Journal & Topics Media Group

Movie Scene: Buzz On ‘Beale Street’


Regina King in “If Beale Street Could Talk.”

“If Beale Street Could Talk” (119 min., Rated R for language, some violent content, and some sexual content). Rating: 7 out of 10.

Getting a lot of attention is Barry Jenkins’ follow-up feature to his Oscar-winning “Moonlight,” with “If Beale Street Could Talk,” a film that has generated some awards talk. As much as I admired “Beale Street” (and “Moonlight” as well), I don’t rank it among the year’s best films. But it does feature some excellent performances by the two young lead stars — but especially by Regina King who is ending up as the odds-on-favorite to win the Oscar in a supporting role.

Based on the novel by famed author James Baldwin in 1974, “Beale Street” focuses on African-American perspectives of life and love in much the same way that “Moonlight” did. I can see what drew Jenkins to use Baldwin’s book. It’s not a message movie. In fact, like “Moonlight,” it’s understated theme uses the power of its endearing characters, the purity of their good-natured intentions, to guide us through a tumultuous set of circumstances in the lives of its two young stars. Set in the early 1970s, Jenkins had depicted the era that Baldwin was speaking from when things were different.

“Beale Street” is all about differing perspectives between whites and blacks at a time in the ‘70s that saw an uprising by women who became more assertive in a male-dominated society. That same uphill climb was taken by the black community — to be heard and be assertive — but to not the same level of success. But progress has been significantly made since then. “Beale Street” is more a microcosm of those times represented by the simplicity of its two young characters falling in love and wanting to spend the rest of their lives together. Easier said than done. Of course, something interferes with it — just like it did between Tony and Maria, and the hatred of racial prejudice that surrounded them.

It’s the quiet moments that work best in “Beale Street,” where Fonny (Stephan James) and Tish (Kiki Layne) fall in love and want to get married. They have differing viewpoints from their respective families; but it’s Tish’s family that gets more play in this film when two things bring their union to a thunderous thud. The first: Fonny, being at the wrong place at the wrong time, is falsely accused of raping a young Puerto Rican woman. Even though it appears there’s no way Fonny would ever do that, there’s some room for doubt viewing his occasional anger outbreaks. The second: Tish gets pregnant with his child. Fonny is randomly picked out of a police lineup as the rapist, and before you know it, he’s in prison with a plea of innocence pending. The tough part is breaking the news to both families she’s pregnant.

This sets up the 2nd and 3rd acts of the film, ironing out the caustic environment that envelops this unfortunate set of circumstances. Tish is still a teenager and Fonny has been arrested — 24 years old — and with times being as they are, with an inner-city Harlem atmosphere, to whites, Fonny is guilty regardless of the truth, while to black folk, he’s a victim of an unfair justice system. Stepping in to give emotional support are Tish’s understanding parents (there’s no love from Fonny’s parents) — especially her crusading mother played by Regina King. She travels to Puerto Rico to convince the young woman who accused Fonny of raping her to change her plea. It’s a riveting scene of truth, anger and tragedy. The failure to change her mind dissolves into the 3rd Act when there’s no hope to get the court to lighten his sentence, which leads to a year’s later scene between Fonny, Tish and their young child that drops off the end of the table at the end. What’s to become of them? That’s frustratingly left hanging.

The story is told in a nonlinear way, jumping back-and-forth between their present struggle — and the wonderful moments when Fonny and Tish were falling in love. As in “West Side Story,” it’s what’s around them that dooms them. Though the love story aspect of the film seems at times to be too fabricated and idealistic, it is nonetheless heartwarming to see true love exist in a world of converging cultures with differing points of view. Because there aren’t that many surprises in the story — and because of its “thud” last scene, “Beale Street” tries, but isn’t able to offer that many insights into our clashing cultural environments that we haven’t experienced before.

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