Moonlight Analysis

Moonlight

Written and Directed by: Barry Jenkins

Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay 2017

Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Drama

This film is a coming of age drama, exploring three stages of a character's life as three chapters in the film. We've seen stories like this, even in Indian cinema in Premam. This is adapted from a play and there's a different structure in the play. There, they play the three stages simultaneously and only after a point they reveal that we are looking at the story of one person (C/O Kancherapalem style), but Barry Jenkins decided to split the stories and explore each of them individually.

The film is not shot in a realist style, it is shot in 2.35:1 aspect ratio and it uses imagery with contrast and it uses strong colors to create mood and also as a storytelling tool. We see these colors in the posters as well, since the film is adapted from a play named In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, they grade the footage that way. The pacing of the film is at the sweet spot, I love watching content with this pacing. 

The themes explored in the film are masculinity, violence, upbringing, parenting, friendship, homophobia in society, acceptance and finally it explores the idea that whatever you assume by looking at a person can be entirely different from the reality. I think apart from the themes being relevant and they being explored well in the film, it is also an idiosyncratic drama. It makes us witness a character's journey, feeling that isn't so easy. I felt that way while watching Boyhood and Forrest Gump, that we have seen a character grow. Here there is a lot of mystery as to what could have happened with him, the events in the gaps but just by seeing where the character is in his life right now, makes us think about how people can change.

Masculinity and Violence: The kid is constantly bullied in his childhood by people around, they call him a 'faggot'. When he is beaten by his peers in his class, a social worker tells him if he was a man then he'd have beaten them which I think is more damaging to hear than that the actual beating he took at school. The next day, he goes and beats up the guy which gives us a little high thinking he deserved it but as in reality, he gets arrested on the spot. The kid ends up meeting someone in jail and they get along and he ends up doing something illegal. He gets muscular, he becomes what he was taught to be a man, but deep down he still is that sensitive vulnerable person when he meets the only love of his life.

Friendship/Love/Sexuality/Acceptance: In his teenage is when he meets Kevin, a guy whom he trusts. They kiss and explore their sexuality but Kevin doesn't open up about himself in front of everyone because of the people around and he ends up beating him and yet he doesn't name Kevin out. When they meet later in life, Kevin has a family and he is settled in his life but the protagonist is still a victim of what happened to him. I think this film can be a good backstory of a villain character, it is not an excuse though, he can get out of it but once you are stuck in something, it almost takes a rehab to get out of it. It can be something illegal as what the protagonist does, or it can what Kevin does, succumbing to the society and the surroundings. It shows what kind of a vulnerable person can someone be inside, in spite of they being muscular, they doing all illegal activities.

This film is a more subtle and a sensitive take on the themes explored in Joker. Joker did that in a more explosive way and I think this film is a deeper and a stronger exploration of such character since it does it in a coming of age form.