prepared to watch this movie was, “Why didn’t SAG-AFTRA nominate Regina King for Best Supporting Actress?”
This awards season has been unusually unpredictable (which is fun), but so many critics groups named Regina King Best Supporting Actress. She was shaping up to be the one sure thing in a crazy year, and then suddenly the SAG didn’t even nominate her.
So I was intent on seeing this performance at my first opportunity to judge its merits for myself. (My opinion makes no different to King’s chances, of course, but it makes a big difference to me. I need to know how shocked (and potentially outraged) I should feel if the Academy snubs her, too.)
King is very good. She definitely deserves at least a nomination for Best Supporting Actress and would make a respectable winner. It’s hard to believe that the Academy won’t nominate her (though I think SAG was right to pass over a one-note Claire Foy performance in favor of a poxy Margot Robbie and Emily Blunt strategically committing extremely sensible category fraud).
After seeing Beale Street, what really surprises me is that nobody’s been talking about the strong male supporting performances. Colman Domingo is incredible as Tish’s father. His is actually my favorite performance of the film. Brian Tyree Henry has one really incredible scene, so emotionally resonant. And Michael Beach plays maybe the most interesting character whose story had me hooked immediately. Why is nobody talking about these performances? They’re amazing.
And the entire female supporting cast is good, too, not just Regina King. Both my husband and I loved Teyonah Parris as Tish’s sister. The character is awesome, and the actress brings her to life so vividly. And all the women in Fonny’s family! Oh wow! What a pack of characters! Aunjanue Ellis is fantastic as Fonny’s unforgiving mother. And one of King’s best scenes works so well because Emily Rios also does some wrenching work.
The two lead actors are doing great work, too. Some of the best moments Stephan James has as Fonny are non-verbal. He has so many pensive, impassioned, silent stares. Meanwhile as Tish, Kiki Layne also narrates the film. That aspect of Beale Street intrigued me. The young lovers experience everything together, share everything. They’re so in sync that one of them narrates the story they share while the other seems to find strength to endure in knowing what not to say.
The movie also has a surprising cast of big names in small parts. Diego Luna and Dave Franco turn up just when you’re least expecting them.
So the film is well acted, top to bottom. It also has a lovely, unusual score (by Nicholas Britell who wrote the music for Moonlight, too), and cinematography (by Moonlight‘s James Laxton) so distinctive that I suspect Jenkins is on his way to becoming an auteur whose work is easily recognized. There’s a slow, stately, almost hypnotically surreal pacing to the camera’s gaze. We’re frequently looking right at someone’s (beautifully framed) face. Those slow, dreamy shots remind me of Moonlight. Even setting plot aside, it’s quite obvious that the same person (people, really) made both films.
Stylistically, Beale Street is lovely and compelling, but the story makes it something even more special.
“One problem with this movie,” I said to my husband on the way home, “is that many people who need to see it will refuse to look.”
Historically our society has cherished a pervasive myth (still prevalent to this day) that urban African American males are more prone (than males of other races) to 1) abandon their children and 2) be incarcerated for violent crimes.
Growing up, I definitely heard a lot of fretful moaning from the media about absentee African American fathers. And even well meaning people were saying condescending things about reeducating black families, providing positive male role models, teaching them better ways to behave.
Yeah, well, of course you’re going to go to prison at a higher rate if the way you look makes you more likely to be arrested. And of course you are going to commit more crimes if you’re desperate and poor and trapped by a system that keeps you that way. And obviously you can’t be there for your pregnant girlfriend if someone has thrown you in jail for a crime you didn’t commit and keeps indefinitely delaying your trial.
I feel like Fonny and Tish’s story is one that a lot of white people need to hear. I mean, I heard a very different version of this scenario from another point of view all the time growing up. And I wasn’t hanging out at KKK rallies or anything. I was a pretty normal, suburban kid. But we were rarely presented with this side of the story.
Maybe I’m being too charitable, but I think a lot of people are racist accidentally. They hear things one way and never consider those things from another point of view, not because they are deliberately closing their minds, but because they are naively unaware that a different way of viewing the situation exists. So many people just ingest views without realizing that all such arguments have been constructed by someone. There’s a very commonplace misconception that one’s particular way of viewing the world is actual, unfiltered reality. But all narratives are constructed, and if the same people control the narrative all the time, then certain stories just never get told.
So I think seeing this story presented may open a lot of people’s hearts and minds…if they will watch it.
One thing Beale Street does extremely well is show us the story rather than just beating us over the head with a spoken message. By the time we learn what Fonny is accused of, we’ve seen enough of who he is to be completely certain that the accusation is false. Nobody really has to convince us he didn’t do it. We can see that for ourselves. Watching his actual behavior onscreen has already convinced us.
Similarly, we learn the kinds of horrors Fonny faces while incarcerated not from him but by listening to his friend talk about his own experiences in a flashback. The storytelling in this film is well done and makes me want to read the novel.
Best Scene:
Much of what we see in this movie is slow, quiet, measured, but I like the intense family drama the best. I absolutely love the scene when Tish’s family calls Fonny’s family over for a celebratory drink. All the performances here are so compelling, but what really makes the scene for me is something violent that happens near the end of it.
Michael Beach’s Frank Hunt does something that is never acceptable, and yet he never lost my sympathy. I found my reaction and the dilemma raised here fascinating. It was one of the most engrossing aspects of the movie for me. In general, I found the fathers’ behavior the best part of the story. The innocence of Tish and Fonny is uncomplicated, but their parents are not so innocent. They can’t afford to be. They love their children too much. I’m really not sure why Colman Domingo is not getting any Oscar buzz for his work here. His performance is so fabulous. He’s my favorite one.
Best Action Sequence:
I love two action sequences equally. One is the encounter when Fonny gets physical to defend Tish at the grocery store. (This sequence is so enlightening.) The other is the “moving the refrigerator” bit.
Best Scene Visually:
Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Regina King:
I love the scene in the alley in Puerto Rico. King’s Sharon Rivers has gone to such lengths to do her part to free the father of her daughter’s baby. Here we see her utter desperation as she encounters an obstacle she has no idea how to dismantle. I love her helpless frustration as Victoria Rogers has a screaming, trauma-induced breakdown. What can Sharon do? What can she possibly do?
The Negatives:
This film is going to get more push-back and resentment from white audiences than Moonlight. That film was not about systemic racism (as its glaring central concern), and this one is. So I would not expect this movie to be quite as widely embraced as Moonlight.
I know that sounds kind of crazy, but there are going to be some people who insist that Beale Street stirs up racial unrest and tries to make white people look bad.
To be clear, that is not how I feel. But some people will feel this way (I promise), whether they say so or not. And some people will throw up their hands and say, “I don’t want to watch another movie that’s showing us how bad everything is and acting like it’s all my fault! Real life is bad enough right now! I want escapism from movies!”
These aren’t actually criticisms I have of the film, more like reasons that spring to mind to explain (in part) why this film doesn’t win as many awards as Moonlight (and it won’t. I’ll be stunned if it does).
Another thing is that Beale Street doesn’t land quite as emphatically. Moonlight‘s ending is almost like an M. Night Shyamalan twist. What I mean is, when we see where it ends up, we’re almost speechless. This movie has a much more familiar, predictable trajectory. Jenkins really, really wowed everybody with his first feature length film, but this is his second, and we’re used to him now. We’ve seen all his tricks and flourishes. In a way, the biggest problem Beale Street must overcome is that Moonlight was too impressive.
On the other hand, I think this film benefits tremendously from Moonlight‘s success. That’s the biggest reason I wanted to see it because it was made by the director of Moonlight. And with that in mind, I didn’t care if some parts (like the beginning) were a bit slow. Based on my experience with Moonlight, I was willing to give Jenkins literally the entire runtime to win me over. But average audiences aren’t going to behave that way. People don’t usually say, “Hmm…this is slow…but I’ll just be patient indefinitely and try to discover what this movie is trying to say to me.”
I think for Beale Street to work, you have to go into the theater actively wanting to see it. The movie is going to be too slow for some people. Also, some people are bound to be frustrated by the movie’s genre. Fonny is in prison for something he didn’t do. So who did do it? (American audiences think this way. My husband and I went in knowing that Beale Street wasn’t that kind of movie, and yet each of us liked a separate suspect for the crime when we talked after the film. And as we talked, we came up with a third suspect, the most likely of all.) (While I watched, I kept thinking, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if Fonny turned out to be guilty? Now that’s a movie that would get people’s attention!” But, obviously, that would be a crazy, shark-jumping move undermining the whole point of the film and making a mockery of all its slow, careful character development.)