If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)
- knives
- Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm
Re: If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)
It mostly comes up in the first act, but the events have a certain machismo to them that I found off putting. The way violence is portrayed for example comes across as going by who is stronger and more right. The film doesn't view that behavior as absurd.
- DarkImbecile
- Ask me about my visible cat breasts
- Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2013 6:24 pm
- Location: Albuquerque, NM
Re: If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)
Can you offer an example? I’m struggling to think of what you could be referring to here.
- dda1996a
- Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:14 am
Re: If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)
I'm guessing he's talking about the long families scene, but I still sturggle to understand what exactly is machismo about it
- knives
- Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm
Re: If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)
How the slapping of the mother is presented was a big example for me. In general I have a lot of problems with how that scene unfolded.
-
- Joined: Sat Nov 08, 2014 6:49 am
Re: If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)
Interesting, I have to admit that machismo as a description was far from my mind in that entire scene.
- mfunk9786
- Under Chris' Protection
- Joined: Fri May 16, 2008 4:43 pm
- Location: Philadelphia, PA
Re: If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)
Does representing that incident = the filmmaker or even the material endorsing it, though?
-
- Joined: Sat May 25, 2019 11:58 am
Re: If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)
I agree with you on a fuzzy logic basis. Meaning I don't agree with your actual articulation, but I agree with some of what you are trying to convey.knives wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2019 10:54 pmThis seems incredibly ironic now that I've seen the movie given the queer erasure it poses to Baldwin's voice not that that is anything new. Bladwin has a pretty unique voice as a black artist distanced from tradition due to queerness that gives his melodrama a unique sense. Jenkins continues to not be able to speak as a gay man which removes that distance. Had Jenkins leaned into that it would be a fine approach and something different from the book in possibly a great way. Instead, as Brian notes, he's desperate to maintain that distance. I think there are thematic reasons he wants to maintain that distance so as to connect the problems of this story to today rendering it zeitgeisty rather than getting lost with the characters, but what he replaces Baldwin's voice with seems to be a fear of melodrama that makes this a hetero, blandly atheist, masculine fest. Occasionally this can synthesize into great moments like the Atlanta guy's cameo which could have been it's own movie, but mostly just paints a weird aggressiveness that feels uncomfortable with itself. This is extremely obvious with Fonny's mother's ridiculous religiousity which Baldwin can paint with the nuanced view of someone who had loved it and learned to hate. Here though she's just this stupid and intolerant woman who no one likes and says dumb stuff. This is a film full of potential that it never reaches.
There is a slight mish-mash of tones in the film. At some points, it is way too twee and precious, and at some points, it wants to be realistic and hardcore. I think Cahiers Du Cinema wrote that some of the sequences played liked Vogue commercials even though superficially we were supposed to believe that the characters were poor.
Just overall I got the sense of it being more style than substance but that is also my impression of Moonlight. Jenkins is an interesting film-maker. I get the sense he's self-censoring some of his natural impulses to fit into a mold that he has envisioned for himself and you get the resulting clash of tones in his work, more here than in Moonlight.
- knives
- Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm
Re: If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)
It's not representing the incident that I am having problems with, after all it features in the book I am venerating, but how it is represented which is a matter of the adaptation.