In New Film, James Baldwin's Art Makes Love a Revolutionary Act

TRUTHOUT
By Nicholas Powers

Director Barry Jenkins discusses his romantic drama film If Beale Street Could Talk at the Build Studio in New York City on November 28, 2018.

How does love survive separation and injustice? The question drives Barry Jenkins’s new film, If Beale Street Could Talk, an adaptation of the 1974 James Baldwin novel, where young Black lovers are nearly destroyed by racism. Everywhere they go, bigots prey on them — whether a carping boss, predatory landlord or racist cop. Baldwin’s answer is that love lets us see (if not touch) a future beyond suffering. Prophetic art is a tradition in Black culture, present in slave narratives, gospel, rap and films like If Beale Street Could Talk. A key feature is that love becomes a vision that transcends cotton fields, ghettoes and prisons. It shimmers like a dream in the brutal world. The implicit prophecy is that for Black life to be honored, the US must be radically transformed or cease to exist. [More]