Moon­light – first look review

A mod­est fes­ti­val hit in 2008, Bar­ry Jenk­ins’ first fea­ture Med­i­cine for Melan­choly did not go on to receive much local dis­tri­b­u­tion beyond the US. By con­trast, long before its TIFF pre­mière, Jenk­ins’ sec­ond film Moon­light had already gen­er­at­ed buzz after a superbly edit­ed trail­er debuted online to much acclaim and an all but pre­sumed ​‘new mas­ter­piece’ sta­tus. Chron­i­cling the com­ing-of-age sto­ry of a gay African Amer­i­can boy in 1990s Mia­mi, the film is indeed unique and remark­able for its sto­ry alone. And it could not feel more time­ly, arriv­ing as it does at a cru­cial cul­tur­al moment when the main­stream is only just start­ing to reck­on with the queer African Amer­i­can experience.

But Jenk­ins aspires to some­thing much greater than lazy box-tick­ing. He skil­ful­ly grants as much atten­tion to the daz­zling­ly beau­ti­ful visu­al style as he does to the uni­form­ly excel­lent per­for­mances. Form and per­for­mance work hand in hand to pro­duce a relent­less cel­e­bra­tion of aes­thet­ic beau­ty. Rang­ing from glid­ing cam­era move­ments and sym­met­ri­cal shot con­struc­tions to slow motion and rich sound design, Jenk­ins deploys a wide range of tech­niques with refresh­ing con­fi­dence and enthu­si­asm. But the film is also in love with its actors, giv­ing them space to take cen­tre stage when need­ed. Maher­sha­la Ali in par­tic­u­lar is strik­ing in the role of father fig­ure Juan, a man who helps the young cen­tral char­ac­ter, Lit­tle (Alex R Hib­bert), nav­i­gate his dif­fi­cult childhood.

Liv­ing in pover­ty with his drug addict moth­er (a haunt­ing Naomie Har­ris), Lit­tle is bul­lied by school­mates, only find­ing kin­ship with a much more pop­u­lar best friend. The film is not afraid to rede­ploy these nar­ra­tive clich­es that we have seen in a thou­sand com­ing-of-age sto­ries. It is the bru­tal sim­plic­i­ty of their intro­duc­tion that soon makes them appear as inescapable truths. The film thank­ful­ly takes them for grant­ed and avoids patro­n­is­ing by apol­o­gis­ing for how com­mon­place they are.

This socio-eco­nom­ic back­ground is the can­vas to a much less famil­iar sto­ry, that of a black boy pro­gres­sive­ly learn­ing that he is gay. As Little’s queer­ness pro­gres­sive­ly unveils itself on screen, the beau­ti­ful images under­line the latent beau­ty in his attrac­tion for his life­long best friend, an attrac­tion that has always been there. We pro­gres­sive­ly recog­nise these rich, colour­ful images and intri­cate cam­era move­ments as belong­ing to a queer, sub­jec­tive aes­thet­ic akin to that of Xavier Dolan, but it’s realised here with more com­pas­sion and less anger than in the Cana­di­an filmmaker’s work.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly this intense­ly thought-out visu­al style can often feel dis­tract­ing. Dis­con­nect­ed from the qui­et, even blank per­son­al­i­ty of the main char­ac­ter – and from his deeply sweet sto­ry – the for­mal flare makes it dif­fi­cult to make any­thing more than a super­fi­cial con­nec­tion with the sto­ry. It’s less the char­ac­ters we feel for, rather the director’s own intense com­pas­sion and empa­thy for them. This is not a prob­lem in itself, but it makes for a pecu­liar view­ing expe­ri­ence where the intense emo­tion­al­i­ty of the film­mak­ing pre­vents the devel­op­ment of a more secure bond with the char­ac­ters. Jenk­ins’ autho­r­i­al voice is resound­ing and strong and his deter­mi­na­tion admirable. Yet Moon­light leaves lit­tle to think about beyond what appears on the screen. His sto­ry is urgent and needs to be told, but the film seems to ask us to care and empathise with his char­ac­ters on the basis of that urgency alone.

These minor mis­giv­ings can be thank­ful­ly dis­card­ed in a beau­ti­ful end­ing that is all the more mov­ing for its unex­pect­ed tonal shift. We abrupt­ly find our­selves watch­ing a sim­ple extend­ed shot/​reverse shot sequence that feels more trust­ing of the view­er, pre­cise­ly because it is less overde­ter­mined than the rest of the film. The sequence is, unlike any oth­er, in def­er­ence to the dia­logue rather than to the visu­al style – Jenk­ins respect­ful­ly steps back to let his char­ac­ters dom­i­nate. As such the sequence is unpre­dictable and grip­ing like no oth­er in the film.

And yet, the sim­plic­i­ty of the edit­ing and the warmth of the sit­u­a­tion depict­ed bring a sense of peace and affec­tion so strong that it over­whelms fear. In an unusu­al move for such a pre­cise­ly cal­cu­lat­ed film, Moon­light ends on a note of ambi­gu­i­ty. But both for Lit­tle and for our­selves, the future sud­den­ly doesn’t seem so scary anymore.