Before you see Moon­light, seek out Med­i­cine for Melancholy

Bar­ry Jenk­ins’ soul­ful new dra­ma Moon­light, a mov­ing por­tray­al of a gay black man’s com­ing of age in Mia­mi, is being wide­ly tipped for major acco­lades this awards sea­son. But its suc­cess is no fluke. Though it seems as if Jenk­ins sprung out of nowhere, he’s been direct­ing projects for more than a decade. Most notable in his back cat­a­logue in his 2008 fea­ture debut, Med­i­cine for Melan­choly, an astute explo­ration of black iden­ti­ty and self-dis­cov­ery. It’s a film Moon­light fans should def­i­nite­ly seek out.

The plot is sim­ple but the sub­ject mat­ter is com­plex. After a one-night stand, two black hip­sters, Mic­ah (Wyatt Cenac) and Jo’ (Tracey Heg­gins), go walk­ing and talk­ing in San Fran­cis­co, hash­ing out the racial pol­i­tics of their local dat­ing scene. Jo’ has a white boyfriend and is untrou­bled by cul­tur­al assim­i­la­tion, where­as Mic­ah chal­lenges her on inter­ra­cial rela­tion­ships: ​“Nine times out of 10, it’s some­body of colour hang­ing onto a white per­son… It’s always one of us cling­ing onto one of them.”

Though Moonlight’s pro­tag­o­nist, Chi­ron, blasts Jidenna’s ​‘Clas­sic Man’ in his car, Mic­ah is trou­bled by his music tastes. ​“Every­thing about being indie is all tied to not being black,” he observes. ​“Friends who are indie – white. Bands who are indie – okay, you’ve got TV on the Radio, but the rest of them are white.” Thus, accord­ing to Mic­ah, black peo­ple date white peo­ple to avoid invisibility.

The rel­e­vance here is that the pop­u­la­tion of San Fran­cis­co is sev­en per cent black, and few of those peo­ple are into what Mic­ah deems ​“not what you’d see on BET”. As a minor­i­ty with­in a minor­i­ty, Mic­ah sug­gests, the pair have a duty to hook up. To Jo’, it’s a des­per­ate chat-up line.

Still, Med­i­cine for Melan­choly isn’t a lec­ture. Jenk­ins’ enter­tain­ing screen­play presents two con­trast­ing voic­es, each with their own mer­its and sharp jabs. At times, it resem­bles a ram­shackle rom-com: Mic­ah attempts to woo Jo’ but comes across as clingy. Mean­while, Jo’ delights in explain­ing the real rea­son Black His­to­ry Month is in Feb­ru­ary (it’s not, as Mic­ah believes, because it’s the short­est month of the year).

As with Moon­light, the look of Med­i­cine for Melan­choly is dis­tinc­tive. Lensed by Moon­light DoP James Lax­ton, the film is an ear­ly devel­op­ment of Jenk­ins’ visu­al style. Not that one’s mis­tak­able for the oth­er. For starters, the film is most­ly shot in black-and-white, with only cer­tain shades of colour dip­ping in from scene to scene. On a roman­tic fair­ground ride, the red hues of Micah’s shirt emerge; when he’s remind­ed of race, it’s back to monochrome.

The tem­pera­men­tal colour scheme empha­sis­es the stress of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, too. Jo’, point­ed­ly, can only live rent-free due to her white boyfriend, while Mic­ah just about squeezes a bicy­cle into his apart­ment. (Jenk­ins’ 20-min sci-fi short Rem­i­gra­tion espous­es on a dystopi­an San Fran­cis­co where the work­ing class have ful­ly left.)

But just as Jenk­ins grew up, like Chi­ron, in Mia­mi, he also lived in San Fran­cis­co and dis­plays affec­tion for the area. Jo’ and Mic­ah drink in their sur­round­ings, and their var­i­ous des­ti­na­tions – such as a self-imposed first vis­it to the Muse­um of the African Dias­po­ra, or the cathar­sis of a rock gig – reflect their respec­tive per­son­al­i­ties. Sim­i­lar­ly, por­tions of their date are word­less and inti­mate, allow­ing the local noise to do the talk­ing for them – a tech­nique per­fect­ed in Moonlight.

Odd­ly, Med­i­cine for Melan­choly was labelled ​“mum­blecore” upon release. It’s lo-fi and indie for sure, but it delves into far deep­er emo­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry than any movie belong­ing to that par­tic­u­lar sub­genre. For the par­al­lels with Moon­light alone, it is essen­tial view­ing. After all, in Moon­light, the key phrase is ​“Who is you?”; in Med­i­cine for Melan­choly, it’s ​“How do you define your­self?” Jo’ insists Mic­ah should be him­self, with­out the pres­sure of a label, and adds, ​“Who gives a shit what soci­ety thinks?” It’s a beau­ti­ful sen­ti­ment. Self-dis­cov­ery, in both instances, can take half a lifetime.

Med­i­cine for Melan­choly is screen­ing at Pic­ture­house Cen­tral in Lon­don on Mon­day 13 Feb­ru­ary. For more info vis­it pic​ture​hous​es​.com