“Perhaps the biggest injustice of last week’s Oscar telecast wasn’t that Green Book, a movie where a walking Italian stereotype teaches an African-American gent how to eat fried chicken, won Best Picture over BlacKkKlansman and Black Panther, movies directed by African-American filmmakers that handled race and racism in a far more insightful, challenging, entertaining manner. (Don’t get me wrong — seeing Driving Miss Daisy 2.0 win was still fucked up.) It was that If Beale Street Could Talk, the latest from writer/director Barry Jenkins, wasn’t even in the running. (At least the movie received several honors at the Film Independent Spirit Awards the day before, including Best Director and Best Feature.)
“The movie was nominated for three well-deserved awards — Best Adapted Screenplay (the movie is based on James Baldwin’s 1974 novel), Best Original Score and Best Supporting Actress, which Regina King thankfully snagged. I guess Academy voters are still twitchy and shellshocked from the last time a Barry Jenkins movie won Best Picture. It’s a shame; I found Beale to be Jenkins’s finest work so far.
“Apart from being an immaculate portrait of an African-American couple in love (Stephan James and Kiki Layne killed it as the young lovers), it was a multi-layered view of how African-Americans survive in America. Like nearly every movie that was made by a person of color last year (and that includes Sorry to Bother You, Widows and the vastly underrated comedy Blindspotting), Beale astutely addressed how Black men are still seen as unfortunate targets in this systemically oppressive society. Even though James and Layne’s characters are beautifully in love — they got a baby on the way and everything — can it still survive once he gets wrongly charged for rape?
“The movie is a wonder. Everything — the cast, the script, the cinematography, the score — is marvelously done. Now that all this Oscars bullshit is done, hopefully people will watch this film and start asking why the hell this didn’t get all the gotdamn Oscars!” ~ Craig D. Lindsey
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