Alternate Best Supporting Actor 2018: Brian Tyree Henry in If Beale Street Could Talk

Brian Tyree Henry did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Daniel Carty in If Beale Street Could Talk.

If Beale Street Could Talk follows two African American lovers as they try to stay together amidst much tribulation during the 1970's in New York City.

2018 was a banner year for Brian Tyree Henry appearing in six different films throughout the year. Several showing very different sides of his talents from his colorful vocal performance in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as a loving if somewhat goofy cop and father, to his menacing work in Widows as a vicious gangster turned wannabe politician vying for legitimacy, but for me his most striking work was found in the lyrical If Beale Street Could Talk. Henry's role is rather small here appearing in only one major scene with some brief work otherwise, but it is the sort of part that a talented performer can make a lasting impression. Now in some sense his character seems minor, just a random friend of our lead Fonnie (Stephan James), who plot wise only important in that he is alibi for Fonnie after he's been accused of rape, although even there Daniel's testimony matters little in front of the prejudiced legal process. The film though is more inclined towards the moments of life than its plot, as Daniel appearance is to focus on this interaction between two old friends. Henry in his few minutes of screentime opens up with such a vibrant turn opening up initially as we see the glimmers of the friendship between Fonnie and Daniel. Henry and James as terrific together in that their interactions share such a naturalistic warmth. The years together in the past just is exuded in their ease as they speak to one another. For me this is the very best scene of the film, particularly as the dialogue scenes, actually because the two create such a lived in quality in the interactions. There film is always trying to find this beauty in the mundane in a way, and here that works as their is such a warmth in every casual interaction. I could've spent almost a whole just seeing the two talk, as I felt the scene managed to move past the idea of these people, something the film occasionally struggles with for me, and wholly just shows us people. Henry is an essential facet of this as his approach to James Baldwin's prose is the most natural. He does not try to oversell its "grandeur" but rather grants a grounded weight. This becomes most evident when Daniel speaks of his incarceration. Henry is outstanding in this moment as he captures in his haunted eyes the real horrors of his situation. In just a few seconds Henry realizes this intensity of his unease, and a bitterness of his state. There is more in his exact delivery that is of this pain he honestly can't speak of in his treatment, as Henry conveys how palatable the pain is in his heart even as he only alludes to what happened to him. When he compares his white captors to Satan, it doesn't feel poetic, but rather his delivery conveys this harrowing anxiety within him that will never leave him. Henry makes this whole segue this powerful descent into the post traumatic stress, that without showing it, reveals this systematic monster through his performance. Henry is only in the film for a few minutes, yet h in that time grants a such a vivid portrait of this man that feels as though he exists far beyond those confines while also creating the film's most remarkable scene.