Moonlight
Directed by Barry Jenkins
Starring Trevante Rhodes, Andre Holland, Janelle Monae, Jharrel Jerome, Naomie Harris, Ashton Sanders, Mahershala Ali, Alex Hibbert
Reviewed by Michael Dalton
[rating: 5/5]
Barry Jenkins’s new film Moonlight about a boy’s evolution to manhood is the most stirring, humane experience you’ll have in a cinema this year. There are moments where it grows so personal and so intimate you may hold your breath out of fear that Jenkins won’t be able to sustain it. Yet he does. He gives the film a rhythm all it’s own. He grants it empathy. Known as various names throughout the film, the hero Chiron lives daily with fear in his heart and a yearning to understand himself and how he fits in with the world around him. He remains introverted as a teenager, gentle, vulnerable, and very much in love with a boy at school, and as a man, well, the clincher is who he becomes. The fact however that no white people play any role here doesn’t necessarily define Moonlight as a black film. Nor does the fact that the lead character is gay define it as a queer film. Its set in a Miami housing project, but Jenkins only uses the environment and the gay element as a backdrop to toughen the story and heighten the sensations and that’s what we yearn to see happen here: for the back to drop away and allow the hero a chance to live and love. It’s a film so in touch emotionally it’s staggering.
The film is split into three chapters. Part One is titled Little and when we first see him he’s being chased by trio of bullies. He’s rescued by the neighbourhood drug dealer Juan who takes him home to his girlfriend Teresa. Too nervous to meet their gaze, Little’s eyes are cast down as he gorges on the food they place before him. Too young to fully understand his mother’s drug habits, he retreats from her and keeps returning to Juan’s home, where during one visit, he asks him what a faggot is. He has a friend at school called Kevin who genuinely likes him and who Little feels strongly about. Part Two is titled Chiron. Now tall, lonely, reedy, and still the target of bullies, he shares a moment of intimacy with Kevin, his perceptions of his mother are more painfully acute, and he’s maintained a friendship with Teresa. The final chapter is called Black, Kevin’s affectionate nickname for Chiron. Black is now strong, muscular, and a drug dealer with gold grilles on his teeth (he bears a resemblance to hip hop star 50 Cent). He may carry a gun but he lives quietly, drives a car like Juan’s and just as Juan did, keeps a gold crown perched on the dashboard.
The hook of Moonlight is the questions it poses without feeling the need to answer them. How strong, determined, masculine, and forthright do you have to be to survive? While the central character is gay, he’s not weak but gentle (a common misconception). In one mercifully brief scene, he’s beaten but following the beating, he snaps to attention and declares a space. It’s a telling scene. Ordinarily we’d cheer at a bully getting his comeuppance but instead we cheer for Chiron and his emerging strength. It is only when we reach the film’s heartbreaking conclusion, we realise who this man is. The plot, such as it is, is thin. It is, at its core, about the experience of life (the poster’s tagline reads “This is the Story of A Lifetime”) and its defining moment.
Adapted by Jenkins from Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, Jenkins manages a perfect balance of respect and empathy without making it self-conscious. You feel for these people, all of them. Whether its Chiron himself developing, for the most part, outside of himself, Juan who moves with purpose and knows one false move could end his life, Teresa who looks on Little as if she were his guardian angel, and Kevin, the most enigmatic of characters, whose actions maintain our curiosity. Jenkins, working with an incredible cast (its impossible to single anybody out), demonstrates incredible control with the sensitive material. Its sensual, it has a charge, and it’s impossible to stand back and just look. Such is Jenkins’s style, all rich colours and swinging camerawork, it’s a story that urges you to not only look closely but to get close, as close as you can. Intimacy runs through the frames, in every furtive glance, in every word. Make no mistake, Moonlight has a rough exterior, but underneath, its heartbeat is strong and steady. You’ll never forget it.
