FRED Watch Quickie Film Review: Moonlight (2016)
THANK GOD FOR THE MOONLIGHT.
I’m a Wayne Stellini and welcome to FRED Watch, where we review everything from the mainstream to the obscure. Today’s film is Moonlight…
A24
Chiron, a painfully shy and heavily bullied boy, comes of age in the low socioeconomic Liberty City, Miami. He finds parental figures with drug dealer Juan (Mahershala Ali) and his girlfriend Teresa (Janelle Monáe), much to the suspicious disapproval of Paula (Naomie Harris), Chiron’s drug-addicted mother.
The dynamics and tensions among Chiron’s biological and surrogate families, his friends, and classmates set him on a path of emotional neglect and want.
Barry Jenkins’s beautifully photographed story pays homage to its unproduced stageplay roots, presented in three distinctive acts in which our protagonist Chiron goes from boy (played by Alex Hibbert) to adolescent (Ashton Sanders) to man (Trevante Rhodes). Because of this segmentation, Moonlight leaves plenty of information on the cutting room floor. What happens in the many years between the moments captured of Chiron’s troubled life are up to the audience to piece together or imagine.
The risk in such a narrative tool is that the audience is kept at bay, but Jenkins is a talented storyteller, drawing fine performances from Hibbert, Sanders, and Rhodes that their harmonious portrayals of Chiron keep us invested. Through Chiron, Jenkins presents a touching exploration of masculinity that shines like a full moon in a sky of tropes movie lovers are all too familiar with.
As Chiron’s surrogate parents, Ali and Monáe are stunning, suggesting that Moonlight could very well have been completely devoted to their complex relationship with the little boy lost and his mother. The importance of these early scenes is evident in the final act, in which Chiron reunites with childhood friend Kevin (André Holland). Here, Rhodes and Holland are heartbreaking, bringing to the surface the pain and loneliness we have been watching Chiron go through, when the narrative comes full circle.
Moonlight may have been a groundbreaking winner at the 2017 Academy Awards, but fanfare and accolades aside, it stands on its own as a beautiful portrait of masculinity. 4 / 5
Starring: Trevante Rhodes, André Holland, Janelle Monáe, Ashton Sanders, Jharrel Jerome, Naomie Harris, Mahershala Ali, Alex Hibbert
Director: Barry Jenkins | Producers: Adele Romanski, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner | Writer: Barry Jenkins; Story: Tarell Alvin McCraney (Based on In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by Tarell Alvin McCraney) | Music: Nicholas Britell | Cinematographer: James Laxton | Editors: Nat Sanders, Joi McMillon
Available: stan.
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