The film is divided into eleven chapters, titled "Intuition", "Denial", "Anger", "Apathy", "Emptiness", "Accountability", "Reformation", "Forgiveness", "Resurrection", "Hope", and "Redemption".[2] The film uses poetry and prose written by British-Somali poet Warsan Shire; the poems adapted were "The Unbearable Weight of Staying", "Dear Moon", "How to Wear Your Mother's Lipstick", "Nail Technician as Palm Reader", and "For Women Who Are Difficult to Love".[3][4]
Plot
The film opens with a shot of Beyoncé leaning against a car in a parking garage, her face obscured by her fur coat, before cutting to a desolate Fort Macomb, interspersed with shots of Beyoncé dressed in a black hoodie amongst the reeds and on an empty stage with closed red curtains.
Intuition: On a plantation, scenes of Black women dressed in white standing solemnly are accompanied by a recitation of the first poem, intercut with scenes of Beyoncé standing among reeds in a black hoodie. Beyoncé begins with "Pray You Catch Me" in an old metal bathtub. She emerges from a stage onto a rooftop and leaps off the edge as the song ends, plunging into deep waters.
Denial: Floating underwater, Beyoncé unzips her hoodie, revealing a skin-toned bustier. She swims into a grand submerged bedroom where she comes upon a version of herself resting on a bed. She begins floating and rapidly contorting underwater before emerging from the bedroom and out of a courthouse onto a street in a flowing yellow frilled dress. ("Hold Up").
Beyoncé walks down a busy city street and picks up a baseball bat. She smashes in car windows in rage as onlookers cheer. She strikes a fire hydrant that begins to spray water as children run to play. She breaks a security camera and a storefront window as fire explodes behind her. She menacingly approaches the camera and strikes it, before boarding a monster truck. She uses the monster truck to squash vintage cars and drives off in the distance.
Anger: A high school band accompanied by majorettes parade down a suburban street. In an abandoned parking garage, women dance in unison in long white dresses with their sleeves tied to each other. A lone female drummer plays in solitude as dancers in black begin to approach an SUV. A ring of fire is ignited as "Don't Hurt Yourself" begins.
Beyoncé, hair braided in cornrows, clad in a tight grey tank top and leggings two-piece and draped in a fur coat, sings aggressively as the song is interrupted by Malcolm X's speech "Who Taught You to Hate Yourself?", speaking about how the most discriminated person in America is the black woman. The song resumes with shots of Beyoncé wandering the parking garage in a wedding dress, and sitting in the ring of fire in a red dress. An intertitle declares "GOD IS GOD AND I AM NOT" before she throws her wedding ring at the camera.
Apathy: In a bus, dancers in tribal paint and hair braided in traditional African styles dance in unison as Beyoncé solemnly looks on. Beyoncé is then heard reciting a spoken-word poem about infidelity over the slow melody of a jewelry box playing a theme from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake. In a plantation mansion, Serena Williams wanders the halls and dances in front of Beyoncé as she sings "Sorry". The song ends as Beyoncé sits crosslegged in an empty room dressed in a metallic bra set with her hair braided similarly to Nefertiti's crown. Naked women wander a field as the film fades to black.
Emptiness: "Dear Moon" is recited accompanied by visuals of a plantation mansion bathed in an eerie blood-red glow. The camera slowly zooms in on a windowed door as the thumping beat of "6 Inch" begins, cutting to scenes of Beyoncé riding in a vintage Cadillac at night. The scene cuts to Beyoncé in a room surrounded by other women dressed in black as she swings a lightbulb above her head. The word "LOSS" flashes as the window explodes into fire. Beyoncé begins dancing seductively on a stage behind glass, intercut with scenes of her dressed in a grand white dress lying on a bed before walking down a hallway as it begins to catch aflame. The song ends with Beyoncé and a group of people standing outside the mansion as it burns behind them.
Accountability: Little girls run around and play in a mansion, while a mother and her daughter sit in a bedroom. It cuts into an interview with a man recounting his experience meeting then-President Obama as he drives through a storm. The interview is intercut with super 8 footage of the man with his family in a New Orleans neighborhood. The film cuts back to a tunnel in Fort Macomb as Beyoncé sings "Daddy Lessons" and plays the guitar. The song is interrupted by childhood home videos of Beyoncé and her father Mathew Knowles, as well as videos of him playing with his granddaughter Blue Ivy, before resuming to more footage of life in New Orleans, such as families playing and a jazz funeral.
Reformation: Beyoncé lies in an empty playing field in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome as "Love Drought" begins, cutting to scenes of women dressed in white walking in a line into the ocean, alluding to the mass suicide of captured Africans at Igbo Landing, who chose to drown themselves over a life of slavery.
Forgiveness: In a sparsely furnished house, she plays "Sandcastles" on the piano, intercut with scenes of a child's drawings, wilted flowers, decorative objects, and a fireplace. She sings to Jay-Z as they caress and embrace each other.
Resurrection: A gathering of black women dressed in white dresses in a historic park. "Forward" begins as black women hold up pictures of deceased relatives, including the mothers of black men whose deaths galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement. A Mardi Gras Indian circles around a dining room table shaking a tambourine.
Hope: "Freedom" begins as Beyoncé sings the first verse acapella on an outdoor stage at night. A dancer begins dancing to the instrumental break, intercut with footage of women sitting under a large willow tree and having a communal dinner, and Winnie Harlow wearing a crown of thorns.
Redemption: Scenes of black women caring for themselves in the mansion are shown as Beyoncé recites the last poem. The film cuts to footage of Jay-Z's grandmother, Hattie White, celebrating her 90th birthday as she delivers a speech on overcoming hardship, marking how she was served lemons but made lemonade. Scenes of women on a plantation coming together and tending to a communal garden are seen, as the final song "All Night" begins with Beyoncé now back at Fort Macomb at sunset, wearing an elaborate dress. She sings to joyful footage of families, couples, and home videos of herself with Jay-Z and her own family.
The film concludes with the music video for "Formation".
“Lemonade” draws from the prolific literary, musical, cinematic, and aesthetic sensibilities of black cultural producers to create a rich tapestry of poetic innovation. The audacity of its reach and fierceness of its vision challenges our cultural imagination, while crafting a stunning and sublime masterpiece about the lives of women of color and the bonds of friendship seldom seen or heard in American popular culture.
On review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on 6 reviews.[10] Miriam Bale for Billboard called Lemonade "a revolutionary work of Black feminism" as "a movie made by a black woman, starring Black women, and for Black women", in which Beyoncé is seen gathering, uniting and leading Black women throughout the film.[11] As well as relating the story of Beyoncé's relationship with her husband, Lemonade also chronicles the relationship between Black women and American society. The includes how the United States betrayed and continually mistreats Black women, with society needing to solve its problems in order to enable reformation and the rehabilitation of Black women.[12] As part of reverting the societal oppression and silencing of Black women, Lemonade centralizes the experiences of Black women in a way that is not often seen in the media, and celebrates their achievements despite the adversity they face.[13][14]
In June 2016, Matthew Fulks sued Beyoncé, Sony Music, Columbia Records and Parkwood Entertainment for allegedly lifting nine visual elements of his short film Palinoia for the trailer for Lemonade. The lawsuit was subsequently dismissed by New York federal judge Jed S. Rakoff, siding with the defendant.[15]
