letterboxd barry-jenkins beale-street

Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk is sublime.

The actors, the cinematography, and the dialogue all possess a certain beauty which gives the film a warmth, even as it deals with sickening subjects. The score, too, adds and resolves tension at all the right moments.

From the plot, perhaps what I appreciated most was the steadfastness of support from Tish’s family. May we all behave with such grace and love.

The film’s ending is a real portrait of the way life sometimes goes: unresolved, messy, leaving us grasping over questions to which we know we can never receive an adequate answer. We must make meaning in life where and when we can, in the ways that make sense to us, and beware imposing those views of the world on others.