Nathaniel Bannister has written a review of Moonlight, which was shown in the PAC cinema from 10 – 16 March.
The film that stole La La Land’s limelight. And to my mind, a most unlikely Oscar winner: no big star to pull audiences in, a strong black cast, and a narrative so delicate that I left the cinema not quite sure what I had watched, but sure that it was wonderful.
We follow a black gay man, Chiron, through three chapters of his life: withdrawn child (nicknamed Little), through sensitive teenager, and finally to bulked-up man (now nicknamed Black). As a child, Chiron is in some unidentifiable way different (though he doesn’t yet know why), and subsequently bullied. His mother Paula struggles with addiction and Chiron’s father is absent. He meets Juan, a drug-dealing father figure, who teaches him that black people are everywhere and he should have no fear of who he is. Of course, what Chiron is and his fear of it are what propels this story. In his teenage years he grapples with his masculinity and sexuality, but the reaction he provokes in his adolescent classmates forces him to abandon his burgeoning understanding of himself, and he emerges, as from a torturous chrysalis, in the final chapter as a drug-dealing ex-convict who has buried his true self deep below the surface.
This is sensuous and subtle film-making from writer and director Barry Jenkins. The three actors he has found to play Chiron (Alex R. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, Trevante Rhodes) share an unusual physical resemblance but don’t play as imitations of each other: they simultaneously reflect growth as well as a completeness, and there is always the same pain and uncertainty in each of their eyes. The camerawork reflects this too: circular movements and woozy, soft-focus close ups in the first chapter eventually give way to a stillness and clarity in the later chapter. There is excellent supporting work from Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali.
What really elevates this though is the synthesis of ideas and themes and moments around this single troubled man, and the crystallisation of that in certain key scenes. When ‘Little’ Chiron asks Juan ‘am I a faggot?’, we feel not only the pain of a little boy, but the inability of society and manhood to find the language to talk about these things. When teenage Chiron lashes out we see an absurd demonstration of masculinity to cover ‘problematic’ sexuality. And when ‘Black’ Chiron at last lets the guard down after two hours, we get a heartbreaking and eloquent expression of a young life failed by everyone around it. This is a beautiful and vital work of film.
Nathaniel Bannister is a freelance writer working and living in Plymouth.
