Moonlight

2016's Moonlight, directed by Barry Jenkins.

Starring Trevante Rhodes, Ashton Sanders, Alex R. Hibbert, Naomie Harris, André Holland, Mahershala Ali, Janelle Monáe, and Jharrel Jerome. 

Winner of an Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay (Barry Jenkins), and Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali). 

Nominated for Best Director (Jenkins), Best Supporting Actress (Naomie Harris), Best Cinematography (James Laxton), Best Editing (Joi McMillon, Nat Sanders), and Best Score (Nicholas Britell).

What is it about? 

Moonlight is based off of the Tarell Alvin McGraney play, In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue. Here, through a more linear 3 act structure, we watch 3 different actors all play a boy/man named Chiron, through his childhood, teen, and adult years. A cousin of sorts to Richard Linklater's 2014 Boyhood, anybody who thought that Linklater's meditation on the passage of time was a little too rose coloured, would benefit from a viewing here. We watch Chiron grow up as a black, gay male in urban Miami, with an addict mother (Naomi Harris). As a child, he is befriended by a drug dealer (Mahershala Ali), who becomes an uncle of sorts- especially with a (mentally) absent mother. As a teenager, we watch his exploration of sexuality, while learning life's painful lessons about how other people can be cruel. As an adult, he explores who he is, his past pains hidden behind a mask of non expression and bling. 

Why is it worth seeing?

Lesser movies would focus on the alienation, hopelessness, and machismo viewer exploitation of Chiron's situation- a latent backdrop for tedious melodrama. Here it provides merely a prism to look through as we watch Chiron grow into a man filled with a haunting quiet. Along the way, we observe growth, nurtured from random acts of kindness and quiet introspection, and Jenkins never alters his gaze as we observe, almost like a documentary, Chiron's rarely externalized thoughts. An amazing reflection on identity, every character feels like flesh and bone on the screen, impossible to simply categorize as just a “drug addict” or “fling”. We find ourselves slowly sinking into this world, being forced to make choices as to what we would do if we were this introverted character, afraid to fill the air with their words. As one of the characters asks Chiron in response to his silence, "Who is you?"- they may as well be talking to us.

In one of the more interesting perfect storms in movie history, 2015’s Academy Awards were abuzz with accusations of a white academy making white choices for nominees and winners, as exemplified with #oscarsowhite protests. The following year, some members of the academy were shown the door to make room for a more diverse group of voters. And wouldn’t you know it, that year had a number of black performers and movies that were nominated. So the field was more open. However, Moonlight, with its paltry $1.5 million budget, was uncommonly good- for any genre of movie, much less a so called black movie. Despite its setting and characters, it had a universal appeal- right down to the underdog status. As Clinton’s political advisor James Carville once said, “America loves an Underdog, but it hates a loser”. But that’s the thing- Moonlight won best picture (after an epic screw up by the accountant firm responsible for the winners’ envelopes)- while being the underdog. The only film featuring gay men who are black, and a Muslim man in a strong supporting role, to win best picture, it’s easy to say one could see it coming, especially with it’s 99 score on Metacritic.com. But that’s after the fact- very few people picked it to win over that year’s heavily favoured, La La Land. Vegas placed La La Land's odds of winning at 1/6, while Moonlight was 11/2.

But that's history.

5/5

Trailer: Click Here.