If there’s a badge of honour that I wear most earnestly upon my chest, its the one that I carry for my avoidance of Oscar-tipped films during their run at the cinema. Its a strange sort of hipster affectation to avoid a film that has become popular because of its critical success, because people who review films for a living have said yes, this film is actually a really good one.
They should know which films are the good ones – there must be at least 100 English-language films made a year and less than 10 per cent of those are picked out as the really, really good ones and then the best one of those really good ones is chosen as the best one of the lot.
Yet I generally eschew the parade, finding it overwhelming to be amongst a crowd of opinions at the height of a film’s buzz. To this day, I take odd pride from having never seen Avatar.
I usually watch all these films eventually – after the buzz has died down to its lowest hum, when its past its DVD release and has started to bounce from Netflix to Amazon Prime and back again.
So we come to If Beale Street Could Talk, which was nominated for a bevy of awards but snubbed for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, instead being recognised for Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score.
The film is set in the background of New York City in the 1970s, with its dagger collars and “cats” and its brutal systematic racism. Based on the James Baldwin novel of the same name, it tells the tale of love amongst tragic circumstances and even more tragic outcomes.
To contextualise the film, it is set in a time where it was even worse to be born black in America than it is today. Childhood friends and now lovers Tish and Fonny struggle to find an apartment as nobody will rent to either a black man, a black woman or a black couple.
It is directed with the sensitive hand of Barry Jenkins, who directed that other Oscar film Moonlight (which won Best Film at the 2017 Oscars, in case there was any confusion with La La Land). Jenkins directs the entire film with subtlety, honesty and style. While the plot beats along well (accompanied by narration from its female lead), it is the direction that tells the real story.
With Jenkins’ direction, what comes through most prevalently in every single gesture of the actors and with every sweep of the camera is the magnetic love story between Tish and Fonny. Jenkins captures the intimacy between KiKi Layne and Stephan James as if the pair are inside a snowglobe, with the score providing the thread for the progression of their relationship, from its first steps in awkward, shy affection to its strides in true, relentless and fierce passion.
The pair have a dream – maybe to have a flat, maybe to have a family – but mostly the two seem to be enraptured in each other despite family disputes and society’s prejudices. In one scene of the film, Fonny (James) tells an old friend (played by Brian Tyree Henry, in a small but affecting role) that he sees Tish as his anchor. “I’m scared about what might happen to the both of us without each other…I’ve got two things in my life, man. I’ve got my whetting stone and I got Tish. Without them I’m lost. Nowhere.”
The film ultimately questions the lengths we will go to and the faith we have in those we love. With a rich supporting cast including the resplendent Regina King, who delivers a quiet, tempered and passionate performance, it is truly difficult to fault it.
While the film’s present day is difficult and harsh, its flashbacks to the couple’s earlier days are torturous in their dreamy naiveté and youthful idealism : one scene where Fonny tries to ignite Tish’s imagination of what their dream home could look like (helped by a bespectacled Dave Franco in a charming role as a kind landlord) is a technicolour dream that seems unreachable when the film returns to the present.
Oscar films can often feel cloying and manipulative in their desperate plea for accolade – usually smacking of studio vehicles to ignite an actor’s CV or make someone a lot of money – but If Beale Street Could Talk is far from all talk (sorry). It adopts a less-is-more tactic in its dialogue and makes far more use of the pauses in between to tell a story of love among the ruins.
So maybe I’ll remember that next awards season.
Jessica Mercer 