The Elegance Of Barry Jenkins’ ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’

The Film That Barry Jenkins Made After Winning An Oscar For ‘Moonlight’

Screen shot from the “If Beale Street Could Talk” promotional trailer. Fair use as it is included for the purpose of commentary and criticism.

This article is in response to Counter Art’s Film prompt for October 2023.

Before director, producer, and screenwriter Barry Jenkins garnered widespread recognition for his Academy Award-winning film Moonlight (2016), he planned to adapt James Baldwin’s 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk.

However, Jenkins was terrified. Baldwin’s literary work had never been turned into an English-language narrative feature, according to Deadline.

“In 1998, Beale Street became Where the Heart Is, a French film by Robert Guédiguian, which shifted the action to Marseille and recast Tish as a white woman,” Joe Utichi recalled. “And in 2016, the year Jenkins released Moonlight, Raoul Peck turned Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House into the Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro.”

“Film is not the best medium for interiority,” Jenkins told Deadline. “Baldwin’s stock-in-trade was the interior life of human beings. It is not an easy thing to translate. It is not an easy thing to adapt.”

Nonetheless, Jenkins was prepared to seize the moment. He had secured the rights to…