Nylah Mitchell/ Fourth Estate

Local library partners with Mason libraries for a screening of Academy Award-nominated film, “If Beale Street Could Talk“

BY NYLAH MITCHELL, STAFF WRITER

Early in the fall 2024 semester, The City of Fairfax Regional Library and Mason University Libraries co-hosted a screening of the film “If Beale Street Could Talk” (2018), followed by a Q&A discussion with a guest panel moderated by Adult Services Outreach Coordinator William Osborne. The panelists were Mason Professor Helon Habila, Mason film student Erika Timmons and Mason civil engineering student Shane Stevenson.  

The screening was part of Fairfax County Public Library’s annual event series, All Fairfax Reads. This year’s event focused on civil rights activist and world-renowned writer James Baldwin. 

The film, directed by Barry Jenkins, is a screenplay adaptation of Baldwin’s 1974 novel, “If Beale Street Could Talk.” The novel and film examines a young Black couple, Tish and Fonny, in Harlem, New York City. Their relationship is tested when Fonny is falsely arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman. Jenkins and Baldwin delve into how Black Americans incarcerated within the criminal justice system face unprecedented levels of discrimination and racism. 

Jenkins dramatizes the film from Tish’s point of view as she tells the story of Fonny and his end road in prison. The cinematography and the mid-century jazz score romanticize the life shared between Tish and Fonny, disrupted when a revenge-harboring street cop arrests Fonny for a crime he didn’t commit. The film uncovers the never-ending cycle of over-policing in Black neighborhoods, leading to mass incarceration and delayed justice within the system. 

To the panelists, it’s a story that still resonates today. 

“A lot of these questions still go unanswered so our solution for a lot of these things still hold so much trauma that’s being unpacked,” Timmons said. 

“It’s a love story. For me, that’s one of the things that will never age,” Habila said. “The story of young love in a harsh world is always going to be relevant because we understand it.”

The discussion covered another theme shown throughout the film: the injustice of the prison-industrial complex, specifically its treatment of Black Americans. The prison-industrial complex refers to the relation between corporations and criminal institutions that privatize prisons for profit and political influence. 

What does the film and James Baldwin himself have to say about [the prison industrial complex]? 

Habila: James Baldwin is always on point in his books and he touches the pulse of what’s important in the community… Whether it’s prison, it’s gay love and all these things. He’s never afraid of speaking up.

Stevenson: I don’t think that [Baldwin] feels like there’s anything in place for us. For even just people like us to really change what’s set in place in the system. In the prison-industrial complex, it’s not so much that ‘it’s just taking people and it’s not going to change,’ it’s also saying that in this change, in this stagnation of the rules, it is still drilling deep in these communities and effectively working hard against it.

Does the romanticization of the cinematography in the film still drive home Baldwin’s point on being Black in America? 

Habila: I think it does. Love and romance are metaphors here used to represent innocence and beauty and fragility and also resilience. The beautiful cinematography and the concept of artistic imagination and dreaming are all used to show the need for dreaming of a better tomorrow, at least with justice and equality.

Timmons: As much as I may respect and find this cinematic world fluid and beautiful, it fails at showing the voyeur the same world created by Baldwin in the novel, which is more in tune with the struggles of Black people as we face down the systemic caste and racist police and judicial systems in this country.

What are the biggest things viewers of If Beale Street Could Talk can take away with them?

Habila: The carceral system is as virulent as ever, racism is alive and thriving, police injustice is also doing quite well. But at the heart of it, ‘If Beale Street Could Talk; is a love story, albeit love in a very challenging milieu, that is a positive.

Timmons: Above all the concepts and harsh reality to be observed in this film, I hope that people to breathe in the love story that leads this story. Two young lovers forced to fight a society poised to harm them at every turn, determined to blossom despite the struggles they are forced to face. That love, above all other emotions, is the only one that can save society.

Learn more about the upcoming All Fairfax Reads events here.