If Beale Street Could Talk is a film about two people in love. Fonny and Tish are two lovers that have known each other for most of their lives. They decide to move into a place of their own together and after being rejected over and over by landlords for being black they finally find a place to rent from a Jewish man. He tells them he is renting to them because he can see that they are in love.
As the story progresses we see how black people are treated in America. Fonny stops a man from assaulting Tish in a grocery store and throws him out. But it's Fonny who is come after by the police as all they assume is it's a black man causing the trouble. Later, the deeply racist Officer Bell convinces a rape victim to say that it was Fonny who raped her, and this becomes his sentence as no one trusts his alibi even though it can be corroborated by others. Fonny must serve time for a crime he didn't commit.
It is only the love that Tish and Fonny have for one another that allows them to persevere. To endure racism and be falsely accuses sets a precedent that black people were not safe, and the release of the film in 2018 begs us in today's time to examine if America is safe for black people.
Barry Jenkins does a beautiful thing in creating a film that has soul. He is able to create poetry with his combination of composition, set design, lighting, and rhythm. He elevates, deepens and gives breadth to suffering that exists in a way that demands the audience experience the quality of love these characters exude. They are very real people, not some stereotype of what the media creates.
