If Beale Street Could Talk

And Prison Visitation

I will admit that, in regards to some movies, because of what they tackle I have the feeling that my words won’t do. And I can’t properly articulate the emotions I have surrounding this James Baldwin adaptation, which Barry Jenkins beautifully brought to the screen in 2018. I can tell you that I hope you’ve already seen the picture, and if not, I do think it falls on all of us to ensure this is a film added to the canon.

Though the tale is told with a certain patient elegance, it is fairly straightforward. Tish and Fonny (Kiki Layne, Stephan James) are the lovers at the center of the narrative. It is 1970’s New York, and they have difficulty as a Black couple finding proper accommodations. You’ll recall this was only fifty years ago when several landlords would not rent to African Americans. One of these landlords ended up becoming President very recently by the way. This is not said enough.

Often, I feel my stomach churn at the thought of cinematic Black miserablism. There are so many movies that seem dedicated to the suffering of Black characters during less-informed (but still familiar) times. But this is a movie filled with moments of considerable joy. Tish and Fonny share a genuine love, and both actors are such beautiful young people. They glow in each others’ direction – it is as if every other cast member is acting in the presence of a lighthouse. The film early on establishes the complications of their lifestyle (much of which would be shared by any young person searching for housing during that era) but it never forgets the warmth between them.

Eventually, their shared life is upended by a phony murder accusation that lands Fonny in prison. Because the movie’s chronology is fractured, this comes considerably after we meet Fonny’s friend, Daniel (Brian Tyree Henry), who has a joyful chance reunion with Fonny only to reveal he had been incarcerated for the last two years. Daniel too lacks the words to express what he experienced – when he goes from jovial to suddenly remembering when he was away, it’s as if a cloud emerges over his head. He emphasizes that they can do “anything” to you in there, which is a very basic insight, but Henry’s line delivery emphasizes the world that lives inside that comment. Indeed they can. You are furniture for the authorities to move as they see fit. When you go to prison, one of the first things you do is strip down and spread your bottom for a stranger, only for him to see if you have contraband located deep inside you. They’re checking the couch, under the seats, for treats. You mean nothing in that moment, and you never mean anything more as your sentence continues. 

The few cops we see in the film are pretty distinctly racist, in service of a larger system, where they need to create the perception of justice – so what if that means compromised justice? Yes, the system is racist, it’s all sorts of “cists”, it’s corrupt. But largely, at the end of the day, these men want to finish the day and leave the office, whatever that office is. They’ll gladly cut corners to do this. This approach is universal, but it is dehumanizing. A witness is found to implicate Fonny in the killings, even though it is logistically clear that he was not present. And that witness, who wasn’t present, was forced into a confession. Because if there’s a confession, everyone can go home tonight. Everyone except for Fonny. Yes, this is an anti-cop and anti-incarceration movie. If you can’t deal with this, I’m afraid you’re not one of the big boys or big girls.

The film’s most devastating scenes involve Tish meeting Fonny during visits. In holding, they meet behind glass, a prison movie staple that they typically never get right. The glass is always clean, everyone is always acting orderly, and you may be speaking through a phone. The phone is present here, and many institutions have it, but in my experiences, there were no phones. You were merely speaking up against the glass, sometimes leaning in so your visitor could hear you through the small ventilation holes in the wall. But I also recall that, as in this movie, the glass is dirty, smudged, decorated by the fingerprints of regret and loss. Typically, if you were having an orderly conversation, the person next to you was cursing, yelling at the glass, making wild gesticulations. Sometimes, that person was you.

Later, as in the movie, visits are contact visits, with caveats. But if you’re visiting in real life, you’d better have a chunkful of change. The prisons make quite a bit of money from visitors, because visitors will try to feed the prisoners they visit. The crap in a visiting area is vending machine junk, sometimes candy and soda, and sometimes something more substantial, like a bagged burger that requires heating in a nearby microwave. It’s going to seem like junk to anyone visiting a prisoner, but more often than not, we do not have access to that food on the inside (and if we do it’s considerably more expensive). The movie is a period piece, but when I saw these scenes, I realized how little has changed about the “visiting room” over the years. It’s still the same: the same isolation, the same dehumanization. We’ve been doing prison for a long time in America, and it’s a shock to see how so few traditions have changed.