Laxton and Barry Jenkins breakdown the visual language they used to translate Baldwin.

There has never been a movie that looks and feels quite like “If Beale Street Could Talk.” Whereas most films about love are designed to make you desire two characters, kept apart by narrative conflict, to come together; director Barry Jenkins invites his audience into the expansive feeling of love. Jenkins attributes the uniqueness of his film to the fact there has never been a feature-film adaptation in English of author James Baldwin before.
“I think one of the really beautiful things about adapting this work from the page to the screen is intellectually, as you read it, Baldwin can describe how that love feels,” said Jenkins. “The way Baldwin writes, you’ll look at a paragraph and there’s no periods in it. It’s just this running collection of moods and thoughts and feelings, that feel like these waves cascading across one another.”
To find and fine-tune the precise visual grammar of Baldwin’s mastery Jenkins followed a process that served him so well with his previous Oscar-winner. One of the keys to “Moonlight” transcending the limitations of its $1.5 million budget – trading docu-realism for crafted visual poetry of the highest level – was the years the director and his close friend and collaborator, cinematographer James Laxton, spent creating the visual language of their eventual Oscar-winner.

Cinematographer James Laxton and actor Regina King on the set of “If Beale Street Could Talk”
Tatum Mangus / Annapurna Picture
“It’s an incredible luxury in that these are conversations that sort out over months, sometimes years” said Laxton. “For example, we may reference aspects of a certain photographer and having those ideas sink in for a couple weeks. Coming back to having a drink or a dinner with Barry a month or two later, and thinking like, ‘You know that conversation we had back in May, now that’s taking on a new meaning for me and a new idea. What do you think about this kind of perspective?’”
Read More:PODCAST: Barry Jenkins Explains How He Found James Baldwin’s ‘Beale Street’ in a Rapidly Changing Harlem Instead of riffing off their influences (stretching from the films of Wong Kar-wai to Claire Denis’ “Beau Travail”) like they did on “Moonlight,” Jenkins and Laxton needed to thread the needle of how to capture the seemingly contradictory aspects of Baldwin’s greatness: The strength and power of the author’s words, but with the nuance and sensitivity of the story; a sense of period, but that felt modern and as much about today as it did the 1970s; the social protest realism and wrongful imprisonment of African Americans, but a story that dwelled in the beauty and power of Black Love. According to Laxton, the first important decision was the choice of shooting in a large format with the Arri Alexa 65. The 65mm sensor capturing a high resolution image with incredible detail, a wide dynamic range for exposure, and large color spectrum, supplied the intimate film with a bold, strong image Laxton felt matched the way Baldwin’s words could cut so deep. “If Beale Street Could Talk” Tatum Mangus / Annapurna Picture “It wasn’t only just the format itself, but also the lenses we used,” said Laxton, in reference to the Arri DNA primes. “These lenses are again, sort of high resolution lenses with fine detail work. They’re sharp, but they’re also quiet. They have a vintage feeling made from glass of a previous era.” The larger format also means that a 50mm lens has approximately the same field of view as a wider 25mm lens has when shooting on the more common 35mm format. “So you have the same sort of presence of being, of seeing like you’re in a close up of someone,” said Laxton. ”But now you also see much more expression, and much more of the physical performance someone is giving.” For the audience the combination can feel almost off-setting, different than we are used to seeing, which manifests itself beautifully in Jenkins and Laxtons’ unique use of close-up with the characters looking directly into the lens. “Those close-ups are driven by trying to engage the audience into the scene, to really bring them into these spaces that is intended to feel very intimate, and very powerful,” said Laxton. “These are very bold choices and ways in which I think we’re adapting James Baldwin’s work in terms of cinematography.” “If Beale Street Could Talk” screenshot The large format also allowed Laxton to capture and emphasize the deep, saturated color palette in how costume designer Caroline Eselin dressed the characters and production designer Mark Friedberg built into the sets and locations. For Jenkins the direct reference to the Technicolor “kitchen sink” melodramas of Hollywood’s Golden Era, and the films of Douglas Sirk and Vincente Minnelli, was, in part, to work against the elements of “Beale Street” that touch on the well-tread story of African-American pain and imprisonment.