Kritiken

What's most remarkable about the movie, aside from its sheer physical beauty and intense yet restrained performances, is how Jenkins democratizes the story, adopting one character's point-of-view and then another, in different sections of the movie, and often within individual scenes.

Uninterrupted, [Tish and Fonny’s] shared tenderness is luxuriated in, while Nicholas Britell’s vivid, Oscar-nominated, original orchestral score provides precisely the required timbres of cinematic melancholy and romanticism. It is a joy to watch.

Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton reinvented the way Florida and Georgia were filmed in Moonlight, and they do the same thing with Harlem in this movie. Immediately distinctive, their way of shooting actors in real places is without equal in current American feature films.

The film’s slowness pulls both sensuous slink and deep dolour from Tish and Fonny’s story, but the persistent solemnity dampens any suggestion of transporting bliss – there’s laughter but no real mirth, no release.

The tears I cried weren’t because I was in awe at the fact that the tenderness and warmth shared by the two transcends the glass dividing them, but rather that there is a barrier there in the first place. While love may be one thing, hope is something else entirely. Tish and Fonny’s boy is the embodiment of hope.

Jenkins has been justly praised for adapting James Baldwin’s 1974 novel (not necessarily the most apparent Baldwin text to work through) with an eye to its insights on African-American identity, subtly (and not so subtly, with its ending) shifting elements and emphases to reflect upon the present.

The faces we see extend beyond beautifully cinematic images—they’re also radical, in much the same way that Baldwin combined artistry with radical discourse.

Jenkins achieves something rare: he pulls the background into the foreground, combines a drama with an essay-film, an analytical documentary. What’s more, he does so without at all weakening or diminishing the drama; rather, the movie’s investigative elements intensify its emotional power, by reflecting them through its characters’ voices and consciousness.

This is not a director’s performance type of movie as “Moonlight” was but more like a test of skill and imagination. What needs to really be stressed in any assessment of “If Beale Street Could Talk” is just how difficult Baldwin’s source material is to translate into a film.

The details are impeccable, from the production design and wardrobe, to the performances, to the music and lighting. Even the fading sunlight as Tish and Fonny walk through their neighborhood feels of a different time. And in creating this world, Barry has given his actors the space to live so truthfully in their characters.

When Jenkins is true to himself, he soars; he stumbles, though, when he’s overly faithful to the novel or doesn’t trust the audience. (A showily centered shot of a landlord’s skullcap reads like a sign for “Friendly Jew!”) The trip to Puerto Rico affirms Sharon’s love and force of will, but mostly feels like one female victim badgering another.

Jenkins’s graceless storytelling misreads Baldwin’s hard thinking and anguished writing — Millennial fans admire his anguish — resulting in a mush-minded protest movie. Like Spike Lee, Jenkins builds a collage of cultural references and topical complaints.