If Beale Street Could Talk is a story about love, plain and simple. It’s a fundamental part of the human experience that has for too long gone ignored in stories about Black Americans. Tish and Fonny are in love, walking hand in hand along the waterfront wearing matching colors in this movie’s opening, and as this story progresses, director Barry Jenkins never relents from that love, even as they and their families face the harshest and ugliest of hardships that pervades America’s social structure. Based on James Baldwin’s novel of the same name, Fonny is in jail, accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and a pregnant Tish and their families work with their meager means to clear his name. Set in 1970s Harlem, everything about this film’s historic production design feels fresh, with pastel colors and complementary colors imbued in the sets and costumes, spreading a sense of romance in every locale these characters find themselves. Tish’s family’s home, for one, is a place where the reds of the doors and walls brew with the greens of the curtains and rugs to create a place of unconditional love and support. It’s in this home that a theatrical encounter between Tish’s and Fonny’s families takes place, one in which even though the characters sit still, a myriad of camera angles changes the dynamic and balance of power with each quarrelsome barb lobbed back and forth; the dialogue is witty and biting, and these characters parry each other in a beat for beat manner one would see on stage. After this scene, though, Beale Street quickly transitions to a more cinematic story filled with Jenkins’s signature style: his camera swings from one person to the next in order to change focus, scenes will fade in and out of transitions for a seamless feel, and there are head-on shots of character’s faces for maximal emotional effect. One scene has Fonny talking to his friend who was just released from jail, and in it, the camera focuses on their faces as they talk and smoke their cigarettes, with their smoke swirling in the natural light that envelops them, and the bloodshot eyes of a haunted past speak more than these characters’ words ever could. Every role in this film, no matter how small, seems innovative and free from stagnation, none more so than Regina King as Tish’s mother, who embodies such strength in love for her daughter, and putting so much pressure on herself to help her daughter leaves her with a vulnerability that will make you tear up. So much more of this film is said in Jenkins’s carefully planned imagery than the script, which makes it a shame that in a movie that’s inventive with its timeline, it feels the need to have narration to carefully explain plot points to the audience. So, too, is it a shame to have a comically racist police officer be the main catalyst for these characters’ issues because while Beale Street certainly isn’t the only movie of 2018 to have bigoted caricatures, it had handled race with such nuance that this stereotype sticks out like a sore thumb. Also of annoyance is that some plot points are quickly left behind and forgotten, and at times, Jenkins’s excessive camera panning can be dizzying and distracting. Nevertheless, what Jenkins has created is an accomplishment, an intimate portrait of systematic oppression, but also of the undeniable love that hatred cannot sink. Perhaps best embodied by Nicholas Britell’s score, one with tracks that covers the wide variety of love--Eros, Philia, and the frisson-inducing Agape--and as three generations of a family breathe life together in one gorgeous frame, If Beale Street Could Talk proves that not only can love conquer all, but that regardless of one's race, heritage, class, and even those who are unjustly imprisoned and kept away from their families, love is still there for them.