“Moonlight” Illuminates the Darkness

Release Date：Nov/18/2016

Genre：Drama

Director：Barry Jenkins

Cast：Trevante Rhodes、Naomie Harris、Mahershala Ali

Viola's Rating：8.7

About the same time last year, Hollywood was experiencing its most furious “white age” because no minority actors or actresses were recognized as Academy nominations. A year after that, Brad Pitt who produced the Oscar winning feature film “12 Years a Slave” once again focused on African-American stories. Happened to be released after President Trump’s stance on immigration, “Moonlight”, as a critically acclaimed film, received eight Academy nominations, and won three including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor.

“Moonlight” is a chronicle of the childhood, adolescence and burgeoning adulthood of Chiron, a young, African-American, gay man, who grows up in a poor neighborhood of Miami. Not only are the obstacles a single-parent kid could face discussed, bully, drug issue and sexual orientation are also on the agenda.

There are a bunch of scenes that are artful with classic music in the background which invite us to know more about Chiron’s inner nature, even go through the incidents with him by the conflict and disconnection of sound and vision.

How “Moonlight” reveals the bloody cruel fact about drug dealing reminds me of “Kill the Messenger”, a flick based on the true story of journalist Gary Webb, who uncovered the CIA's past role in importing a host of drugs into the U.S. to sell in ghettos across the country to raise money for the Nicaraguan Contras' rebel army. Drug dealers in real world usually aren’t addicts, and they know the consequences and effects too well that they wouldn’t try it themselves, but to sell to those in rough neighborhood.

Even growing up in such awful environment, Chiron finds his own way to become the “perfect one”, but he still might not be the role model society accepts. The key to comprehending “Moonlight” is to flavor the bitterness Chiron has tasted, and find one’s true self through this journey.

Despite of all the darkness we see in “Moonlight”, there are three different kinds of love shown throughout the motion picture: family, friendship and relationship. However, they all aren’t in the usual form we’re familiar with. Having a malfunctioning family, being bullied at school and his homosexual orientation all make it difficult for Chiron to feel loved as easy as other people do, but the most beautiful thing about “Moonlight” is that he still gets the love he deserves as the real him.

Compared to other Oscar winning movies this year, “Moonlight” seems ardent and dismal, but just as “black boys look blue in moonlight”, this picture illuminates the darkness in the society and brings out every authentic attribute and true self from the inner nature that’s buried deep.

Picture credit: IMDb