Film Tip: Barry Jenkins “Moonlight”
Barry Jenkins’ film Moonlight (2016), the recipient of three Oscar awards, is a coming-of-age biopic of an ordinary African American male from an impoverished milieu who is struggling with his sexual identity and sense of self.
Its most unique aspect may well be the fact that the protagonist Chiron is played by three different actors in each of the three parts of the film, each one corresponding to a specific stage in his personal development. Jenkins thus offers a classical three-part structure as is often advocated for screenplays: story set-up, confrontation and resolution (see Field, 2008: 21). The three parts represent three periods of Chiron’s life: his early childhood, his teenage years and his adult life.
The film is also distinctive in that the principal characters are all Black and thus it is able to convey a more authentic than usual depiction of the lived reality of working class African American life. In this connection, it is also worth noting that the filmscript was Barry Jenkins’ own adaption of a play written by Tarell Alvin McCraney and, for the most part, it is set in Liberty City, Florida where both the producer and playwright themselves grew up.
There are several main topics in the film: black sexual identity (black queerness), masculinity and delinquency. In particular, the issue of delinquency is dangerous to society in a double sense, as something that disrupts normality calling into question the social order but also as something that withdraws from normality while displaying its own deficiencies (Habermas, 1988: 281). It is Jenkins’ profound ability as a director, producer and screenwriter that allows for empathy, enabling the thoughts of the other person to reach our own home. He gives black people a voice, tells their stories and offers an unembellished look into their world.
It’s definitely an exceptional contribution to cinema.
09/2020
Photo: Barry Jenkins CC BY-SA 2.0 (Wikipedia)