If Beale Street Could Talk

I understand that for viewers requiring a strong and original story, director Barry Jenkins’ serenade may be a disappointment (if the actual reason is not a combination of low emotional intelligence, latent racism and unwillingness to meet the work halfway, learn something about it in advance and try to understand its means of expression). The best melodramas, with whose conventions the film works inventively, always told primarily through music and colours (following the example of Claire Denis, Jenkins adds human faces and bodies, touches and glances, the way people communicate with each other verbally and nonverbally), were literal, very naive and narrowly focused their attention, at least outwardly, on expressing feelings within a relationship. If Beale Street Could Talk is not about overcoming conflicts and dramatic reversals. It allows us to experience (feel, perceive and touch) various situations in non-chronological order. With its composition with a regular rhythm, cyclical recurrences and overlapping scenes, it is reminiscent of a blues song or a lyrical poem. The aim is not realism, but an almost tangible evocation of a particular moment, mood and emotions, which are frequently contradictory (love, pain, sadness, laughter). However, politics also come into the film through the feelings – because we want (to see) a satisfying love story, together with the young couple we experience helplessness and disappointment from a world that repeatedly betrays them, which appeals to them only in order to remind them that because of their different skin colour, they do not have the same right as others to be blithely in love. If Beale Street Could Talk is a spellbinding film of extraordinary fragility, rare in the context of today’s film production due, among other things, to the above-standard requirements placed on the audience’s perceptiveness (which is in part because its tactile character arouses even those senses whose existence you are not aware of when watching other films). 90% (25.03.2019)

Barry Jenkins has practiced art movies with Moonlight, which was awarded an Oscar, so he thought that he could continue in the same vein. The acting is OK, but in terms of the story it was so incredibly boring and dull that even the interesting cinematography could have saved that. (26.02.2019)

Overall, it’s certainly a better film than Moonlight or the similarly ambitious and praised Fences, by Denzel Washington, because the characters are more believable, the ideas are contrasted with the intimate worlds of the protagonists in a more interesting way, and it also delivers several intense moments that are memorable and avoid falling into sentimentalism. However, it’s still too whiny and so hungry for applause that I simply couldn’t applaud to it despite its undisputable formal qualities and praise-worthy ideas, especially when the ending comes from the ranks of the most expected and ordinary – perhaps that was the intention, but it didn’t work on me. (11.03.2019)

A future classic in the field of committed romantic film about unconditional love (assuming that canons and classics can still be made in this day and age) which, while pleasantly surprising with its wide range of themes that weave seamlessly together, is unable to avoid cheap visual shortcuts at times. This is especially borne by the unlikable, negative characters, who are straight out of a comic book, and I personally found it even more irritating how the central duo are unable to walk down the street except through the middle of it. Otherwise, the cinematography, music, and actors are all superb. The camera in particular can be seen painfully trying to tame its ambition in favor of greater civility, but occasionally it gets away with it and shoots fantastic sequences like moving into an imaginary apartment or a home birth. (25.03.2019)