Tag: Memory

It’s a historical drama, one that’s set around the time of the novel’s composition, but it’s equally a story about today, a movie that relies on its historical context to bring to the fore not the incidental differences but the disturbing similarities connecting those supposedly bygone days to the moment at hand. Like Baldwin’s novel, Jenkins’s film is dramatized from Tish’s point of view and in her voice. The film’s deftly and frankly complex, interwoven time structure (amplified all the more by the intricately pleated editing) thrusts the past and the present into the same plane of thought and evokes, above all, the politics of memory—the sense that memory is constitutive of history, of the history that may not be written but is nonetheless ferociously at work in the lives of people who are themselves largely left out of the official record. Tish and Fonny’s love story is rapturous and tender, a secular-holy and sweetly sexual exaltation that rises to a higher dimension with the creation of a new life: Tish’s pregnancy, which she has to announce to Fonny through the glass and over the phone of a prison visiting room. That’s where they speak, near the beginning of the film—immediately after the rhapsodic opening, of the two lovers exchanging virtual vows in the riverside glory of the New York cityscape. The young couple’s warmth and intimacy (emphasized in James Laxton’s burnished cinematography, which glows and gleams with touches of light) is a crucial counterpart to the violence at the heart of the action. The charge is brought by a Puerto Rican woman named Victoria Rogers (Emily Rios), who picked Fonny from a police lineup in which he was the only black man. Daniel is in the film only briefly, but his presence is at its very core: visiting Fonny in the Bank Street apartment, he talks of the cruel pressure by police at the time of his arrest, by the prosecution when pressing charges, by the system at large when he was forced into a plea deal for a crime that he, too, didn’t commit. The air of urgency to “If Beale Street Could Talk” arises also from Jenkins’s own success, with “Moonlight,” a film of a similar emotional intimacy and immediacy, but one in which the societal pressures and political offenses endured by its characters are, though dramatized, hardly discussed. With “If Beale Street Could Talk,” Jenkins makes explicit what’s present and clear but more implicit in the earlier film: the inseparability, in the lives of black Americans, of personal experience and political consciousness.

The government announced on Sunday an increase in funding for brain cancer research in tribute to Jowell, who was recently called “an inspiration” for her speeches after being diagnosed. We would like to hear from readers whose lives she touched through her career or personal life, and to highlight some of your memories as part of our coverage. Share your tributes and memories Did you meet Jowell in a personal or professional capacity? How did she affect your life or that of your family or community? Share your thoughts and memories using our form below and we’ll publish a selection of your contributions. Tell us a little about yourself – age, what you do, etc* What is your favourite personal memory of Tessa Jowell or her work? If you met Jowell, tell us what happened, and when If you have a picture that helps tell your story, you can upload it here File uploads may not work on some mobile devices. * Email* One of our journalists may contact you to discuss your story Can we publish your response? * Yes Yes, but please keep me anonymous No Enter your save and resume password Cancel Confirm If you’re having trouble using the form, click here. Read terms of service here.