Anna: Book Adaptations and If Beale Street Could Talk

If Beale Street Could Talk, written by James Baldwin and published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Relating back to our class discussion about book adaptations, my roommate and I saw Barry Jenkin's new movie If Beale Street Could Talk, adapted from James Baldwin's novel of the same name. Neither of us had read the book, but went into the theater with high expectations, based on our enjoyment of Jenkin's last movie Moonlight, also adapted from a written work.

We emerged from the movie feeling a bit duped. The visuals of the film were phenomenal, and the story that the movie works to tell is important and has the chance to be quite hard-hitting, but we both felt that the dialogue and narrative of the film fell flat, and that conflicts between characters went underdeveloped and didn't leave the impact that they could have. The movie was steeped in emotion, intimacy, and tension, but none of that potential energy amounted to anything substantial in the plot. It left something to be desired, and we both agreed that the "something" we were looking for might have only been found in the novel and couldn't have been translated for the screen.

I think part of this missing thing is a level of articulation of the inner thoughts of the main character, Tish. As the narrator of the movie, Tish's voice introduces us to the conflict of the film and acts as a guide to provide context and explain jumps in time. However, Tish's voice is never used to articulate her feelings of conflict, elation, or devastation. This is to be expected, since watching a movie that is mostly narration would be torture, but the rest of the movie didn't rise to the responsibility of conveying the development of Tish and the other characters. The novel, on the other hand, is able to take as much time as it needs developing the world it's creating, and Tish, as the narrator of the novel as well, has a chance to explain her story and what she is feeling in a much more developed way. The story is so emotionally driven that adapting it into a film stripped it of what it could convey.

This disappointment reminded me of our discussion of Call Me By Your Name, which I actually just finished reading after watching the movie during winter break. Initially, I thought the movie was fine and was an interesting story to watch unfold, but after reading the novel, I'm mad about what the filmmakers left out, and I feel that, ultimately, they failed the book. The novel is narrated by Elio, the young protagonist of the novel, and through his narration you learn every. single. detail of what this young man is feeling and thinking about his developing relationship with Oliver. It provides a level of context and intimacy with the story that the movie just can't communicate. The relationship between the two men in the movie versus in the novel are too totally different representations. They can still both be valued, but it almost seems unfair to call one an adaptation of the other.

Looking at both of these movies, it makes me wonder if novels like these, that deal mostly with an emotional stream of consciousness from the narrator, can be successfully turned into films. Are there any examples of such adaptations out there?