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

Second Opinion: Moonlight

"I Won't Let You Go. Hey Man. I Got You. There You Go. Ten Seconds. Right There. You In The Middle Of The World..."

Within the final paragraph of my first review for Barry Jenkins' Moonlight not but a week past, I came to the conclusion that the eight time Oscar nominated picture was indeed an impressive piece of drama, but too a film which seemingly didn't hold up to the impressive amount of hype which had surrounded its' release for months since it first hit the festival circuit in late 2016, at least on first watch. With the review out for everyone to see, the usual state of affairs would be to forget the film and move swiftly on to the next one, particularly as on first glance, Moonlight didn't seem to be the masterpiece many had declared it to be. However, in a rather surrealist fashion, this past week has been one in which a wild conundrum has been constructed within my cinematic mind, questioning my original decision regarding the movie's qualities, due mainly to the fact that the sensual feelings and visuals of Barry Jenkins' dramatic coming-of-age tale cannot escape my mind long enough for it to be regarded as something other than a work of excellence. For a reviewer who finds it hard sometimes to admit when he is wrong and hold his arms out to graciously accept a slice of humble pie, Moonlight is a strange case of a film which hypnotises you the more you think about it but more impressively, captivates you the more times you sit down and admire it. 

 Like many films before it in which repeat viewings has either resulted in a film being better or worse than it seemed on first watch, Moonlight is a movie which I now can fully understand for what it is; a social realist drama about the conflicted nature of love within the confines of Miami's drug-ridden gang-lands, and although the film does still suffer from a middling final act in which the quest for ambiguity and exploration in terms of its' character's emotions does still become slightly repetitive and arduous, Trevante Rhodes does do a superb job of portraying a character who although is powerful and intimidating on the surface, underneath is a firework of emotions, lit by the calling of his one and only experience of love, concluding in a battle of repressed emotion which bears similarities to Casey Affleck's performance in Manchester By The Sea, a similarly low-key drama which focuses on the understatement of feelings rather than the dramatic pull of shouty soap-like confrontation. As stated previously, Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris are indeed the stars of the show, with the former cementing an unforgettable performance of a cliche-avoiding drug dealer in the short time he has on-screen and the latter on second watch coming across as a terrifying entity of drug-infested mania, with the scene in which her character is filmed backwards harking towards more of a surrealist horror infliction and boy is it startling. 

Another element of Moonlight which was more noticeable on second watch was the superb choice of music encompassing the film's score, with Nicholas Britell mixing a crafty selection of modern hip-hop, classic soul and a striking use of strings, particularly "The Middle of the World", a violin-heavy piece of music which hits an arrangement of nerves in an almost Lynchian and somewhat surrealist fashion, adding breadth to the evidence of the film's more horror-inflicted elements. Concluding this particular feature therefore, Moonlight is indeed a working progress of a movie, where although La La Land and Manchester By The Sea are arguably more effective as an entire body of work, Moonlight is a movie which just can't seem to escape my train of thought for any meaningful length of time. What Barry Jenkins has here is a movie which has been scuppered by the tremendous level of hype surrounding it and whilst many would have shared similar views to my own on first glance, a second watch has improved and highlighted its' more impressive elements ten-fold. Whilst La La Land is still my personal preference for the Best Picture nod, Moonlight is the type of movie which wouldn't surprise me if it took the prestigious gong instead, a particular statement I wouldn't have said a week ago. How things change...

Overall Score: 8.5/10

(At Least on Second Watch)

Film Review: Moonlight

"At Some Point You've Got To Decide Who You Wanna Be..."

Striding hand-in-hand with La La Land for the two most hyped cinematic releases of the year, Barry Jenkins' Moonlight is the type of movie of which its' reputation more than precedes it, gathering overwhelming critical response from across the critical stratosphere and a fair number of Oscar nominations to support its' claim as a modern masterpiece of cinema. Where La La Land managed to actually exceed expectations, so much so that two visits to see it in the cinema just isn't enough, Moonlight is yet another example of a film-going experience which just doesn't seem to correlate with its' preconceived notions of excellence, with it being yes, a movie which is made with a huge degree of gentle care and dedication to its' source material, but is too also largely nonexistent in attempting to create a succinct relationship between its' leading characters and the audience, resulting in a movie which follows in similar strides to Martin Scorsese's Silence earlier on in the year in the sense that although its' craft is admirable, the final result isn't the masterpiece I was hell bent on expecting. 

Following in three acts the troubled early life of Chiron, a conflicted and withdrawn character born into the drug-ridden and crime inflicted surroundings of an unnamed geographical area of America, Moonlight delves deep into the organic nature of life itself, with its' central protagonist slipping through year after year without a crystal clear notion of his own true identity in a Boyhood style tale of discovery amidst the backdrop of an atmosphere that bears similarities to the nihilistic portrayal of society within HBO's The Wire. Although each of the three depictions of Chiron throughout the movie give solid performances, the true standouts of the movie are the double-header of House of Cards/Luke Cage star Mahershala Ali and Moneypenny herself, Naomie Harris, who each give rousing and emphatic performances within the quite shocking minimal time they actually appear on screen, amidst a screenplay which relies on the element of understatement to quietly and sometimes tediously get where its' attempting to finally go. Moonlight is no doubt a impressive piece of drama from second-time writer/director Barry Jenkins, but it too is a film which doesn't hold up to the impressive hype surrounding its' release, at least on first watch.

Overall Score: 7/10