Barry Jenkins On Beale Street, Baldwin & Black Love As Protest
If Beale Street Could Talk was James Baldwin’s fifth novel, a love story set in Harlem in the 1970s. Oscar winning director Barry Jenkins makes history as the first filmmaker to adapt the words of Baldwin for the screen with Beale Street coming to theaters this Christmas.
Starring Stephan James and newcomer Kiki Layne, the story centers around two young lovers, Fonny and Tish who are racing against time as false accusations land Fonny in jail and Tish is expecting their first child. Their families rally behind them simultaneously preparing to welcome one life into the world while saving another.
“The movie opens with this quote about, you know, about there being a Beale Street in all these towns across America as a metaphor for these communities where the souls of Black folks exist,” says Barry Jenkins, who secured the rights to make Beale Street from the Baldwin estate after completing his first film, 2009’s Medicine For Melancholy. “Beale Street is this very lush love story, a story of family, familial love, romantic love. Just so many different versions of love, in particularly Black love in the neighborhood, Harlem, that James Baldwin grew up in. Yet it’s also, in certain ways, a protest novel.”
While set decades ago, Beale Street feels current as it tackles how racism permeates the criminal justice system making victims of everyday people. As if Baldwin’s prose isn’t already stirring enough, an A+ cast of Regina King, Colman Domingo, Teyonah Parris, Brian Tyree Henry and breathe life into every syllable even when they aren’t speaking.
“I think he was writing to the human condition,” says Jenkins. “And so long as there are human beings on planet Earth, the things he was wrestling with are always going to be relevant to the people reading his work or watching this film."
If Beale Street Could Talk will be in limited theaters December 14th and everywhere December 25th.
