Moonlight
2016 · Directed by Barry Jenkins
Original language: English
- drama
The story
The tender, heartbreaking story of a young man’s struggle to find himself, told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love, while grappling with his own sexuality.
What it’s like
Saturated blue and magenta light pools against dark skin and wet asphalt, and the camera hangs close on faces in slow, deliberate movements, so a glance or a hand lingering on a shoulder carries more weight than any line of dialogue. Sound is spare: a low synth pulse and piano motifs that drop out entirely in the quiet stretches, leaving breath, the hum of a car, the sea. The mood is tender and watchful, a slow ache with moments of startling warmth, and the intensity is real but measured. There are fights, a shove or two of schoolyard cruelty, drug use and dealing shown plainly, and a few sharp bursts of violence, while sexual content is restrained and largely implied. Three chapters unfold at an unhurried pace, following one young Black man from childhood to adulthood as he tries to understand his own desire under pressure from a hostile world and a fractured home. It suits a late, quiet evening alone, for viewers who want an intimate, emotionally exact film that favours silence and looks over plot, and who can sit with grief that never fully resolves.
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