Review: Moonlight

Moonlight (15)

USA 2016  111 mins  Dir: Barry Jenkins  Cast: Trevante Rhodes, Andre Holland, Janelle Monae, Ashton Sanders, Jharrel Jerome, Naomie Harris, Mahershala Ali, Alex Hibbert

The chief beneficiary of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, which justly drew attention to gong-givers’ failure to recognise black talent, Moonlight is the kind of low-budget indie drama that might ordinarily be expected to find a small but appreciative audience with a limited arthouse release. Based on Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, writer/director Barry Jenkins’s tender second feature is a perceptive deconstruction of African-American masculinity. Set in a milieu in which we’ve been conditioned to seeing conflicts resolved by the macho popping of caps in bottoms, it sidesteps stereotypes so effectively that its brief moments of violence are freighted with real emotional impact.

Moonlight is divided into three chapters charting key moments in the life of Chiron. We first meet him as a weedy, sensitive and withdrawn nine-year-old nicknamed ‘Little’ (Hibbert), who hides from a pack of pursuing bullies in a squalid crack house in Miami’s run-down Liberty Square housing project. It’s here that he’s discovered by Cuban drug dealer Juan (Ali), who befriends him. We learn that Chiron’s father is long gone and his mother, Paula (Harris), is a hopeless crackhead. Already his sexuality is the subject of speculation and his future hardly seems rosy. Part two finds the teenage Chiron (Sanders) still being bullied at high school but drawing closer to his childhood chum Kevin (Jerome), who clearly reciprocates his feelings. By the concluding segment, he’s been toughed by his experiences to become a muscular, bling-festooned adult drug dealer (Rhodes). The inescapable conclusion is that he’s effectively turned into Juan.

It’s all beautifully photographed and superbly performed by an excellent ensemble cast. While Chrion is played by three separate actors on his journey of self-discovery, Naomie Harris endures the additional burden of aging make-up and gets comparatively little screen time. But she still makes a big impression, succeeding magnificently in capturing the jittery junkie’s neediness and selfishness – especially in a heartbreaking scene in which she shakes down her own son. Chiron and Kevin’s first sexual encounter is equally sensitively handled, and the film excels in such small, intimate, telling and often unexpected moments as Juan giving little Chiron a swimming lesson. But it’s not perfect. Many important developments in Chiron’s life take place offscreen, leaving us to fill in the gaps between episodes for ourselves, and one major character simply disappears without explanation. Juan is also a problematic figure and, perhaps, a bold subversion too far. We’re presumably intended to intuit that he sees his younger self in Chiron, though no really persuasive reason is offered as to why an inner city drug pusher would be motivated to become a troubled nine-year-old boy’s protector and mentor. The uncharitable might even be inclined to view him as the crack dealing equivalent of the Tart with a Heart.