Why Everyone Should See MOONLIGHT
Of the hundreds of thousands of feature-length movies that are made, a relatively small number of them can accurately be described as good. Even fewer are legitimately great. Then there are those movies that come out every year, ranging from one or two to a handful, which are masterpieces. Such movies, united by immaculate artistry or sheer ambition, offer not just two hour’s worth of entertaining escapism, but a singular experience that imparts a lasting impact on those who watch it. And then, there are those movies that are so good, so supremely well-crafted, they transcend what you previously thought could be accomplished by the medium and remind you why it is you watch movies in the first place. These movies are gifts to cherish; they maybe come around once a decade, if we’re lucky. Of course movies, as with all art, are subjective and highly personal, but there’s a reason why these select few movies go down in history as all-time classics- they tap into something special that affects people from all walks of life, becoming one with our collective cultural consciousness. It’s always tricky speculating on the legacy of an artwork that has only just recently been released (after all, how something ages is the true mark of distinction), but even so, I wholeheartedly believe that Moonlight is one of these movies.
Moonlight, if you are unaware (and it’s fairly likely you are given that it is an under-advertised independent film with an all-black cast, made on a shoestring budget and distributed by a small production company), tells the story of Chiron, a boy growing up in Miami during the 1980’s who is struggling to find a sense of belonging and accept his place in the world. Apart from the fact that Chiron is black and gay, it sounds pretty much like your typical socio-realist coming-of-age film that we’ve all seen hundreds of time before, right? Well, not quite like this. What elevates Moonlight head and shoulders above its peers is the deeply humanistic lens through which it tells its story.
Moonlight is a triptych, meaning that it is divided into three distinct acts, each of which shows us a glimpse of a different period of Chiron’s life- when he is a young boy, a teenager, and an adult (each played by a different actor)- in order to give us an all-encompassing picture of who he is as a person, both overall and also at these exact points in his life. In that, the structure is put in place to tell what amounts to one man’s very specific story. With a film like this, it would be easy to focus exclusively on Chiron’s unique circumstances that he, as an individual, has to deal with, but Moonlight goes further: it becomes a portal into a realm of truths about the common human experience that goes beyond any mark of difference. It isn’t just about the prison of black masculinity, it’s about the prison of masculinity in general. It isn’t just a gay love story, it’s simply a love story. It isn’t just about what it’s like to grow up black and poor in America trying to discover your true self, it’s about what it’s like to grow up and try to discover your true self as any human being must do. Moonlight is, more than anything, a movie about the (oftentimes difficult) process of the formation of one's identity and how much we are shaped by our environments and those around us. I’m not black, I’m not gay, and I wasn't raised in a public housing community in Miami by a crack-addicted single mother, yet I completely connected with Chiron and saw parts of myself in him, a testament to how effectively its specificity-as-universality approach works.
Before the movie even starts, the first thing we hear, along with the sound of calm waves rolling into the shore, is Boris Gardiner’s “Every Nigger is a Star” as the production logos appear. Not only does this state the film’s thesis up front, it calls back to the opening of Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly, fittingly establishing Moonlight's place within the pantheon of great African-American art. But if we’re going to make a one-to-one musical comparison, the most apt wouldn’t be Kendrick, it would be Frank Ocean, insofar as the feeling you get while watching Moonlight is a lot like what it feels like listening to one of Frank’s albums. What I mean by that, is that Moonlight, like Frank’s music, takes you on a journey with its beautifully-composed storytelling, but immersing you into its world, by generating tender emotion and expressing an idiosyncrasy of yearning and nostalgia inside a swirling whirlwind of memory, ultimately takes precedence over everything else. The only difference being that while Frank does this sonically, Moonlight has to do it visually. Writer-director Barry Jenkins opted to go with a bold, lyrical style, like how I would imagine it would be watching poetry unfold in motion. Jenkins has a firm grasp on the innate power of moving images (so many shots are burned into my memory), letting the heart-piercing looks of his characters carry the film, only using dialogue sparingly. It also must be said that I have never seen black skin lit and color graded as well as it is in this film (recommended further reading on how movie lighting has traditionally worked in terms of race), that shows the beauty of all its actors’ different hues reflecting the temperature of the vibrant blues, purples, and greens that Miami is bathed in.
In a day and age where most of the big Oscar movies are designed with the single-minded goal to win awards, Moonlight has no extrinsic motivation. It knows that the story it is telling is important, but nothing about it comes off that way. One gets the sense while watching that every single individual involved in the cast and crew were extremely passionate about this material, and they just wanted to share it with the world. That passion shines through in the fact that Moonlight does not contain an ounce of self-importance or any type of agenda- it doesn’t rely on emotionally manipulative plot points or any big “movie moments,” nor does it devolve into miserabilism to try to push a political message. Instead, all it asks is that you identify with and share Chiron's feelings without judgment, taking whatever you choose to get out of it. He, along with all the other characters in this film, are flawed people trying to get by as best as they can, just like the rest of us. The way the interiority of Chiron is translated into a tangible, breathing exterior is remarkable, and I can’t express enough how refreshing it is to watch a film overflowing with so much genuine humility and sincerity that actively dismantles so many stereotypes. It just does everything right (even all the music choices are perfect), knowing exactly when to pull back and keep it all understated. Less is often more, and as a result, Moonlight delivers the most subtly resonant moment of catharsis ever put on screen, with just two simple sentences uttered toward the very end of the film.
I’ll leave you with a quote from the late, great film critic Roger Ebert, who once said, “We all are born with a certain package. We are who we are: where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. We're kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people. And for me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It lets you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.” At the time Ebert said this, he was talking about movies in general, but he may as well have been describing this movie. If there's one thing the world needs more of, it's empathy. And if there's one thing cinema needs more of, it's films like Moonlight. Absolutely essential viewing.