The movie is current, infuriatingly current, in its clear and direct exposure of the system of white supremacy that’s enshrined and perpetuated in the workings of law-from the laws themselves to their street-level abuse by police officers, their backroom abuse by police officials, the chicanery of prosecutors, the pressures and prejudices of judges, the crushing brutality of incarceration, and the over-all pressure of money and burden of poverty that renders the entire objective, arm’s-length, formally coherent system of oppression circular and self-perpetuating. It’s a historical drama, one that’s set around the time of the novel’s composition, but it’s equally a story about today, a movie that relies on its historical context to bring to the fore not the incidental differences but the disturbing similarities connecting those supposedly bygone days to the moment at hand. What’s more, he does so without at all weakening or diminishing the drama rather, the movie’s investigative elements intensify its emotional power, by reflecting them through its characters’ voices and consciousness. With his new film, “If Beale Street Could Talk,” an adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel, Barry Jenkins achieves something rare: he pulls the background into the foreground, combines a drama with an essay-film, an analytical documentary.
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