If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

Score: 5 / 5

It's a nearly perfect film from the man who made last year's perfect film Moonlight. Barry Jenkins has done it again -- although, in my view, not quite as successfully -- with If Beale Street Could Talk, adapted from the James Baldwin novel.

Tish and Fonny are in trouble. Having been friends their whole lives, they eventually become lovers. Now she's pregnant with his child, but he's been framed for raping another woman. Tish must tell her truth to their families and plan how to support herself, her child, and Fonny's defense. Told in nonlinear episodes, the film weaves a mesmerizing tale of love through lovers, family, faith, and of course New York City.

Like his earlier film, Beale Street works best as a sensory exercise. Its impossibly beautiful score -- by composer Nicholas Britell -- sweeps your heart away while gorgeous photography of New York life -- by James Laxton -- steals your sight. Though the cinematography isn't as evocative as in Moonlight, here it does do well in focusing our attention on the human faces struggling for love. We're kept tight on various visages, daring us to investigate the souls of those whose lives we're intimately invading. It's exactly the kind of technique so alien to our culture of screens and speed and ironic distances; to be kept in often silent proximity with the windows to the soul of another human.

The screenplay here is a bit more articulate than in his earlier film, and while I didn't quite like it at first, it's hard to ignore the powerful voice of James Baldwin bleeding through. Further, while all the actors are uniformly doing excellent work -- they shine often when saying and doing nothing at all, only looking -- they manage to make the heightened dialogue sound not only normal but absolutely pure, wrapping their voices and our minds around weighty concepts and layers of meaning with each utterance.

The film's slow, melancholic visual and aural approach to storytelling may be too deliberate and cerebral for some, but it belies a surprisingly complex, detailed story. Timely and deeply disturbing, the romance set amidst contemporary race relations, gender dynamics, and grave injustice is also, at its core, a time-tested dramatic form in new trappings -- new color, if you will -- as a tale of pure hope in the face of evil society.

I personally didn't care for the intrusive use of stock photos depicting historical race relations, and I'm annoyed that Regina King didn't get more to work with in her role. Frankly the film didn't mean as much to me as the groundbreaking queer romance Moonlight did, but all these are just personal preferences. So while it's not my favorite example of the unbelievably beautiful craft of its director, Beale Street deserves all the praise in the world. Go see it. Go love it. Let the sounds and sights wash over you, and fall in love all over again. It's an amazing thing to experience.