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FILM REVIEW Moonlight, Directed by Barry Jenkins, USA, Altitude Films

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FILM REVIEW Moonlight, Directed by Barry Jenkins, USA, Altitude Films INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF JUNGIAN STUDIES, 2018 VOL. 10, NO. 1, 83–89 FILM REVIEW Moonlight, directed by Barry Jenkins, USA, Altitude Films, 2016, 1 hour 55 minutes Spring is often synonymous with Oscar season, but it is some considered reflection on the 2017 Best Picture that is necessary one year on. If it is news to you that Moonlight won the Oscar last year, then you are not alone. It is certainly among the least-marketed Oscar winners in recent decades. If you do know about the film, it is likely that it is in the context of its two-way fight for the prize with another more popular film, or perhaps from news coverage of a dramatic mishap on Oscars’ night. The film was the modern musical La La Land and the mix-up was the result of the wrong envelope being given and that the film’s name being read out instead of the winner Moonlight. A male employee from PricewaterhouseCooper’s – who administer the envelopes – is thought to have mistakenly given a duplicate Best Actress envelope (already won by Emma Stone for La La Land) to Warren Beatty. In a familiar commentary on the expectations social media places on creative industries personnel, it is possible the employee, Brian Cullinan, could have been distracted by his Tweeted picture of Stone moments before handing over the envelope. The event overshadowed much mainstream serious discussion of the film and did little to tempt staunch supporters of La La Land to see it. There are films that are designed to win Oscars and appeal to the middle-range, but it is difficult to suggest Moonlight is one of them, even with some of its missed opportunities to push the envelope of homosexual encoun- ters than those previously seen on mainstream US silver screens. The mix-up was certainly a first, but there were more firsts just as worthy of the headlines, such as the first Muslim (Maher- shala Ali) to win an acting Oscar, the first all-black cast to win the Oscar for Best Picture and the first LGBT film to do the same. Not only is homosexuality a topic for exploration here, but the nuances of African-American masculinity, Miami working-class communities and poverty are equally so. Moonlight is a modern coming-of-age story, in three acts, of confused sexual orientation which is only speculatively resolved in the final act of full adulthood that we end the picture on, with our protagonist having already shown us tipping-point glimpses of his childhood and teenage years. It is therefore only in retrospect that we can refer to the character as homo- sexual rather than bisexual or sexually confused. For instance, at that point, we learn that he has still only had one male sexual encounter but perhaps more uncomfortable female ones result- ing in, it is hinted at, fatherhood and an abandonment cycle beginning once more. The film is set in three different time periods starting in early 1980s Liberty City, Miami. The lead character across these periods is African-American Chiron, portrayed by three different actors: Act I (Little, childhood Chiron) played by Alex R. Hibbert; Act II (Chiron, the teenager) played by Ashton Sanders and Act III (Black, adult Chiron) played by Trevante Rhodes. Bullied at school, Little (Hibbert) meets local drug dealer, Juan (Mahershala Ali), and forms a surrogate father relation- ship with him as a replacement for his absent father and equally-yet-figuratively-absent crack- addicted mother, Paula (Naomie Harris). While Chiron faces many challenges popularly associ- ated onscreen with his geo-socio-economic status and race, such as poverty, drugs, single-par- enthood, alienation and bullying, he faces additional challenges as he attempts to work through his sexual identity and associated desires for the same sex. He does so at a time and place of apparent little patience for such identity politics in a black masculine world. 84 FILM REVIEW Ironically, it is the most patriarchal and stereotypically masculine figure in the story, Juan, who is most receptive and willing to guide Chiron through the journey. More than this acceptance of Chiron, he provides food and shelter for him when none is forthcoming from Paula. It is in this way that Jenkins foregrounds a new masculine as distinct from previous media portrayals of poverty as motivating violence. A strong contribution of the text is acknowledged as one which advances the ideas around masculinity. Coming-of-age … genre? If there is one thematic category of the film which is contestable and difficult to define in absol- ute terms around the category of genre, it is coming-of-age. If it is a genre, then it is so in the sense bildungsroman is a literary genre as broad and telling as a piece of culture about the for- mative years of a character moving into adulthood and the psychological and educational tropes that brings to any given cultural and socio-economic situation. In many ways, it is fitting that there exists no absolute body of literature in cinema studies that tells us definitively or moves more specifically to describe the coming-of-age story than the bildungsroman par- ameters. This is largely a (undoubtedly collective unconscious) case of content influencing form because the mimesis of the identity issues worked through in such films – from sexual or political identity, and childhood progression into adulthood, to the self and persona circum- stances arising from such dynamics. It therefore also functions as a plot for many narratives because we see such tropes cut across genres and themes from pratfall and school-boy humour to serious dark and melancholic characters. These can exist in subtexts within the very same film, consider Stand By Me or, at least the human-nature parable reading of, IT (especially in its 2017 Chapter I incarnation), or a blend of the serious with the witty al la Juno (2007). Comedy, drama and tragedy are the true classical genres these types of films rely on. These seeming opposites can also be the structuring potential for the entire films them- selves, consider American Pie (1999) on the one hand and This Is England (2006) or Fish Tank (2009) on the other. If Jenkins’ film is coming-of-age, then it is so in the latter end of the spec- trum. Joy is not quashed and there are moving sequences of such emotions, but the overall tone is one of struggle. The film is based on Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue and is thus part biographical, with the writer having grown up in Liberty City. The three-act structure is chronological with the lead character’s age and development. He begins life as ‘Little’ before being known as ‘Chiron’ and then developing the moniker ‘black’. It is not clear whether Jenkins intended any similarities between the physical appearances of the actors, and while it is poss- ible to assert that there is very little, it is never a problem because of the way he depicts these three periods as intensive tipping points of development into the next. Boyhood by Richard Linklater is an impressive feat and a project 10 years in the making, working with a single actor in a similar coming-of-age narrative of identity formation. If Jenkins was to follow suit with using the same actor over the course of different decades, it would have been a project in need of encouragement and investment pre-millennium which seems unlikely given the topics being explored here. However, as stated, it is in the content and scripting of the development of each act that carries our attention more than trying to find physical simi- larities between the trios. The first dynamic is the relationship with Juan; the second is when teenage Chiron is masturbated on the beach by a classmate, Kevin (Jharrell Jerome). We also see Kevin across the three acts played by different actors. Either side of teenage Kevin, there is child Kevin (Jaden Piner) and adult Kevin (Andre Holland). Although the scenes are perhaps more fleeting in ways than those between Chiron and Paul or Chiron and Juan, it is the relationship with Kevin which defines the story arc. After their sexual encounter on the.
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