If Beale Street Could Talk doesn’t care about your expectations. There is a shot early on in Barry Jenkins’s new film (adapted from James Baldwin’s novel) of the young lovers Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne) and Fonny Hunt (Stephan James) walking down a street in 1970’s New York. Fonny holds an umbrella, and the two walk close in a way that might seem familiar if you’ve ever seen this. But Tish and Fonny are walking away from us, into their own future. If Beale Street Could Talk isn’t here to teach you about race relations or to make you feel good about love or New York or the fact that Despite Everything, These Two Found Each Other. Jenkins and his collaborators have made a lush but furiously angry film that while telling the story of Tish and Fonny also stops to address the violence that America inflicts upon its citizens of color. Beale Street takes place well inside African-American culture, and here white people are to be considered for the degree of fear or mistrust or suspicion that they arouse. A much more melodramatic and cliched film could have been made from this material, but Jenkins is a humanist who is also very much aligned with Baldwin’s idea that the American system views black people on a sliding scale from inconvenience to hatred. If Beale Street Could Talk has both a beating heart and fierce moral urgency.
Tish is 19 years old and pregnant with Fonny’s child. Fonny is 22 and in jail awaiting trial for a rape he did not commit. They are not married, but have known each other since childhood and are together with the cautious blessings of Tish’s parents Joseph (Colman Domingo) and Sharon (Regina King, wonderful) and of Fonny’s father Frank (Michael Beach). The scene in which Tish informs first her parents and then the Hunts of the pregnancy turns from celebration to argument in an instant as Fonny’s religious mother (Aunjanue Ellis) doubts that Tish can be responsible for the baby. The fears of everyone else are more practical: can the families find the money and the help needed to get Fonny released from prison? Jenkins’s script doubles back to tell the story of Tish and Fonny falling in love, but the film is built around several conversations between Tish and Fonny in the jail visiting room. Each time Fonny looks a little more tired, a bit thinner and physically worn down. We don’t follow Fonny back into the prison, but the idea of incarceration as a means of state violence is played out on Stephan James’s face and in the words of Brian Tyree Henry as Fonny’s friend Daniel. Henry is only on screen a few minutes in Beale Street, but in that time he creates an indelible portrait of a man who isn’t quite sure that he is still human. It is a remarkable small piece of acting, and a great supporting performance for the way it adds texture and depth while folding itself into the body of the film.
For all of the righteous anger that If Beale Street Could Talk summons, it also loves its characters. Barry Jenkins is an avowed fan of the late director Jonathan Demme, and Jenkins fills Beale Street with signature Demme close-ups of the characters gazing directly at us. We are invited to look at Tish and Fonny both in their physical beauty and their love for each other. These shots would be moving in any case because of the talent of the filmmakers, but the choice to put grounded, joyful African-American characters at the center of the frame is a choice that most films don’t have the time or the desire to make. Thanks both to Jenkins’s skill and his empathy the door is opened to something that wasn’t there in the culture.
One other actor holds the screen in Beale Street, and she is Regina King as Tish’s mother Sharon. King is by turns as funny, sharp, and loving as one might expect from her in this role, but Jenkins allows her to go deeper. Late in the film Sharon travels to Puerto Rico on a desperate mission to help Fonny’s case. There is a marvelous long take of Sharon looking into a hotel mirror – King is looking right at us – as she considers what to wear and how little it might matter. King plays all of the internalized fear to perfection, just as she does the anguish after a meeting with Fonny’s accuser (Emily Rios) goes badly. Regina King’s long career takes in Boyz n the Hood and Jerry Maguire and Emmy-winning television work, but here Jenkins gives a great actor a chance to play a fully realized character and King is up to the task. If Beale Street Could Talk delivers on the promise of Barry Jenkins’s earlier work while also highlighting the message of a still essential writer. When all elements of a film harmonize to the degree they do here then the result can only be something this affecting. Barry Jenkins makes films that will endure.
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