‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ is a very powerful film, but not an easy one

Posted on January 18, 2019

By MARK VIOLA

The ending of the 2017 Academy Awards will never be forgotten, with “La La Land” being announced the winner of Best Picture, only for it to turn out that for the first time in Oscars history, the wrong winner had been announced. Instead, it was “Moonlight,” an exceptional film from writer/director Barry Jenkins, that won the top prize.

Amazingly, “Moonlight” was Jenkins’ first time in the director’s chair and only the second feature-length screen play he had written, earning him the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. Whenever a filmmaker bursts onto the scene like Jenkins did with “Moonlight,” the question inevitably arises, what will he or she do next?

In the case of Jenkins, the answer is “If Beale Street Could Talk,” based on the novel by James Baldwin (“I Am Not Your Negro”), telling the story of a young couple in love who are faced with great adversity, including disapproving parents and a false accusation that could separate them for years, if not forever.

The film begins with Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne, “Chicago Med”) visiting her boyfriend Alonzo “Fonny” Hunt (Stephan James, “Race”) in prison, arriving with the news that she is pregnant with their child. From there, the story jumps back and forth between the present, as we follow Tish’s family’s efforts to exonerate Fonny and reunite the couple, and the past, documenting Tish and Fonny’s budding relationship from childhood friends to lovers.

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