Talk About Directing! --- Dayt 295

Walk: Union Square, AMC Metreon Theater (If Beale Street Could Talk)
Distance: 2.5 miles

Stephan James, KiKi Layne, Brian Tyree Henry in If Beale Street Could Talk

As if we film buffs didn't know it, Barry Jenkins is an excellent and important film maker for our era.

The young director/screnwriter (he's only 39) was nominated for numerous awards for his first feature film, Medicine for Melancholy (2008).  Then his next and second film, Moonlight, won the Academy Award for Best Picture (among a host of other awards).  Now here comes his third film, If Beale Street Could Talk adapted and directed by Jenkins from the novel by James Baldwin.  

Taking on the brilliant, incisive, consummately eloquent Baldwin is daunting stuff for any artist in any field.  And Jenkins is totally up to the task.  His If Beale Street Could Talk is graced with  screenplay, cast, cinematography and music (among other attributes) that would surely meet Baldwin's exacting standards because they meet Jenkins'. Perhaps a bit slow and portentous at times, but, so what?; Baldwin himself was sometimes thought to be overbearing or overlong on a point. So Jenkins aligns with the best perhaps honoring Baldwin by adopting his techinque.