Film Review: If Beale Street Could Talk

"Love Brought You Here. If You Trusted Love This Far, Trust It All The Way..."

With Moonlight undoubtedly one of the most impressive standalone movies, let alone directorial debuts, in recent memory, the Academy Award winning, Barry Jenkins, returns for his second outing in the form of If Beale Street Could Talk, a cinematic adaptation of the novel of the same name by American writer, James Baldwin, which sees the American fuse his stylish directorial and film-making style amidst a screenplay which follows the loving, complicated and wildly rocky relationship between KiKi Layne's Tish and Stephan James' (Selma) Fonny. With Moonlight understandably, and somewhat infamously, taking home the biggest award at its' respective Oscar's ceremony back in 2017, even when "first-time" winner La La Land was my own personal choice for the nod, the success of one of the most independant and little seen Best Picture winners rightly placed Jenkins at the forefront of critics' minds who were dying to see whether his ability in the world of cinema just happened to be a one-time fluke. Therefore, whilst there is no denying that at the heart of Beale Street is a clear directorial focus and cinematic design, with it seeming comfortable and relatively safe to say that Jenkins has already managed to place himself into the mind of an auteur, the American's difficult second album not only fails to live up to the high expectations, but somehow also manages to be a film which shockingly forgets the fundamental rule of cinema 101; telling a good story.    

With a central narrative which twists and turns its way throughout a strange decision which sees Jenkins attempt to tell the story in a non-linear fashion, the crux of the drama focuses on Tish and Fonny's attempts at not only dealing with the unexpected arrival of a child, but the latter's sudden and wrongful arrest after he is remanded in prison for the supposed rape of a downtown female. Whilst I can admit to not exactly immediately sympathising with character's from a completely background to my own, the hard truth is that Moonlight also featured characters who shared very little life experiences with myself, yet due to the superb acting and script, I was still able to feel every emotion and ride along with the drama until the very end. In the case of Beale Street, the fact that I had absolutely zero investment in the central relationship is undeniably a key factor in the cold, almost empty emotional resonance the film evokes, with neither Tish nor Fonny managing to be as memorable as either Juan or Chiron from Moonlight, and therefore resulting in a dramatic experience which just feels rather underwhelming and stale. Whilst comparisons to Moonlight should only be made in passing, Beale Street does benefit from Jenkins' now trademark style, with floating, wide-angle camera shots and hazy, jazz infused cinematography really quite superb, but with too many pointless uses of the format, including a quite baffling one minute plus shot of a clay pot in which nothing happens, Beale Street ultimately fails to build on the excellence of Moonlight and come the end of it, actually became quite irritating to watch as it failed to justify a staggeringly ill-judged two hour runtime. Just for the record, at least Regina King was good. 

Overall Score: 6/10