‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ Is Nothing Short of Perfect Cinema

Moonlight director Barry Jenkins’s latest film is a perfectionist achievement. From the very first image, of the leading couple walking through the park dressed in carefully coordinated yellows and blues, to the last, it’s glaringly obvious that Jenkins knows exactly what he’s doing. If Beale Street Could Talk runs rampant with cinematic history — from whiffs of Citizen Kane and West Side Story to hints of Do the Right Thing — but manifested with profound originality and so much feeling. The film manages the elusive feat of merging acerbic socio-political commentary with art in its purest form. It is certainly magic, but borne of staggering skill and deep commitment to cinema.

Beale Street (a street in New Orleans), per James Baldwin who wrote the original novel, is the story of Black America. Beale Street (the movie) therefore serves as a parable of the larger story, of the dangerously, life-threateningly racist social, political and judicial institutions in the U.S.A., in the 1970s when the book was written, sure, but endlessly translatable to today’s world, when we’re still a bit on the fence about whether black lives really do matter after all. It is the story of Tish, a 19-year-old black woman who lives in Harlem with her parents and sister, and whose childhood best friend-turned-lover, 22-year-old Fonny, is imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, just as Tish finds out she is having his child. The film follows Tish and her family as they do everything in their power to get Fonny acquitted, this agonisingly unjust process interspersed with flashbacks of the young couple’s ever-growing love for each other.

No detail is left up to chance, from the faultless casting (Regina King who plays Tish’s mother is especially outstanding, hence her Academy Award nomination for best actress in a supporting role) to the dance of light and colour and music that carries each shot artfully to the next. If I was appalled by the Oscar nominations before, I am now enraged that Beale Street was snubbed for best director and costume design. What a fucking joke. But archaic and insular recognition aside, If Beale Street Could Talk is a thing of rare beauty and an indisputable must-see.

10/10