Page 14
February 6, 2019
If Beale Street Could Talk
C ontinueD from p age 10
Jensen and his cinematographer
James Laxton to impart that rev-
erence on screen. They know how
to linger on the beauty of black
skin and Afro-textured hair and
black bodies--indeed, Jenkins
has spoken about the adaptation
required to do this justice given
that film was originally created to
represent white skin, which leaves
black skin underexposed. (I think
there’s a metaphor here some-
where.) Here, black is beautiful,
and bright colors and long close-
ups help us to see what is most
deeply and genuinely true rather
than literal. It’s the truth we hav-
en’t learned to see.
It’s only in that context of love
and genuine beauty that we can be
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expected to grapple as we should
with the violence that is perpetrat-
ed on Tish and Fonny, and on black
people in general. In keeping with
Baldwin’s intention, the film feels
like a series of overheard conver-
sations, what black people would
(and indeed, sometimes do) say
outside the hearing of white peo-
ple if they could articulate their
innermost thoughts. We see how
white men feel entitled to Tish’s
body, how Fonny endangers him-
self by standing up for her, how his
wounded dignity reacts when she
stands up for him, how she is so
often the only person in a position
to receive his understandable rage
and pain. We watch Fonny learn to
dream and find a way to express
his heart, only to watch (as Tish
does) as the light and hope drain
out of him in jail. We see Tish
struggle with the weight of each
burden she must bear alone--tell-
ing Fonny through glass that she is
carrying his child, breaking each
bit of bad news about his pros-
pects, absorbing the senselessness
of a case in which her own testi-
mony is useless against that of a
white police officer with an axe to
grind. In a pivotal scene, Fonny
and an old friend (an amazing Bri-
an Tyree Henry), recently released
from prison for a crime he did not
commit, speak of the indignities
that each finds impossible to es-
cape; they wear the costs on their
souls and on their faces for a few
moments of nearly unbearable
honesty, before returning to laugh-
ter and gratitude for Tish’s simple
and good cooking.
We also overhear the courage
and raw power it takes for Tish and
Fonny and those who love them to
keep fighting. “Unbow your head,
sister,” Tish’s elder sister firm-
ly chides her in an early scene-
-and before long, of necessity,
Tish acquires the power to insist
that Fonny’s lawyer refer to him
by his nickname rather than by
Alonzo, the legal name that is al-
ways used in official proceedings,
and also the power to pull Fonny
back from the brink of despair by
reminding him that “I understand
what you’re going through, be-
cause I’m with you.” Even as he
is dwindling away behind bars, we
watch Fonny dredge his depths for
hope; “I want to hold you in my
arms, and I got to hold our baby in
my arms.” Tish’s father Joseph re-
minds Fonny’s father Frank, also
at the brink of despair, that, even
without resources, they have al-
ready managed the impossible in
their lives, so they will find ways
to get the money to fund Fonny’s
defense; I sadly expect that few
white people will know how to
process the truth of Joseph’s rec-
ognition that the wealth of white
people is almost entirely stolen.
And Regina King as Tish’s steely
mother knows suffering and offers
only and entirely what she knows
she has to give, advising Tish in a
moment of anguish, “Remember,
love is what brought you here.
And if you’ve trusted love this far,
don’t panic now. Trust it all the
way.”
Yet even that much love and
that much power can’t save Fon-
ny from the fate reserved for him.
Another of the film’s agonies is
how marginalized people are pit-
ted against each other; an affec-
tionate rapport with a Mexican
restaurant owner is contrasted
with the anguish of the rape vic-
tim, a Puerto Rican woman who
was instructed by police to identi-
fy Fonny in the line-up and then is
left to her trauma. The entrenched
patterns of senseless brutality feel
and are intractable.
In this story, love manages to
survive, but it can hardly be said
to thrive. It does not cushion Fon-
ny and Tish and those who love
them, and their love should not
lull us into believing that their
losses are uniquely unjust. In this
wrenching and beautiful depic-
tion, we are meant to listen, to
grieve as we ought, and to aspire
to the determination that has been
modeled for us, the quality of de-
termination that will be needed to
end such suffering.
Darleen Ortega is a judge on
the Oregon Court of Appeals and
the first woman of color to serve
in that capacity. Her movie review
column Opinionated Judge ap-
pears regularly in The Portland
Observer. Find her movie blog at
opinionatedjudge.blogspot.com.
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