Directed by: Barry Jenkins
Written by: Barry Jenkins, Tarell Alvin McCraney
Starring: Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, Trevante Rhodes. Mahershala Ali
Usually when I leave a cinema I like to talk about the film right away, highlight the moments that I loved or hated, and really get in to the meat of the discussion. I love talking about movies, it's what I do.
This film left me quiet and disquieted.
I've seen films that have left me with this hollow sensation before; the sense that what I had just experienced was disturbingly true to life. Despite the film's extremely specific character focus, there's an incredible connection that can be drawn to the story because of what this film is and what this film is about.
*Warning: Spoilers Ahead*
Moonlight focuses on three stages in the life of Chiron; the first stage, Little, focuses on his time as a child. Chiron is dubbed 'Little' for his shy persona and small size, he's often bullied, which isn't helped by an emotionally abusive mother, Paula. Chiron's places of solace are in his friend Kevin, and Juan and Teresa, a drug dealer and his girlfriend, who take Chiron in to their home and feed him, after finding Chiron hiding in a dope house.
The second stage, Chiron, follows Chiron in his last year of high school. Here we see the taciturn Chiron being constantly bullied by another student. Terrel, and coming to terms with his sexuality as he has his first encounter with Kevin.
The third stage, Black follows Chiron as an adult, now a drug dealer after leaving juvie, and a completely different person, now hugely muscular and much more talkative. This sees Chiron come to see his mother because she wants to reconcile, and return to Kevin after years of not talking.
Each of these sequences is a story to behold all on its own. The stages are very deliberately set up in a traditional three-act structure, but each act on its own it just laden with themes and meaning to consider, with their own individual emotional climaxes that shape the life of Chiron.
Little was the most affecting of the three for me. Juan is hardly the person that you'd normally associate with the idea of a father figure, but this drug dealer gives young Chiron a home, feeds him, gives him a place to stay, teaches him to swim, and passes wisdom on to him. What I love about this film is that it doesn't try to force moral opinions of wrong or right, it simply presents these events as they are, and shows the complicated nature of them, an unavoidable sea of grey. Juan is a drug dealer, but Juan is also not emotionally abusive and tries to help Chiron find his identity. It's only more complicated from there as Juan finds out that he deals, albeit indirectly, to Paula. We don't see easy resolutions, either; Juan doesn't immediately give up his ways and become a man of the cloth or something ridiculous, and Paula doesn't just up and stop her crack habit. There's no happy resolution here, and Little comes to an emotional climax as Chiron sits at Juan's table, and first asks Juan what a 'faggot' is and why the other kids call him one, before asking if Juan is a drug dealer. There's so much to be said about what happens in this scene that I'm not sure where to even begin, but the fact that the scene ends with Chiron leaving and Juan hanging his head in shame is powerful. Juan is a father figure who has taken this boy in to try and help raise him, he's discovered that he has contributed so fundamentally to the problem, and he won't stop. The whole scene is beautifully acted as well; particularly Ali as Juan, who clearly expresses the complexity of the scene. Little nods, meaning in exchanged looks, the way he pauses before answering, in that moment, Ali has truly become Juan, and everything shared between Ali, Hibbert as Little, and Janelle Monae as Teresa is true and believable in a way that's rare to see.
Before I move on to Chiron, I want to briefly emphasise this film's use of sound, or rather, lack thereof. It's common in realistic filmmaking to avoid sound that isn't diagetic, and Moonlight is no exception. This isn't a film that requires a piano or some violins to tell you how to feel, the film shows itself and asks you to interpret how you feel about it. The film is given meaning through what we can see rather than what we can hear.
Chiron is sad and twisted. Juan is dead, and it's barely mentioned. The man who had such a significant effect on Chiron as a child is now dead as Chiron struggles as a teenager. The film doesn't dwell on his death, only offering a line to express that he is, and the effect is incredible, capturing both why death is meaningful in narrative and why death is meaningful in real life. In narrative, Juan was once a driving force in the story of Chiron's life and no longer is, and the only thing that remains is the effect that had/can still have on remaining characters; in reality, even a close friend or family member will hold a place in our lives after their death, but it isn't something that everyone talks about all the time every day. There's this theme of avoiding the past that's started with this revelation, and it continues well in to Black, but more on that later. Chiron's sexual realisation is powerful because of who draws it out; Kevin was the only boy close to Chiron when they were children, even giving him a different nickname, 'Black', and now he's here again, helping Chiron find out a little more about who he is. But as poignant a scene this is (there's no gratuity about it; is you didn't know it was happening, you wouldn't even realise), it's what comes next that left a pit in my stomach. Terrel's bullying of Chiron reaches it zenith when Terrel coerces Kevin in to beating Chiron. Just the evening before, Kevin was the closest Chiron had ever been to another person, and now that man was beating him. It's a hard-hitting scene, and seems like a comment on the fusion of sex and violence in culture. The film doesn't halt its onslaught or tough scenes, either; Chiron storms back in to school with a vengeance, and smashes a chair over Terrel's back, knocking him unconscious. It's as fast as it is shocking, but instead of revelling in this moment that should be cathartic for Chiron, the film instantly shows Chiron being sent to juvie for nearly killing a fellow student. This movie doesn't offer up a satisfying vengeance, it shows us what happens in reality if you beat someone over the head with a chair. Scenes like this are so effective and hammer home the uneasy feeling the film is trying to give you, showing you the struggles without sugarcoating them or offering a way out.
Black is the closest this film gets to achieving some kind of closure. Chiron has become everything that he wasn't, a muscular, street-talking drug dealing thug, but we learn with time that this is a mirage Chiron has put in place to hide his perceived weaknesses. His talk with his mother is a hopeful one; she's now clean and helping others at a rehab centre, and while he at first spurns her apologies with the words he's repeated since childhood (I hate you), he eventually breaks down and forgives her. Life doesn't magically get better for the two of them from here, and it's important that this film treats this moment as barely the start of something. Chiron's reunion with Kevin is much heavier, and a shadow of what you wish it could be after all the pain Chiron has been through. The final emotional climax does arrive, however, as Chiron finally lets his masquerade fall and reveals his true self to Kevin in a single utterance, "you were the only one". It's not some sweet declaration of love, it's a sombre cry for help from a man who has suffered from the way his life has shaped him. The final embrace between Kevin and Chiron didn't look of romance but of understanding; Kevin understands his place in the shaping of Chiron's life, and Chiron has his first moment of real openness in his life. Things aren't alright, but this is a start. This film never shies away from the more difficult moments, and the finale in Black is no exception. As the film came to a close, I knew the filmmakers wanted me to feel the uncertainty of the characters, and I most certainly felt as they did about the whole depressing yet hopeful situation.
This film's narrative is unique and challenging, but there's also so much to talk about this film at the visual level, because the film goes a long way to include little details that repeat and solidify imagery in our mind. One of my favourite examples of this happens across all three acts. In Little, Juan wears an ear stud in his right ear; in Chiron, Kevin wears on in his left; in Black, Chiron wears a stud in each ear, a small symbol to reinforce the idea that Juan and Kevin have played such a heavy part in Chiron's identity. It's the little things like this that elevates the film above so many others that I've seen, such as the use of ice water in Chiron to help heal Chiron's wounds is reflected in Black when Chiron uses ice water as he feels his tough facade breaking. This film uses visual language to reinforce the narrative so effectively, the filmmakers have well and truly achieved what it appears they set out to do, presenting a film that really confronts you about the effect people have on each other.
This review isn't anywhere near as complete as I would like it, but it's the best I can really do after one viewing.
*Edit: I re-watched it tonight (25/02/2017) with some friends, and I realised immediately that I made a mistake, in that Juan wears a stud in both ears, not just his right. This furthers Chiron's amplified emulation of Juan in Black, so it's still a nice detail, but not for how I miread it initially.
While I'm here, I just want to quickly talk about the film, why it's the best of 2016, and therefore why I think it should win over the likely choice La La Land. I absolutely love both films, but each is an entirely different experience, and they left me with a whole different set of thoughts and emotions. When I came out of La La Land, I had a strong sense of feeling like I'd seen something drawn from an idealistic past and painted with realistic modern colours. It was a sobering take on films from another age, and imitated so well that the thought that held in my mind was "I wish they still made movies like this". In the case of Moonlight, the thought was more along the lines of "I have never seen a movie like this before". The first time I watched Moonlight was like the first time I watched 2001 (though I'd argue that Moonlight is far more accessible than 2001); I had witnessed film done in a way that felt entirely new, and that doesn't happen often when you watch movies as much as I do. I can't quite put my finger on exactly why Moonlight feels this way in the technical sense; however, I can say that the film was unsettling in the way it was all so perfectly believable. Part of what can make a film critically successful is the ability of the film to make you forget that you're watching a film, and Moonlight executes this without fault; I truly felt, for the duration of the film, that I was not just watching a film, but that I was being given a window in to another person's life. This is realist filmmaking at its finest, something that Kubrick was known for, which is perhaps why my mind first goes to 2001 when I try to recall an experience similar to Moonlight. Everything that happens in Moonlight seems as if it really happened, and that we were simply watching captured footage of real events rather than a dramatisation of them. This is just one reason why I believe Moonlight to be the best film of 2016.
The Verdict: Moonlight is... different. I find it difficult to summarise the film the way I usually do here, because it's deeply layered and just begging for multiple viewings. It's also hard to find a single film to compare it to, so I cannot say something as simple as "if you liked this film, you'll love Moonlight'. The subject matter and realistically slow-burn style of storytelling also don't make this film something that will appeal to a lot of people as entertainment; this is the sort of film that reminds you that film is also art.
Rating: 10/10
Published January 30th, 2017
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