Moonlight is directed by Barry Jenkins and stars Mahershala Ali, Trevante Rhodes, Naomie Harris, André Holland, Ashton Sanders and Alex R. Hibbert. It's a coming of age story about all the oscar things, like a young, black, gay guy living in poverty, which could make the film sound like Oscar bait. This came out in November last year, but living in Australia, I just got the chance to see Moonlight. In a lot of these cases when you watch a movie after you've heard everyone hyping it to be a classic, you can be let down by unrealistic expectations. So I went into this movie trying to watch it through my lens, seeing what this movie means to me and I was blown away.
Since this movie's been out months in America, I'll be a bit comfortable taking about the movie, but if you haven't already seen it, I don't want to deter you by spoiling the movie, so I will say Moonlight is a fantastic coming of age story about a black man called Chiron who grows up in a rough neighbourhood. At a young age, he meets this guy called Juan, played by Mahershala Ali (Cottonmouth in Luke Cage), who becomes somewhat of a father figure to Chiron. We follow Sharon through three chapters of his life in a story of family, friendship, love and above all... identity.
The movie started out just fine, but there's a specific moment in the movie where Mahershala Ali's character is in the water with Chiron, and the music swells, the lively, beautiful cinematography shines and the dialogue and the performances are just on point: everything came together and it was at that moment, a moment of empathy, when I thought to myself yep... this movie is going to be special, and by god, it was.
The performances, the cinematography, the writing, the story: this movie is a vision, an uncomprimised, fully realised vision. This is a story I've never seen before in cinema. I'm not exaggerating. We've seen coming of age stories before, but the lives of which Moonlight examines is one rarely ever seen in cinema. I'm sure there's a movie out there which has explored the life of a gay, black male but Moonlight is so much more than that. This is a movie about universal themes such as empathy, identity, intimacy, the little moments in life. This movie can increase your empathy. I love the director's choice to focus the camera on little, mundane aspects of life which I was actually talking to a friend about the other day. It went hand in hand with the themes of the movie.
Each of the three actors portraying Chiron? Fantastic, each of them complimented each other. Mahershala Ali? I wouldn't be disappointed in the slightest if he won the academy award for best supporting actor. I know the Academy doesn't mean everything, but if anyone deserves it, it's him. He sells the shit out of every aspect this role demands of him. Seriously, if you liked him in Luke Cage, please witness his performance in this movie. Don't expect any Oscar moment from him where he's screaming his heart out to the Academy to give him an Oscar, but his portrayal of emotions is so nuanced and understated. Naomie Harris also did a good job as Chiron's mother.
This movie gets under your skin and makes you feel emotions I've yet to feel from any other movie before this one. It's a movie about nature vs. nurture. Will you be true to yourself and your identity, or will you be a product of your environment? It manages to be bitter, and sweet. The exchanges which occur in the last 25 minutes of the movie I know won't leave me days from now. The characters in this movie just feel so real, and tangible. I mean, you watch a movie like The Dark Knight, which is a fantastic blockbuster, one of my favourite films, but the characters still feel like characters. They're well written yeah, but none of them feel as real and authentic as the characters here.
I have a few problems with this movie but they're honestly all nitpicks. The characters in the first half occasionally looked blurry as a result of the colour grade and contrast of the movie, but this flaw was gone by the second half of the movie, with the cinematography more often looking gorgeous than not, and there is another scene where 1/2 a dozen people are kicking this guy whose on the ground, and the camera was obviously doing maneuvers and finding obstacles to avoid showing us the guy actually being kicked.
Otherwise, Moonlight is a near perfect movie. It's the most original movie I've seen in a while. It's affecting, it's empathetic, it's beautiful, it's bittersweet and it's fantastic from a technical standpoint with beautiful camerawork and gripping, nuanced performances, and from a story standpoint, with a one of a kind script.
I'm rating Moonlight a:
Score: 5.2/10.
Hopefully you've already seen Moonlight and I don't need to tell you to go watch it. If you haven't, do yourself a favour and go see this movie.
Thanks for reading.
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