The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ shows what black love must face to survive

The movie leaves you feeling intensely empty and overwhelmingly full at the same time

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September 26, 2018 at 9:56 a.m. EDT

The first frames of “If Beale Street Could Talk” are so breathtakingly beautiful because of their purity and rarity.

Fonny (a charismatic Stephan James) is holding hands with Tish (a magnetic newcomer KiKi Layne) as they stroll silently through an empty park. The screen practically glows from the golden leaves, her yellow outfit, the dazzling sunlight.

For this young black couple in 1970s Harlem, with the rest of their lives ahead of them, their future seems just as bright.

Many other scenes in the astonishing, intimate drama — based on the beloved James Baldwin novel and directed by Barry Jenkins — celebrate black love in a way that’s hardly ever feted in film.

Fonny and Tish, who grew up so closely that they played in the same bathtub as kids, communicate multitudes to each other with a single look. Their palpable chemistry grows from budding flirtations to devout declarations. And just as the book contains one of the most exquisite descriptions of love-making in all of literature, its onscreen iteration truly does it justice.

Throughout this story, Jenkins emulates the jazz-driven rhythms of Baldwin’s legendary lyrical prose while, like his Oscar-winning film “Moonlight,” he memorializes the seemingly small moments of everyday life. This movie perfectly captures that wonderful joy of falling in love for the first time — and when the actors face the camera directly, the viewer feels that tenderness too.

But “Beale Street” — which begins hitting theaters on Nov. 30 — also proves that such a plot is a luxury that’s unjustly unafforded to many. The film continually flips between these idyllic memories and their present-day situation: Fonny has been arrested and falsely accused of rape.

“I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass,” Tish tells the audience of Fonny, with whom she is also now expecting a child. As her belly grows, those hopeful hues of gold become noticeably dim and infrequent. In an especially dark room, Fonny recounts his troubles trying to rent an apartment as a black man, and his friend Daniel (a brilliant Brian Tyree Henry) explains the irreversible damage of psychological terror reinforced by systemic racism. And when the actors face the camera directly, the viewer feels that hatred too.

Of course, there’s no speck of yellow in the black-and-white archival photos of police brutality and inmate labor — a reminder that though the source material was first published in 1974, it remains all too relevant.

Before the root of Fonny’s arrest is revealed, Regina Hall shines as Tish’s tenacious mother; and Teyonah Parris, as Tish’s sister, and Dave Franco, as an open-minded landlord, both bring moments of lighthearted laughs.

Somehow, “If Beale Street Could Talk” leaves you feeling intensely empty and overwhelmingly full at the same time. Such a simultaneous dichotomy is essential to the story of Fonny and Tish, as well as those who live while black in America, “from 1974 until today,” said Jenkins at the world premiere of the film.

This racially-biased world puts black people on the defense in order to just survive and love each other; to steadfastly do so amidst insurmountable forces becomes a true act of bravery.