Films about African American LGBT youth have never been the industry’s stock in trade, and at a time of intense outcry against the systemic devaluation of black lives as well as the underrepresentation of minority artists, Jenkins’ film functions as a rare and important corrective.īut to praise the film purely for its politically righteous subject matter - or worse, to suggest that it’s playing the diversity card, as some vapidly contrarian think-piece is sure to argue down the line - is to risk understating the aesthetic choices that make it not a sociopolitical tract, but a singular piece of cinema. Over the next several months, the plaudits and trophies that are likely headed in the direction of Jenkins and his exceptional cast and crew will be attributed, in ways both complimentary and condescending, to the fact that “Moonlight” fills an obvious demographic void. (It’s playing in the festival’s Platform competition.) I expect that it will have a similar effect wherever it plays, and while I have yet to consult the latest dispatches, it’s clear that the busy, creaky machinery of Oscar season - driven by journalists and frequently set in motion at festivals like Toronto and Telluride - has already begun to grind in the movie’s favor. He’s made a film that urges the viewer to look past Chiron’s outward appearance and his superficial signifiers of identity, climbing inside familiar stereotypes in order to quietly dismantle them from within.Īlready warmly received at Telluride, “Moonlight” sent a palpable surge of emotion through the packed theater where it had its first Toronto International Film Festival screening Saturday night. The actors don’t bear an especially close physical resemblance to one another - partly due to a decisive physical transformation that the character experiences at one key juncture - but they’re all of a soulful, taciturn piece nonetheless. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes), which makes the continuity of feeling all the more remarkable.
He will experience a powerful, forbidden moment of sexual awakening that will be suddenly, cruelly turned on its head - and then revisited, years later, with infinite patience and tenderness.Ĭhiron is played by a different actor in each of the film’s three acts (they are Alex R.
Over the course of more than a decade, this quiet kid will be neglected, abused, chased, bullied and at one point incarcerated, but also blessed by gestures of kindness and generosity from unexpected sources. Loosely adapted from Tarell McCraney’s play “Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” Jenkins’ film is a character study in three acts that immerses us in Chiron’s tough upbringing on the sunny, crooked streets of Miami. In Jenkins’ hands, the cold, mechanical apparatus of the camera becomes nothing less than a conduit for human empathy. It observes Chiron’s silence, respects it and to some degree absorbs it. This extraordinarily intimate movie, beautifully directed by Barry Jenkins (making his first feature since 2008’s “Medicine for Melancholy”), works in much the same way. Yet everything about him - his sad, downcast eyes, his drooping posture, his visible discomfort in the presence of others - seems to summon forth and express an entire world of feeling. Chiron, the lonely young black man we see growing up before our eyes in “Moonlight,” doesn’t say much.
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