Directed by: Barry Jenkins
Starring: Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, Trevante Rhodes, Naomie Harris, Mahershala Ali
Rated R, 111 minutes
“Moonlight” is not a protest movie, but its timing might turn it into one. In the days following the election of a man who began his career by violating the Fair Housing Act, hate crimes have been reported across the country by the dozen, including one sickening act of cyberterror committed against black freshmen at my alma mater. Dave Chappelle emerged from hiding to give a 10-minute monologue on “SNL” pointing out, with some resignation, that none of this is unfamiliar to black Americans. Just when it seemed like America was ready to move past the point where minorities live inherently politicized lives, the clock was reset, and now we all have to reckon with it. “Moonlight” is a good place to start.
The story of “Moonlight” is simple: A gay black boy grows up in Miami. As a 9-year-old, he goes by Little. As a teenager, he uses his real name, Chiron. As an adult, he goes by Black. In each stage of his life, he comes to grips with his sexuality and his masculinity more, approaching but never quite reaching the point where he can freely be himself. That, along with a subplot about his mother’s drug problems, is the entirety of the movie. The tropes you might expect from a movie about a poor kid’s experience in a big city—gun violence, gangs, racism—are missing here. Even the abuse Chiron takes from his mother is muted, buffered each time by her cooing embraces. At no point does the film delve into politics or reference current events. It is singularly about Chiron, without conflating its purpose with anything else.
By casting three different actors to play the lead role, director Barry Jenkins (“Medicine for Melancholy”) risked the unity of the movie, but it pays off. All three, from the small-for-his-age Alex Hibbert to the lanky Ashton Sanders to the beefed-up Trevante Rhodes, seem cut from the same cloth. Chiron is quiet and introverted, alternating between being afraid of his own shadow and steeling himself for battle, and he is consistent from one act to the next.
His journey, however, is hard to pin down. The scenes throughout the film lack the push-pull of objectives on which plot structures are usually built. Gone are the pointed dialogues that propel a story forward, replaced by heavy doses of small talk. The only thing we have to hang on to is Chiron himself, and he often reacts to the hardships of life with a poker face.
It’s telling, though, that the hardships he faces aren’t your typical melodramatic fare; they are, by and large, surmountable. His mother (played by the ever-underappreciated Naomie Harris) is addicted to drugs, but she loves him dearly and tells him so whenever she’s of sound mind; eventually she gets clean. Chiron isn’t alone or closeted, having mentors who love and support him and a friend who becomes his beloved confidante. He goes to jail at one point, but we gloss over that experience and only meet him again later, after he successfully builds himself a new life. In other words, his life isn’t simple, but the people in it show him compassion and he possesses some capacity for upward mobility. And yet, he still struggles to come to terms with himself.
All of which reveals the core of the movie, the message that makes it so resonant in this time of heightened tension. Even with the understanding of his peers, even with the freedoms afforded him by the law, Chiron is terrified of being his true self. It’s difficult to understand his reticence in the safe spaces created by those who love him, but that’s exactly what the movie asks us to do. Each person faces his own battles, it says, so be patient.
It would have been an important lesson regardless of the outcome of the election, but under different circumstances, it wouldn’t have been so radical. In the context of a president-elect who preaches stop-and-frisk and a vice president–elect who funded torturous gay conversion therapy, “Moonlight” ascends to a unique position in the progressive canon. Which is a double-edged sword, of course—the hope, ostensibly, is that movies like “Moonlight” won’t be radical for very long.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 11/18/16.