Love in the time of racism

In If Beale Street Could Talk, director Barry Jenkins adapts a James Baldwin novel that pits the innocence of lovers against soul-crushing racism.

If you stop to think about it, you might be hard-pressed to come up with a long list of movies that portray love with tenderness, soul-deep commitment, and true devotion.

Among other things, a tender depiction of such a love is precisely what distinguishes If Beale Street Could Talk from normal Hollywood fare. director Barry Jenkins' follow-up to his Oscar-winning Moonlight, has moments that are illuminated by the characters love for each other and by Jenkins' love for them.

But if Beale Street -- set in New York during the '70s -- only dealt with love, it would not be doing justice to the 1974 James Baldwin novel of the same name. If Beale Street Could Talk also assays the impact of racism on the innocence of two lovers who have known they should be together since childhood.

Tender feelings collide with harsh realities that test the devotion of a young man and woman who want little more than to live, raise a family and continue loving each other.

The casting of the couple obviously becomes crucial in a movie such as Beale Street and Jenkins' has done well. Stephan James portrays Alonzo, a.k.a. "Fonny," a 22-year-old with ambitions to make sculptures from wood. KiKi Layne portrays Tish, Fonny's 19-year-old fiancee and also the story's narrator.

Jenkins invites us to fall in love with this sweet couple and we do, but he also plans to break our hearts. Tish is pregnant and it's entirely possible that Fonny will be in jail when his child is born.

Set up by a racist cop (Ed Skrein), Fonny faces a false rape charge. Tish fights to clear his name. She knows that the Puerto Rican woman who identified Fonny in a line-up did so in a confused panic. Fonny wasn't even in the vicinity of the crime.

The movie contextualizes the relationship between Fonny and Tish by bringing their respective families into focus as it shifts between the present with Fonny awaiting trial in jail and the past in which Fonny and Tish developed their relationship.

Fonny's mother (Regina King) supports her pregnant daughter; her father (Colman Domingo) also makes his love for Tish clear; he understands that he's going to have to get involved with some hustling to raise money for Fonny's defense.

In an early scene, the two families meet and sparks fly. Fonny's religious mother (Aunjanue Ellis,) disdains Tish and treats her as a wanton woman who's ruining her son's life. Fonny's father (Michael Beach) takes a different view. He hauls off and belts his wife in the kisser, a slap that turns a comic scene into something harsh and harrowing.

Perhaps Baldwin was trying to highlight poles of belief within the black community: staunchly religious conservatism vs. love-infused tolerance, the latter born of an understanding about what's needed to carry on.

Brian Tyree Henry turns up as an old friend of Fonny's who has just been released from jail and who can't shake the emotional damage of incarceration. He didn't belong in jail any more than Fonny will.

Jenkins respectfully extends scenes to allow the actors to live within them, but some of them go on too long and you begin to feel the movie's length.

Maybe it doesn't matter because If Beale Street Could Talk doesn't feel rooted in a specific time and place as much as it feels like an extension of imagination lodged in an essential moment -- one built around a deep understanding of harsh American realities and an unconquerable capacity for hope and survival.

If Beale Street Could Talk poses a heartfelt and heartbreaking question: Why must two lovers pit their happiness against a world that doesn't want to give them a chance? That sounds like the trailer for a romance novel, but -- in this case -- it's an indictment of racism that tries to crush the sweetness out of everyday life.

'Race,' the Jesse Owens story

Not a bad movie, but the subject deserved a better one.

Despite a strong performance from Stephan James as Jesse Owens, Race proves an only passable account of the track star's life -- from Owens' victories as a student athlete at Ohio State to his stunning triumphs at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

A sprinter and long jumper by trade, Owens won four gold medals in Berlin, a feat that was widely celebrated as a slap in the face to Hitler and his Nazi minions, racists who hoped to use the games as a demonstration of unbeatable Aryan superiority.

Director Stephen Hopkins' dutifully tells Owens' story -- or at least parts of it -- but he's so busy recounting events that he doesn't get deep enough into anything.

None of this is to say that Race, with its double-edged title, is an act hagiography.

Owens is shown making mistakes, notably an affair he had while he was engaged. And some of the movie's supporting players are also depicted as flawed.

Avery Brundage (Jeremy Irons), an influential member of the International Olympic Committee in 1936 and later its head, was a construction mogul whose dealings with the Nazi government sparked controversy. Brundage wouldn't listen to progressive voices who insisted that this particular Olympics should be boycotted.

The movie also shows that Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis), Owens' tough-love coach at Ohio State, wrestles with alcohol problems, and, at times, seems insensitive to Owens' problems.

The movie takes a pretty positive view of Leni Riefenstahl (Carice van Houtem), the filmmaker whose Olympia set new standards for sports photography. Of course, Riefenstahl also made Triumph of the Will, a propaganda documentary and near exaltation that chronicled the massive 1934 Nazi rally in Nuremberg.

Here, Riefenstahl is portrayed as a rebellious spirit, defying Joseph Goebbels (Barnaby Metschurat) so that she could make her own film rather than the one that the propaganda minister wished to see.

Those who know little or nothing about Owens' life can view Race as a learning experience, but even the racial barriers in a script from Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse can feel as if they're being played by-the-numbers, including the virulent racism Owens faced at Ohio State, where he broke three world records at a now legendary 1935 Big Ten meet in Michigan.

A recent New York Times story briefly describes Owens life after the Olympics. He made an unsuccessful foray into Hollywood, dabbled in vaudeville, and, at one point, lost his amateur status, the article notes.

Desperate to support his family, he toiled at gas stations, and performed stunts in which he ran against race horses.

American racism kept Owens from capitalizing on his victories in Berlin. His triumphs abroad, presented here with the expected celebratory quality, didn't do much to change the racial climate at home, something the movie could (and should) have done more to dramatize.

Odd isn't it? When it comes to fictionalized sports movies Hollywood has no trouble serving up inspiration, but when it latches on to a historically important story, it can't get beyond an effort we'll call "adequate," and perhaps instructional for those unfamiliar with Owens' life.

Given all its volatile and exhilarating ingredients, it's disappointing that Race doesn't have greater impact.