Through the looking glass

Through the looking glass

Barry Jenkins' adaptation of James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk is a masterpiece of understatement on a love that endures all obstacles

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Tish Rivers, the woman in James Baldwin's novel If Beale Street Could Talk, muses to the reader in the book's first pages: "I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass."

But in the context of her life, she has to. Tish (Kiki Layne) looks at the man he loves, Fonny Hunt (Stephan James), through prison glass in the early scene of Barry Jenkins's elegant and heartbreaking adaptation of Baldwin's novel. That sentence also captures the essence of the story in which love, pain and social injustice are the forces that compete to take over everyday experience of the black community in Harlem, New York, in the early 1970s. Tish's and Fonny's nuptial bliss -- and what bliss, what joy -- is interrupted when a policeman frames Fonny for a crime he didn't commit, and his family's attempt to locate the victim and convince her to exenorate him makes up the rest of the story.

That the film didn't make the cut in the Oscars' Best Picture nomination, and neither did Jenkins in the directing class, is a startling omission, for this is one of the most remarkable films from last year and one which, strategically, would endorse the diversity discourse the Academy champions. (I definitely prefer Jenkins' film over Black Panther by Ryan Coogler, BlacKKKlansman by Spike Lee, and Vice, Adam McKay's hammy Dick Cheney biopic).

Like the 1974 book, If Beale Street Could Talk is a romance set in the times of racism, police prejudice and minority oppression. It was then but it could be now, too, in a US swayed by nationalist populism. And yet Jenkins' bid to be relevant is gentle and unobtrusive; for the most part, from the very first shot in fact, If Beale Street Could Talk is basked in the luxuriant mood and jazzy rhythm, where a scene of lovemaking is staged with such tenderness and the family life of Tish and Fonny sketched in such vibrant colour that the misfortune that comes later is even more pronounced and bitter. The film is part of the discourse not because it exerts itself into the agenda, but because the emotional impact of the story is undeniable.

What Jenkins did in Moonlight, which won Best Picture in 2016, he's done again here with virtuosic confidence: the juggling of the timeline, the dreamy romance and wistful separation, and the way the plot takes a back seat to mood, temperature and colour as the characters seem to wade languorously through tears of happiness and sorrow.

Clearly -- and to put it bluntly -- Jenkins' influences are the Asian films of Ho Hsiao-hsien and Wong Kar-wai, where cinema time is autonomous from real time, where romance is sweet and transient, and where jazz-like tempo of the editing is at once silky smooth and improvisational.

At a time of Black Lives Matter and liberal indignation at Trump's America, a black filmmaker making a gentle romantic film sounds almost subversive in itself. This year we've also seen Spike Lee flexing his dark wit and provocative sarcasm in BlacKKKlansman, an anger-fuelled black comedy that makes the cut into both Best Picture and Best Director nominations; we're still fresh from the memory of Jordan Peele's bizarre, racially-coded horror Get Out. And this week Childish Gambino's This Is America, about gun violence and black angst, won big at the Grammys. Jenkins' approach of contemporary politics is from the opposite end: honesty, sincerity and integrity. The balmy romance between Tish and Fonny -- despite the disaster that hit them -- is almost an act of defiance in the structural horror that conditions their relationship. Meanwhile, the film's portrayal of Tish's family gathering is one of the finest stagings of domestic life, a cinematic equivalence of Baldwin's literary prose, and without having to try to feel urgent, it speaks to us with depth and authenticity.

It sounds like a cruel joke that in Thailand, If Beale Street Could Talk is marketed as a Valentine's movie (facing off with the Thai romantic comedy Friend Zone). But despite the subject matter, it's a perfect date movie for adults: a film that shows how true love withstands the gravest obstacle. Looking at the person you love through prison glass isn't just a test of one's romantic strength; it's a testament of human courage in a time when we all need it most.

If Beale Street Could Talk

Starring Kiki Layne, Stephan James

Directed by Barry Jenkins

At House RCA

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