Moonlight shines
Director Barry Jenkins presents a stunning, transformative journey from boy to man
Moonlight
Starring Trevante Rhodes, Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris and Janelle Monáe. Written and directed by Barry Jenkins. Opens Friday at the Varsity and TIFF Bell Lightbox. 111 minutes. 14A A drug dealer lowers a silent young boy into the waters off Miami.
How do we read this scene, one of many striking moments from Moonlight, a film like no other? Is it a burial or a baptism?
It’s closer to the latter, although the negative option may seem more likely when viewed out of context. We need to abandon all stereotypes for a movie this special, one of the year’s best.
The drug dealer is Juan, wonderfully played by Mahershala Ali, who has befriended a fatherless 10-yearold everybody calls Little (Alex Hibbert). Juan drives around their tough neighbourhood with a crown on his dashboard and a swagger in his step, not afraid of anybody.
He’s a different person around Little, to whom he’s shown paternal affection since discovering the painfully shy lad hiding from bullies in an abandoned house.
Juan and his girlfriend Teresa (Janelle Monáe) are keeping an eye out for Little, whose mother Paula (Naomie Harris), a nurse addicted to crack, can barely keep herself together, much less raise a child.
That beach scene? It’s Juan teaching Little to swim. It’s one of the film’s transformative moments, many of them involving water.
Writer/director Barry Jenkins adapts his story from Tarell Alvin’s stage play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue.
But the sensitive eye and compassionate soul Jenkins brings to his second feature are entirely his own, no surprise to anyone who appreciated the intuitive wisdom of Medicine for Melancholy, his debut film from 2008, also built around an unusual pairing.
Moonlight is structured as a triptych, spanning 16 years as it charts the progress of Little, whose real name is Chiron. Chapter 2 finds him as a tall and gawky teenager, now played by Ashton Sanders, still barely speaking and still observing the world with a wary combination of dread and wonder. He’s also still being bullied. But his classmate Kevin (Jarrel Jerome), who has known Chiron since childhood, inspires him to address his fears, which include a homosexual orientation Chiron only vaguely perceives.
Chapter 3 arrives and so does an older Chiron, now played by Trevante Rhodes and going by the name Black, a nickname bestowed by Kevin.
He’s living in Atlanta, remaining close to a mother who never felt all that close to him, and he’s become a man much like his benevolent mentor — check out that crown on the dashboard.
Black is still struggling to find his voice and his pride, but a telephone call reconnects him to Kevin (André Holland) who is similarly older and yearning.
Much of what happens in Moonlight is perceived almost subliminally. You see and feel the intensity of these excellent actors more than hear them, since dialogue is minimal, no words wasted.
James Laxton’s astute camera offers both tentative reveals and fullon encounters.
Composer Nicholas Britell is as comfortable with classical strings on the soundtrack as he is with hip-hop beats.
The only thing for certain about this exploration of African-American masculinity, a stunning journey from boy to man, is that it can’t be classified, specified or qualified.
It just needs to be watched and embraced, as an entirely fresh example of the power that great movies can exert on our lives.
The sensitive eye and compassionate soul Jenkins brings to his second feature are entirely his own