"Moonlight" - Film Review
Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight is a spectacle to behold. Told over the course of twenty years, the film follows Chiron as a child (Alex Hibbert), as a teenager (Ashton Sanders), and as an adult (Trevante Rhodes), grows up in Miami during the height of the crack epidemic. It’s a quiet look at the issues of masculinity, sexuality, and identity that are often underrepresented in movies.
Part of what makes the performances of the three Chirons so fascinating is that Jenkins went to extreme lengths to ensure that the actors never met one another. He was concerned that if they spent time together, their performances would end up simply mimicking one another. Even with that constraint, there’s a softness in the eyes of Hibbert, Sanders, and Rhodes that ties their performances together and makes their portrayal of the onscreen Chiron so seamless. The only character in the movie who interacts with Chiron at each of his different ages is his mother, Paula (Naomie Harris). The relationship between Chiron and Paula is strained because of her drug addiction and her abuse toward him. As Chiron grows up, the audience sees the toll the addiction is taking on Paula and how powerless he is to do anything about it.
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Chiron finds solace in Juan (Mahershala Ali) and Juan’s girlfriend, Teresa (Janelle Monáe). The two give Chiron a place to stay and food to eat, a safe house far from the abuse of his mother. Juan takes Chiron to the ocean and teaches him to swim. As time goes on, Chiron finds comfort in water, whether he’s in the ocean or in the bath, and it becomes a cleansing escape for him. It’s a feeling he is never able to find when he’s at home. One night, over dinner with Teresa and Juan, child-age Chiron asks what a faggot is. We get the impression that he heard it from his mother or kids at school who were teasing him about his sexuality. Juan’s response is kind. He says it’s a word used to make gay people feel bad about who they are and that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. The duality of Juan is that he acts as a stand-in father figure, but he is also a drug dealer. Those things are hard for Chiron to reconcile, especially given his mother’s addiction.
Few directors let their cameras linger on actors’ faces in the way Barry Jenkins does. He understands that a small change in expression can often say more than ten pages of dialogue. The magic of that focus, especially in this movie, is that it makes the characters more real to the audience. The audience sees the pores of their skin and the minute changes of expression on their faces. There is a tenderness in the careful way Jenkins captures his actors as well as the city he grew up in. He is documenting the streets he knows intimately and telling a story that closely parallels his own. It is so clear that Jenkins is paying respect to the people he knew growing up and the boy he was. Moonlight is honest and open, exactly what a movie of this type should be.
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