Review of 'If Beale Street Could Talk"
Thoughts on the novel by James Baldwin and the 2018 film. I read it before I saw it. | Originally Published 02/2022
This is a different type of love story. One where the love is absolute. Usually you have a love story where one or more of the characters have to question "is this the one for me"? There is no room to question Tish and Fonny's love for each other. They have truly loved each other since they were kids. The real drama in the story is whether the world is gonna love them back and let them be together. Whether they'll get lucky or not, because it takes luck not to get fucked over by a system that excludes you. Will the racist, white-dominated society ever let up; and if not accept their existence, then at least be uninvolved/unaroused by it? No, they are aroused by it. The white men depicted in the film are just a reflection of reality in 1970s America and present-day. Their superiority complex is so baked into them by historical coincidence that many of them can't sit still nonviolently if a black person comes into their line of sight. And that's exactly the situation Fonny has to deal with in If Beale Street Could Talk. He was arrested by a white cop for a crime that he didn't commit, all because of his actual offense; walking home while black. It is as simple and cold as that. This might be James Baldwin's fictitious story but it's informed by a well sourced history of black oppression.
The big dilemma in the story is Fonny's imprisonment. To make matters more dire Tish informs her love that she is pregnant during one of her first visits at Fonny's jail. As stated before he was just minding his business one night when a cop decided Fonny fit the description for a suspect in a recent rape case. A young Puerto Rican woman was the victim of this heinous crime, but since it happened in the dead of night she didn't get a good look at who did it. The police department rounded up guys off the street and convinced young Victoria that Fonny was the one who did it. Part of the tragedy of Beale Street is the state pitting these two persecuted minorities against each other. The state has no 'real' proof to link Fonny to the crime. Unfortunately, as Tish's sister puts it in the book "We have to disprove the state's case. There's no point in saying that we have to make them prove it, because, as far as they're concerned, the accusation is the proof." Guilty until proven innocent. James Baldwin would probably be depressed but not surprised to find out not much has changed about the justice system in America.
What I find most gripping is the genuineness of the characters. Not just the young adults Tish & Fonny, but their families too. Tish's family has a crude vocabulary and domineering attitude towards anyone not in their corner. They, like many in their community, are jaded by the world they grew up in. They are just finding ways to cope and not explode. Not explode just for their families sake. For Fonny and the baby's sake. They love one another and to them that means speaking uncomfortable truths, like holding no punches when talking about the sins of white people. And sins not in the religious sense because their family justifiably has lost faith in any grand fairness that religions so often preach. Fonny's biological 'family' on the other hand drinks the Christian kool-aid hard. Well his mother and sisters do. They don't see Fonny's incarceration as an injustice, but as a consequence of his impurity. Impurity of having a child so young, marrying so young, not being pious enough, etc etc. The only family member that truly supports him is his father Frank. Baldwin is showing us through his characters that we're all imperfect. We are products of our circumstances and environment, like the wood Fonny crafts into sculptures. What perfect symbolism by Baldwin.
The innocence of this couple's love is something that really comes through in both the screen and the original novel. I did feel the film relied too heavily on its long silent stares between the protagonists. They're meant to evoke a love that is so powerful it needs no words, but after a while these scenes get too tedious and uninteresting. I think the film adaptation kept close to Baldwin's work though, but since I inevitably compare it to the novel I just feel it came short of being as powerful. Part of it could be just simply that this is James Baldwin’s story, not the director Barry Jenkins' original work (Like Moonlight was, and which I think is a 10 of 10 film). There was however one semi-big detail the film didn't adapt, and that's the presumed suicide of Fonny's father at the end of the drama. In my opinion that omission is very significant. It softens the power of the story. A thought I think now that describes the film overall. Jenkins himself hints at in an interview with IndieWire1 that his film was more about the love story. I think Baldwin's original story is about hurt, hurt, and more hurt with love trying to survive it all. And Fonny's father committing suicide after facing the fact that his son is not getting out of prison is a crucial moment of that hurt. Baldwin obviously thought it was crucial because it’s literally the last thing that happens in the book. Presumably Baldwin's final reminder that historically a black life in America never really gets a happy ending.
P.S. My comments ended up being more on the book than the movie because at the moment I wrote this I recalled the book more. Also I thought the soundtrack was great and stood out as one of the best things about the film.