Moonlight 2016

Let’s talk a little about one of the newest movies “Moonlight”. The movie is about the life of Chiron, a young black man growing up in Miami. He has many downfalls and goes through bullying and doesn’t exactly have a good childhood, but his journey to manhood is told by three chapters of his life: when he’s a kid, when he’s in high school and when he is all grown up. His path is guided by the kindness, support and love of those around him, even though they don’t quite show it. The film was release on October 21, 2016, directed by Barry Jenkins, had a box office of 42.7 million and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture. The movie presents a beautiful story no doubt, and it definitely deserved the Award for best picture, but I want to talk about why didn’t exactly liked it.

The movie starts of like any Drama… slow, but this movie remains slow. we are presented the usual scenarios of the kid being bullied for his sexual interest and he can’t exactly go anywhere, because his mother does other thing Chiron isn’t interested in. The first scene we see is a well crafted shot of the Juan’s ( Mahershala Ali) car pulling into the side of the street, where he meets up with a junkie he sells drugs to. Here we are introduced to the protagonist Chiron (Ashton Sanders) running away from other school kids. The movie continues to play out and we are presented the main problems: the mother doing drugs, Juan dies, Chiron experiments with his friend about his Sexual interest. It presents Character that don’t add anything to the plot and the creators of the film clearly don’t know the term chekov’s gun, because it presents things to us that we believe hold meaning, but tell no actual story. And it all continues to be told in this beautiful wide screen with very neon dark colors, with smooths camera cuts. The movie, visually, is indeed very appealing, but it lacks completion. As we approach the ending of the film we see that non of the problem have been resolved, but even more are showing up. The mother is still doing drugs and is shown no signs that she will stop, Chiron is left alone with no friend and boy/girlfriend and he also become a drug dealer. His friend I mention earlier did indeed move on and found a wife and family, but he was the one Chiron fell in love with. Now, I get this is suppose to be a sad ending, saying that love is hard and life doesn’t go the way you planned, but it just doesn’t feel like anything truly happened. Nothing gets resolved. Not to mention it had a weird ending, because we see both friends sitting together hugging and it cuts to credits, but it feels like nothing got accomplished.

Moonlight is one of those movies that I will probably never see again and wouldn’t give a high score. It definitely takes the cake for visual aspects, but it lacks story completion and character development. It’s a good movie to watch to pass the time, but not one I would highly recommend. However, I do believe that the movie deserved all its praised, because the creators did take their time doing the movie. I still believe this movie isn’t for everyone not only because it’s not for a younger audience, but because it’s slow and not everyone is going to sit through the 1:40 minutes of the movie. source