Tish is a young Black woman in 1970s Harlem. She finds out she is pregnant just as her fiancé Fonny is sent to prison for a rape he did not commit. The film follows her family's desperate fight to free him before the baby arrives. Barry Jenkins' adaptation of James Baldwin is a love letter written against the prison system.
If Beale Street Could Talk is a 2018 drama and romance film directed by Barry Jenkins. This breakdown covers 4 techniques (2 cinematography and 2 narrative), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Braveheart uses several of the same techniques.
Adjusting the film's overall color, such as how warm, cold or vivid it looks, to match a character's emotional state. It can also separate different realities or states of mind.
How this film uses it
James Laxton's photography shifts between 2 looks. The memory sequences are warm and soaked in amber, and the present is cooler, harder and more realistic. The difference in color shows you what love used to be and what the system has made of it.
Where to see it
The flashback sequences of Tish and Fonny falling in love. Memory gets an amber-gold palette. It is set against the cold blue-grey of the prison visiting room.
Holding a close-up on an actor's face long enough to catch tiny changes in expression. You read what the character is thinking from details a wider shot would miss.
How this film uses it
Jenkins films his actors in slow close-up as they break the fourth wall, meaning they look straight into the camera. They do it with the calm of people who know they are being seen. The close-up becomes a statement of their dignity.
Where to see it
Fonny looking directly into the camera in the prison. Because he is looking at you, his false imprisonment becomes a statement made to you as well as a plot event.
Having a narrator tell the story from some point after it happened. The events feel like memory, and you sense early on that something will be lost.
How this film uses it
Tish narrates the story in voiceover from a future where she already knows how it ends. Her narration is tender and clear. Even the most painful scenes feel like something she has witnessed and survived.
Where to see it
Tish's opening voiceover: 'I hope that nobody has ever had to look at somebody they love through glass'. She is looking back from the future, so the whole film is framed as her act of witness.
Opening and closing the film with the same device, often an older character returning to an important place. The frame asks a moral question about what you just watched.
How this film uses it
Jenkins opens with Tish and Fonny together and closes with them together again, now with their son, in the prison visiting room. The closing image carries everything the film has done to their world between the 2 shots.
Where to see it
The final scene, where Tish and their son visit Fonny in prison. They share snacks and look forward to his release. The couple is together and permanently changed. You can see the system's damage in the gap between the 2 shots.
Questions
If Beale Street Could Talk: quick answers
What filmmaking techniques does If Beale Street Could Talk use?
CineCode breaks down 4 techniques in If Beale Street Could Talk (2018): Color Grading as Psychology, Deliberate Close-Up Performance, Retrospective Voiceover and Bookend Moral Frame.
Who directed If Beale Street Could Talk?
Barry Jenkins directed If Beale Street Could Talk, released in 2018. CineCode also covers Moonlight (2016), Mufasa: The Lion King (2024).
What films are similar to If Beale Street Could Talk?
Films that share techniques with If Beale Street Could Talk include Braveheart (1995), Moonlight (2016), Priscilla (2023), Fight Club (1999).
