'If Beale Street Could Talk' review: James Baldwin's Harlem comes to life

Stephan James, left, and Brian Tyree Henry star in "If Beale Street Could Talk." Credit: Annapurna Pictures via AP/Tatum Mangus
PLOT A black short-order cook is wrongly accused of rape.
CAST Stephan James, KiKi Layne, Regina King, Brian Tyree Henry
RATED R (for language and some sexual content)
LENGTH 1:56
PLAYING AT Manhasset Cinemas
BOTTOM LINE A visually and verbally stunning adaptation of James Baldwin's novel.
"If Beale Street Could Talk" opens with a quotation from author James Baldwin. "Beale Street," he wrote, "is a street in New Orleans, where my father, where Louis Armstrong and the jazz were born. Every black person born in America was born on Beale Street, whether in Jackson, Mississippi, or in Harlem, New York. Beale Street is our legacy."
With his seriously gorgeous adaptation of the 1974 Baldwin novel, "Moonlight" writer-director Barry Jenkins has responded to Baldwin’s lyrical anguish by creating a world of warmth and possibility amid everyday callousness.
The charismatic Stephan James plays Fonny, a short-order cook/sculptor, who has been wrongly accused of rape. He also has a pregnant fiancee, Tish (KiKi Layne in a formidable screen debut). Through the story of Tish and Fonny, and their intimately entwined families working to get him out of prison, many more characters take the stage. Regina King excels as Tish’s mother, Sharon, a marvel of intuition and strength. She leads a matchless ensemble including Colman Domingo’s relaxed, loving husband, Joseph, and Brian Tyree Henry as an old friend of Fonny’s, recently sprung from prison.
The story also travels to Puerto Rico, as Tish’s mother tracks down the fleeing accuser of her son. But most of " Beale Street" stays within a dreamy, violent, cruel, beautiful vision of 1970s New York. Baldwin’s descriptions in the novel include passages such as this one, narrated by Tish, describing a moment in her loving home with a Ray Charles song on the record player. "I listened to the music and the sounds from the streets and Daddy’s hand rested lightly on my hair. And everything seemed connected — the street sounds, and Ray’s voice and his piano and my Daddy’s hand and sister’s silhouette and the sound and the light coming from the kitchen."
That’s pure cinema. What Baldwin does with words, Jenkins does visually. It’s what Blanche DuBois says in "A Streetcar Named Desire": "I don’t want realism. I want magic!" In " Beale Street" that magic can be crushing, and soul-stirring, sometimes simultaneously.
Most Popular
Top Stories





