By Richard von Busack
Remarkable is the only word for Moonlight. It’s a love story and a story of childhood; it’s also a movie about being, in Charles Mingus’ phrase, “beneath the underdog.” In several episodes, Barry Jenkins (of Medicine for Melancholy) directs the story of some 12 years in the life of an undersized boy from Liberty City, the poor part of Miami. Chiron is played by three actors, Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes.
Young Chiron has been badly bullied, hiding his homosexuality from everyone, ever since his mother (Naomie Harris) called him a faggot. Chiron has a kind of surrogate father figure for a while—a passerby named Juan (Mahershala Ali) who rescues the boy from a pack of bullies and takes him home for a meal with his girlfriend Teresa (Janelle Monae).
Jenkins’ skill is such that you can feel both sides of the tension—the man’s urge to help on the one side, the boy’s nerves on the other. Matters get more complex when Chiron discovers his attraction to his friend Kevin (played by Jharrel Jerome in adolescence and André Holland in adulthood). The budding friendship is crushed by a thug looking for some fun.
Moonlight is a movie about people who never get into the movies unless they’re holding guns. Even without a single gunshot in it, this peculiarly acute film is the most eloquent movie about the corrosive trauma of ghetto life since Killer of Sheep (1978).
The visuals by cinematographer James Laxton are keen and fresh. No matter what it’s like to live in it, the neighborhood’s pastel houses and palms lighten the spirit. And there are moments of escape: Particularly a soon-to-be-famous moment where Chiron learns to swim in the ocean while being cradled in Juan’s arms.
It’s somehow hard to define great direction—it’s easier to define its absence—but Jenkins is surely a great director, as can be seen by his wielding of the power of a close-up, a two-shot, by his knowledge of when to drop out the sound, to go against the grain of a scene, or the decision to give a wheedling junkie an incandescent, beguiling smile. He’s got it all and more.
