Movie Reaction: Moonlight

Formula: The Wire * Brokeback Mountain

There's a lot of overused sayings that have been going through my head since seeing Moonlight. Things like "Sometimes the best way to say something is to say nothing at all" and "universality through specificity". These sayings very much apply to the film even though I would like to find a better way to say it.

Moonlight is the story of Chiron, a gay black child, teen, and man growing up in Miami. It's told in three distinct parts (hence, "child, teen, and man"). The first part follows a chance meeting with a local drug dealer (Mahershala Ali) that leads to him and his girlfriend (Janelle Monae) looking over  Chiron. They become the lifeline he needs between being ridiculed at school for being gay and having a crackhead mother at home. The next part brings him to high school, where he is starting to become a man. At the same time he's struggling to survive the intolerance he faces at school and to understand what he should do with his feelings. The final act is about tearing down the walls Chiron has built up to protect himself. There's a key relationship in the middle of all this that is better left to be explored in the movie than by me now. It's the through line of the film and the emotional core.

This is a hard film to single out any one performance from. All three actors playing Chiron (Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, Trevante Rhodes) are spectacular. If there was a way to share a Lead Actor Oscar, they'd be my front runner. There's no weak link between the three of them. Naomie Harris is the only actor in all three parts and her work is especially impressive when you know that she shot everything over a few days she had off in the middle of shooting a Bond movie. Mahershala Ali isn't in the movie for all that long, but he sets the tone early in invaluable ways. Janelle Monae uses her few moments well. It's a strong, strong cast.

Director Barry Jenkins beats you down with the silence in the film [in a good way]. Chiron is a character of few words, leaving the actors to say a lot with a look or a pause. Repeatedly there were scenes when I got annoyed in the theater because the sound of someone shuffling around in their seat was loud enough to distract from the silence in the scene. The film is as much about what isn't said as what is.

There are times when the movie does like the wallow a little. Frankly, the crackhead mom seemed like the story was stacking the deck against Chiron a little too much. Most of that is mitigated by his rather ideal situation with Ali and Monae though. If I had a complaint about the movie, that would be it, and it's a weak one.

They say that specificity in storytelling is the best way to get to universal truths. That's certainly true of Moonlight. I don't know what it's like to grow up as a poor gay black man in Miami. However, I do know what it's like to be scared of connecting with others or to struggle with accepting yourself. Moonlight is a lovely film. It's a simple story at its core with complex characters and performances. And, thanks to its structure, it has three different satisfying endings. Most films struggle with getting just one ending right.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend