X
- 2018
- R
- Annapurna Pictures
- 1 h 59 m
- 2018
- R
- Annapurna Pictures
- 1 h 59 m
Summary Set in early-1970s Harlem, If Beale Street Could Talk is a timeless and moving love story of both a couple's unbreakable bond and the African-American family's empowering embrace, as told through the eyes of 19-year old Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne). A daughter and wife-to-be, Tish vividly recalls the passion, respect and trust that have con...
Directed By: Barry Jenkins
Written By: James Baldwin, Barry Jenkins
- 2018
- R
- Annapurna Pictures
- 1 h 59 m
- 2018
- R
- Annapurna Pictures
- 1 h 59 m
If Beale Street Could Talk
7.0
Where to Watch
Summary Set in early-1970s Harlem, If Beale Street Could Talk is a timeless and moving love story of both a couple's unbreakable bond and the African-American family's empowering embrace, as told through the eyes of 19-year old Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne). A daughter and wife-to-be, Tish vividly recalls the passion, respect and trust that have con...
Directed By: Barry Jenkins
Written By: James Baldwin, Barry Jenkins
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 53 Critic Reviews
87
98% Positive
52 Reviews
52 Reviews
2% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 53 Critic Reviews
87
98% Positive
52 Reviews
52 Reviews
2% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
The result is another mesmerising and wholly immersive experience from a film-maker whose love of the medium of cinema – and fierce compassion for Baldwin’s finely drawn characters – shines through every frame.
If proof were needed that Barry Jenkins’s directing achievement was far from a one-off, it pulses and dances through every sequence of his follow-up, If Beale Street Could Talk, in all its gorgeous romantic melancholy and sublimated outrage.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 168 User Ratings
7.0
69% Positive
116 Ratings
116 Ratings
21% Mixed
36 Ratings
36 Ratings
10% Negative
16 Ratings
16 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 168 User Ratings
7.0
69% Positive
116 Ratings
116 Ratings
21% Mixed
36 Ratings
36 Ratings
10% Negative
16 Ratings
16 Ratings
A compelling love letter from the homeland of Jazz. A love story above justice, walls and bars. Remarkable performances and endearing OST. The unanswered finale is a good detail in some way. A must to see.
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After seeing Beale Street twice, there's no doubt in my mind Barry Jenkins is an absolute gift to humanity. The sheer amount of beauty, tenderness and delicacy on display in this film makes it one for the ages. Give KiKi Layne and Stephan James ALL the things!
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Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk is beaming with style and detail, but at its core, it’s a mindful meditation on human beings seeking the greatest gift we can give each other—love.
Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton’s palette is rich and warm, its colors deepened by a score by Nicholas Britell that ranges from a distant, forlorn trumpet to a string quartet in which the players dig in as if they’re having their own dialogue between hope and despair. The close-ups are immense, the emotions archetypal.
A superlative slice of ’70s social realism.
While there is poetic grace, that's not to say that there's no didacticism. Like Baldwin, Jenkins has a rigorous sense of what is broken in society.
Perhaps because Jenkins can’t translate to the screen the incisiveness and music of Baldwin’s prose, he brings on real music from other sources. Over and over, and increasingly as the movie wears on, Jenkins drowns his film in mirthless jazz and pop interludes to the point that the action feels stuck in cement.
This is a somewhat sobering watch - gritty and thought provoking, in terms of dealing with racism and making you imagine how people of colour felt when dealing with clear social injustices. Its a bit slow, plot pace wise and maybe a bit too dour for some but the music is quite good, with a bit of poignancy present, so its ok. I wouldn't actively recommend it as such, no.
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Beautifully shot, but emotionally languid
Based on James Baldwin's 1974 novel of the same name, If Beale Street Could Talk is aesthetically faultless, but much like writer/director Barry Jenkins's previous film, Moonlight (2017), the totality is considerably less than the sum of its parts. The biggest problem is the love story. Employing a Terrence Malick-esque esoteric voiceover, Jenkins lifts entire passages directly from Baldwin. However, what reads beautifully in the novel is badly out of place in the film, even in voiceover, and has the effect of rendering the two central characters unrealistic, with their love for one another idealised to such an extent as to become ridiculous.
New York, 1974; 19-year old Clementine "Tish" Rivers (KiKi Layne) and 22-year old Alonzo "Fonny" Hunt (Stephan James) are in love, and planning to get married. However, when Fonny is accused of ****, the victim mistakenly identifies him in a line-up, and he is charged and detained. Awaiting his trial, Tish visits him in jail, telling him she is pregnant, and promising she'll do whatever it takes to get him out before the birth. With this as the central framework, the story is told in a non-linear style, jumping back and forth from one time period to another.
This non-linear structure has an important thematic effect; we know from the second scene that Fonny is in jail, meaning that as we watch Tish and Fonny planning their future, there's a shadow over everything. For the most part, this contributes to the tone of the film. However, Jenkins overuses the technique. I understand why the film is told out of sequence, but not to the extent it is. Compare this with Sean Penn's The Pledge (2001), a linear narrative where he accomplishes the same thing with one out-of-sequence scene at the start of the film. Beale Street, on the other hand, jumps all over the place, never settling into a rhythm, with the cumulative effect one of distraction rather than immersion.
Aesthetically, much like Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk looks amazing. From James Laxton's vibrant cinematography to Caroline Eselin's colour coordinated costume design, everything we see rings true, and much like Moonlight, the influence of Kar-Wai Wong is paramount; seen in the non-linear narrative and relatively slight plot, the poetic tone, the centrality of music, and the tendency to use visuals rather than dialogue to convey thematic points.
As in both Medicine for Melancholy (2008) and Moonlight, Jenkins occasionally has characters speak directly to camera. They're not breaking the fourth wall, however. Such scenes are dialogue scenes, with the camera between the characters. It's a technique that was used most famously in The Silence of the Lambs, where each character looked into camera when speaking to Clarisse, whereas she always looked just slightly off-camera, setting up a fascinating visual contrast which encourages us to identify with her. Beale Street doesn't do anything as interesting or subtle with the technique, but Jenkins's tendency to use it during moments of heightened emotion does suture us into the milieu of the film.
However, a serious problem at the film's core is the love story, wherein Fonny and Tish just don't seem like real people, not in the way they gaze into one another's eyes as if they are seeing each other for the first time, not in the way they speak to one another as if every syllable is of **** portentousness. They rarely speak normally; instead, they adopt the eloquence of James Baldwin. In lifting sections directly from the novel, Jenkins forgets that what works on the page, doesn't necessarily work on the screen, and the reproduction of Baldwin's rich and lugubrious prose is simply unrealistic, with the delivery sounding stilted and awkward, and, most egregiously, far beyond the lexicon of the characters.
Another problem concerns the depiction of Bell (Ed Skrein), the racist cop who frames Fonny. Played as a leering pantomime villain, with bad hair, bad teeth, and bad skin, he's obviously a metaphor for the ugliness of racism, but he's so completely over the top, it rips you right out of the film. On the other hand, Regina King's portrayal of Tish's mother, Sharon, is exceptional.
Beale Street is an undeniably beautiful film that depicts the love between two astonishingly attractive people (it's worth noting that in the novel, Fonny's unattractiveness is emphasised). However, Jenkins's interpretation turns Fonny and Tish into a Ken and Barbie-esque couple. Taking a meditative approach to the material, Jenkins's adaptation never rings true. Whereas Baldwin's Tish and Fonny are flawed, contradictory, and relatable, Jenkins's protagonists are too-perfect-to-be-real, with every agonisingly serious pronouncement they make to one another pushing them further and further away from connecting with the audience on an emotional level.
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[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]
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At the end of the movie, I realized why there were only 12 of us in the movie theatre on a Friday evening in a largely Afro-American neighborhood. Apparently word got out about this depressing movie with two dimensional characters and a shallow plot. I was relieved when the movie was finally over.
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Production Company
Annapurna Pictures,
Plan B Entertainment,
PASTEL
Release Date Dec 14, 2018
Duration 1 h 59 m
Rating R
Tagline Trust Love All the Way
Awards
Academy Awards, USA
• 1 Win & 3 Nominations
Golden Globes, USA
• 1 Win & 3 Nominations
Black Reel Awards
• 4 Wins & 14 Nominations
