If you look carefully, you can see “Moonlight” gleam. It’s a meek, but powerful story of a young gay black man in Miami struggling to give and to feel love. It contains deep wells of personality, empathy and intimacy, but visually and tonally, Barry Jenkins’s film is equally beautiful, a sensuous and ravishing look at romance and identity that envelops you in a hypnotic, soothing lunar glow.
We meet Chiron (pronounced Shy-RONE) at three stages of his life, first as a young boy, then as a teenager in high school, and finally as a 20-something adult (Ashton Sanders). As a kid (Alex Hibbert) he’s racing through a field, the camera dashing to keep up and careening from side to side as it glimpses a few other boys chasing him. It’s not a moment of frivolous fun, but something more violent and saddening. They’re trying to pelt him with rocks, and Chiron takes refuge in a burned out motel room. In it he finds a charred vial, a remnant of a junkie’s former squalor. His savior is a drug dealer named Juan (Mahershala Ali). He nicknames Chiron “Little” and despite the boy’s timid, apprehension, offers him a meal and a place to stay for the night, only to then bring him home to his drug-addled single mom. Juan emerges as a father figure in Chiron’s life, but the boy is caught up in a circle of dependency between his addicted mom and the dealer who keeps selling to her regardless.
In one of the film’s several achingly heartfelt moments, Juan takes Little into the ocean to learn how to swim. The camera bobs alongside as Juan carefully suspends him in the water to float, and the moment evokes a spiritual baptism. “At some point you got to decide who you want to be,” Juan says. “Don’t let no one decide that for you.”
“Moonlight’s” intimacy grows deeper as Chiron grows older, now an awkward, skinny teenager (Trevante Rhodes) staving off a menacing bully with long dreadlocks. His one friend is a class clown and womanizer named Kevin (Jharrel Jerome). Kevin taught Chiron to fight and prove he wasn’t soft when they were kids, and now he’s nicknamed him “Black” and enjoys talking up his latest female exploits. They share an intimate moment on the beach in the moon’s basking light, the camera nestled warmly behind them as Chiron’s hand digs into the sand.
“Moonlight” doesn’t rush through any stage of Chiron’s life, and every point of conflict comes slowly and unexpectedly. Rather than exploding with melodrama, it’s contemplative in examining Chiron as a human being needing some form of intimacy and affection. And yet it’s revelatory when those feelings arrive. “Moonlight” is full of luscious and heartrending moments that linger and reveal the film’s depth beyond its surface level beauty. At one point, 9-year-old Chiron asks Juan out of the blue, “What’s a faggot?” Suddenly there’s a whole other realm to what this boy has been going through quietly hidden underneath his blank slate. Then there’s Chiron’s mother Paula (Naomie Harris) screaming at him before slinking into the neon void of her room, a surreal, indelible image in which you can feel the heat of the moment. And near the film’s conclusion, Kevin asks Chiron, “Who’s you?” Kevin’s face fills the frame as he asks Chiron this simple, yet probing question. He’s so close you can nearly feel his touch.
“Moonlight” gets closer to its protagonists than any film this year. It’s rare to see such fully formed black characters being allowed to love on screen. The beautiful part is that it loves its audience back. It’s reaching out to hold you with its vivid colors and its mystical score. Embrace it back.
4 stars