When it was announced about a year ago that Barry Jenkins was going to direct an adaptation of James Baldwin's 1974 novel, I knew Baldwin's commentary of young love caught in the storm of systematic racism was in capable hands.
Slow-paced, "every day Black folks" stories are what I often gravitate towards, and Jenkin's 2016 Academy-Award winning film Moonlight was such a masterful quiet character study that put my faith in the Miami-bred director being a proficient teller of Black American stories for the 21st Century. With this teaser trailer, released on what would've been Baldwin's 94th birthday, I'm even more confident that one of my favorite novels from Baldwin will be taken to heart, and bring to proper vision the bittersweet love story of Fonny and Alonzo, a Harlem couple whose love is put to a test when Alonzo is falsely accused of a crime.
Baldwin's works deserve to be framed as straight-to-the-marrow character studies, that concentrate on emotion over extravagance, that are style merging with substance, and Jenkins seems to have achieved that byway of the trailer's pensive, yet poetic tone. To my knowledge, this is the first of Baldwin's books to go from page to big screen (Go Tell It On The Mountain was made into a television mini-series in the 1970s) and from the look of things, won't be the last. From a standpoint, it no doubt baits that Oscar, but truly, it's time for more diverse stories to grab that golden honor, as I'm always here for anything that shows Black people living, loving, and leaping over society's complex hurtles, especially if its coming from the pen of Baldwin.
Oh, and I'm happy to see Regina King starring in this as Fonny's mother, as if you look up "underrated" in the dictionary, her name is pretty much the freakin' definition.
If Beale Street Could Talk will be in theaters November 30th.
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