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After Barry Jenkins’s “Moonlight” won three Oscars in 2017, including Best Picture, the writer and director could presumably do whatever he wanted next. He’s followed up his life-changing success with “If Beale Street Could Talk,” an adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel about Tish, a 19-year-old woman in Harlem, and her boyfriend, Fonny, imprisoned for a violent crime he didn’t commit.
“They almost feel like they went hand in hand, like they were companion pieces in a certain way; they both deal with these dynamics of black family life,” Mr. Jenkins says of “Moonlight” and “Beale Street” on this special episode of the Book Review’s podcast. “So much happened, there was such good fortune with ‘Moonlight,’ that I felt like, if I was going to cash in my capital, why not cash it in to bring my favorite author to the screen in a way that I felt like I could have a lot of say over, and in a way…
