+ Best Mega-hit of the Year + Best LGBT Movie of the Year + Best Poster of the Year + Best Coming-of-Age Movie of the Year
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| A rarely seen but striking poster based on a water color painting for Barry Jenkins' Moonlight |
Chiron is a kid growing up in a hard neighborhood in Miami, Florida where his coming into his own is made very difficult by bad parenting, drugs and macho violence.
Moonlight is the second feature from great Miamian co-writer/director Barry Jenkins (Medicine for Melancholy (2008)). He co-wrote the screenply with Tarell Alvin McCraney (Day N Night Out (2010), short), based on McCraney's semi-autobiographical, unpublished play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue (2003).
If the short caption of the plot above sounds dour, that's because this is a dour story. It calls to mind films such as the great Precious (2009), which I liked better immediately, due to its humor and snappy pacing, and another sad gay romance, Brokeback Mountain (2005), but also David Gordon Green's masterpiece George Washington (2000). Moonlight is, like that film, a very sensory-stimulating experience. - At one point in it when a sugary juice is removed from the frame, I thought I could actually smell it, which is a sure sign of vibrant, compelling filmmaking. James Laxton's (Yoga Hosers (2016)) elegant photography contributes to this quality.
If you were led on by the severe 2015/16 hype surrounding the film, you might have expected it to have much more in it; but Moonlight is a small, intimate story, rather like an adapted short story, igniting us with three points in its protagonist's life. To say it is slow would be wrong, I think, but Moonlight sure takes its sweet time with some of its scenes and moments, which will inevitably attract some and alienate others. It expands moments of import from Chiron's life, and heightens them through stylish techniques and Nicholas Britell's (The Big Short (2015)) fabulous score to art.
The film is esteemed also by remarkably fine casting of the child, teen and adult actors who portray Chiron especially and also his buddy Kevin and truly feel like they could be the two persons with about two decades dividing them from each other. They all play well: Oscar-nominated Naomie Harris (Trauma (2004)) is impressive as Chiron's flawed mother. Mahershala Ali (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)) won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his fine portrayal of Chiron's older mentor Juan, but I think lesser known actors Ashton Sanders (The Retrieval (2013)) and Trevante Rhodes (If Loving You Is Wrong (2015-16)) as Chiron as a teenager and an adult, respectively, give even more remarkable performances. Chiron goes from a visibly frail, tension-fraught teenager into a grown man whose buff, drug-dealing appearance puts a guard down between himself and the world around him, while his person inside hasn't really grown much. The change and development he goes through is part of the oppressively circular society the film portrays. The film also has Janelle Monáe (Hidden Figures (2016)) and André Holland (42 (2013)), who stands out in the film's very sexy last scenes. This cautious but intense romance between Chiron and Kevin is the best part of the film for me.
Moonlight is a very quiet film. It doesn't go for the noisy-busy approach of, say, Precious, but resides a lot in the uninformative communication of Chiron and the looks passed between the characters, which adds to the poetic quality of the film. It also treats its plot points with the ritualistic importance known from many other coming-of-age films, which this essentially is. If it has a sin it is that it hides away the voracious and animal aspect of male sexuality, as it essentially pretties it up or makes it less carnal than it naturally is.
While it is specifically an African-American story, it also deals with such universal issues as learning and dealing with one's own homosexuality, identity, bullying and traumatic roots, - which all help it transcend race as any great film must. Moonlight is its own and I look forward to seeing it again some day.
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Cost: 1.5 mil. $
Box office: 55.8 mil. $ and counting
= Mega-hit
[Moonlight premiered 2 September (Telluride Film Festival) and runs 111 minutes. McCraney wrote the play in 2003 as a way of coping with his mother's dying of AIDS. Both McCraney and Jenkins grew up in Miami's Liberty Square neighborhood where the film plays out. Shooting took place on location in Florida for 25 days from October - November 2015. Harris shot her scenes in 3 days, Holland his in 5. The actors portraying Chiron at three different stages were kept away from each other, never meeting before after shooting. The film opened #19 in 4 theaters to a 402k $ first weekend (the year's best per-theater average) in North America, where it peaked in 1,564 theaters and #11 (different weeks), grossing 27.7 mil. $. The film was nominated for 8 Oscars: Best Picture (won), Supporting Actor (Ali, won), Adapted Screenplay (won), Supporting Actress (Harris, lost to Viola Davis for Fences), Director (lost to Damien Chazelle for La La Land), Cinematography (lost to Linus Sandgren for La La Land), Editing (lost to Hacksaw Ridge) and Score (lost to Justin Hurwitz for La La Land). It was also nominated for 6 Golden Globes, winning one, nominated for 4 BAFTAs; it has won AFI's Movie of the Year award, won 5 out of 6 Independent Spirit Film nominations, won 3 National Board of Review awards, as well as several more awards and nominations and placements on countless top 10 lists of the year. Moonlight is certified fresh at 97 % with a 9 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Moonlight?
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