There’s a certain irony to the
award being momentarily given
to La La Land, a movie about Jazz
that seemed to fundamentally mis-
understand the essence of Jazz,
given Jenkins’ followup to his Os-
car winner takes its name from the
Memphis street that played a piv-
otal role in the formation of Amer-
ica’s true art form. La La Land’s
misunderstanding of Jazz is best
illustrated in a scene in which Ryan
Gosling’s pianist behaves like a
petulant child when asked to play
Christmas carols at the restaurant
where he’s employed to entertain
diners. Any Jazz musician worth
their salt would jump at the chal-
lenge of stamping their own trade-
mark on a Christmas standard,
and most of the greats recorded at
least one seasonal album during
their careers. Jazz is the art of tak-
ing something that exists and mak-
ing it your own, finding beauty in
the mundane and the miserable.
Fonny (Stephan James), the
young African-American pro-
tagonist of Jenkins’ adaptation
of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel,
Watch the trailer for If Beale Street Could Talk
NJ STAGE - ISSUE 54
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