'If Beale Street Could Talk' review: Can love survive the hate a society gives its own people?
by Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
Dec 21, 2018
3 minutes
The first thing we see in "If Beale Street Could Talk" emerges as text on a black screen, a quotation from author James Baldwin. "Beale Street," he wrote, "is a street in New Orleans, where my father, where Louis Armstrong and the jazz were born. Every black person born in American was born on Beale Street, whether in Jackson, Mississippi, or in Harlem, New York. Beale Street is our legacy."
The street, the metaphor, is wide enough to accommodate all sorts of travelers. With his seriously gorgeous adaptation of the 1974
You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.
Start your free 30 days