If Beale Street Could Talk

Set in the early 1970s, “If Beale Street Could Talk” is based on a novel by James Baldwin of the same name.

The main characters in the film are Tish and Fonny. When the movie opens, it’s a bright sunny day; we find Tish and Fonny walking together, ready for the future that lies before them.

Kiki Layne plays Tish; this is her first film. Fonny is played by Stephan James, who played Jesse Owens in the movie “Race.” Rounding out the cast is Regina King, Who plays Tish’s mother, Sharon Rivers.

In the second or third scene in the movie, we learn that Tish is pregnant with Fonny’s child. Tish tells her mother Sharon, and then her sister and father. Upon hearing the news of the baby, the family decide to have Fonny’s family over to share the good news. However it goes downhill from the start, ending in a fight.

We shortly learn that Fonny is being held in jail. Tish visits him in jail, and informs him he’s going to be a dad. He tells her that he wishes he could be there for the birth of the child. She tells him that she knows he’ll be out of jail before then. Sadly, he isn’t.

The film is told bouncing backwards and forwards in time. Tish and Fonny have known each other since they were small children. We see them at ages 2 or 3, then 5 or 6, then 10 or 12, then as adults. They’ve known each other their whole lives, and it finally blossomed into love. Then Fonny got arrested.

Fonny is being held on a charge of the rape of a young woman, which happened several miles from his home. It was physically impossible for him to be at the crime scene when he was in fact, home with his wife and a visiting friend, who could all corroborate his whereabouts. Yet it has fallen on deaf ears, and he sits in jail awaiting trial.

Sadly, one of the themes in the movie is one we are all too familiar with-innocent people of color being incarcerated by law enforcement without having committed a criminal act. It was written in the 1970s, yet we are still dealing with this problem in this country. It is so timely a piece that it felt as if Baldwin had written it last week.

In Baldwin’s works, it seemed to me that he always had an autobiographical character in the work. As I watched, I searched for a character like Baldwin. I know Baldwin was gay, so I searched the characters in the film for a queer character. About halfway through the movie, I realized that the autobiographical character in this work is the lead male character, Fonny.

In one scene in the film, Fonny talked about the system being rigged in the US, and that it is rigged in white people’s favor. In this scene, Fonny talks about getting some money together and leaving the United States. That is exactly what Baldwin did for a time. He felt imprisoned in the US, and felt a unique sense of freedom in Europe.

“If Beale Street Could Talk” is not about Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee; instead it is a metaphor for the black experience in America.

Throughout the movie, the visual aspect of the movie was fascinating to me. In the darker subject matter of the movie, the scenes were shot with low levels of light. When things were bright and happy and hopeful for the characters, the shots were rooms full of light, or shot outside on bright sunshine filled days. I don’t know that I have ever seen such a visual representation of emotion or depth of material in film that ran for the entire length of the film.

The film appeared to be shown in chapters, with Tish narrating between chapters. In these moments, the film showed documentary footage, news reel footage, from the country at that time. It helps to illustrate Baldwin’s points, as well as submerging the audience in that time, in those conditions.

As an audience member, it was disconcerting to bounce backwards and forwards in time. However, the entire movie is disconcerting. The audience is not meant to feel comfortable.

In the end, there is a happily after for Tish and Fonny, just not in the way they had pictured their future. Tish and Fonny’s future is many people’s present in this country. We still have people being locked up in jails without their ever having committed a crime.

“If Beale Street Could Talk” is not about Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee; instead it is a metaphor for the black experience in America.

Now available on Blu Ray, DVD, Hulu, YouTube, Vudu, Google Play. 3 stars.