Only a couple of acclaimed novelist James Baldwin’s novels have been transformed into movies, but writer-director Barry Jenkins has tackled the task, with mixed results.  The story, involving a young urban black couple whose dreams of a good life are shattered when the man is falsely accused of rape, is a powerful one — and the cast delivers powerful performances.  What sinks the drama, for me, is the forced deliberation and pretentiousness of the direction.

Barry Jenkins’ film feels more like it belongs on the stage than on the big screen.  It is filled with long, brooding silences, sequences shot in slow motion, dramatic pauses between sentences and a general sense of its own imperativeness.  Set in 1970s Harlem, the film is — admittedly like many other films — definitely designed to comment upon racial tensions that have not appreciably improved yet today.  This is certainly a project with merit, but Jenkins is so intent on milking every moment of meaning, outrage and tragedy that the story drags on and on interminably.

Oddly, I think, the film’s best scene occurs very early, as Tish (Kiki Layne) reveals that she is pregnant, and her baby father’s family reacts badly to the news.  That scene, which also begins somewhat stiltedly, develops into an explosive, impressively powerful sequence.  It very likely landed Regina King, as Tish’s mother, her well-deserved Academy Award.  The film never again reaches that same fever pitch.

Translating literature into cinema is always difficult; the book is usually better than its subsequent film.  This truism probably applies here, too (I’ve not read the book).  When a popular story is filmed straight-forwardly, it usually produces a decent, often good, occasionally great movie.  But when a director tries to impose his or her “artistic vision,” sometimes that vision interferes with or overwhelms the elements that make it so stirring in the first place.  That’s the sad case here.  ☆ ☆.  14 March 2019.