Modern Masterpiece: Moonlight

I love movies.  I think film as a medium is one of our greatest art forms; nothing else quite captures all the senses together the way it does.  Over a century after its birth, there are enough impact-making movies that people around the world spend lifetimes studying and dissecting them.  It's right up there with music as one of the most popular art forms that bring people together across the globe.

When it comes to movies made during the 21st Century, one stands above the rest to me: Moonlight.  Written and directed by Barry Jenkins, it tells the story of Chiron, a gay black kid in Miami.  That story is told in three segments, following Chiron as a child, teenager, and adult.  It received rave reviews, and even won the Oscar for best picture- only the second movie with a black director to ever do so.  To me, the hype is fully worth it.

One thing I love about this movie is how many layers it has.  You could watch it from tons of different vantage points, with different ideas about what it's supposed to be about, and come away each time with something a little different to chew on by movie's end.  To me, there are three main ways to see this movie: as a movie about a queer, black protagonist; as a movie about a protagonist with a drug addicted parent; and as a movie about a quiet, gentle boy in an often ugly world that forces him to close himself off to it.

Queer, Black Protagonist

The most immediate, and arguably most meaningful, layer of Moonlight is, of course, as a story of a queer black boy/man.  As someone who is neither queer nor black, I won't spend too much time here, as there isn't much I can say that a queer black writer couldn't say with more more perspective and insight.  In fact, here is a write up by just such a writer.  I will leave you with a great excerpt from the piece, though I'd urge everyone to check out the whole thing:

"Growing up in North Philadelphia, I was like Chiron. I did not exude traditional masculinity or fit into black male cliques. Although I existed on the margins, I was never alone. My childhood was filled with people like the movie’s Juan and Theresa, people who saw me as I was, offered protection, and guided me into adulthood. I have known my own versions of the character Kevin, who befriended me even though I was not the archetype of masculine bravado. “Moonlight” revealed to me how my coming out was not an individual act, but one that was supported and facilitated in part by my community.

“Moonlight” captures the beauty of blackness. The movie forces us to interrogate and expand our conceptions of black masculinity, but it also presents a new image of the black community for us to consume. It locates queerness, compassion, and love throughout the black community, shining an intersectional spotlight on queer lives.

Through the transitions of Chiron’s life, it explores the bonds that endure. In the moonlight, we see black, queer life at the center of the black community. In the moonlight, I can more clearly see myself and those who have stood next to me all my life."

Protagonist with a Drug Addicted Parent

I grew up with a father addicted to crack-cocaine.  To say it wasn't easy is an understatement, but what matters more in this case is how deeply it affects someone who grows up that way.  To have a parental figure, who is supposed to be the embodiment of care, responsibility, and safety, end up being the opposite of those things most of the time.  Of course, there are good moments and bad moments, especially when your addicted parent is a good person underneath who just doesn't have their life together- but ultimately, it's an experience that leaves a deep impact.

One thing that Chiron develops in this movie is a quiet independence that many children of addicted people develop because they've subconsciously learned that vocalizing their needs and wants won't necessarily work for them.  This isn't a rugged independence, but a withdrawn one.  Combined with Chiron's queerness, which already makes him a target of exclusion, the quiet independence one can develop in these circumstances can cause us to drift apart from people.  Because if we can't trust our own parents to be there for us, how can we trust other people?  How can we know we'll be safe and cared for by someone else if it's not that way at home?  This is a big part of what Chiron has to struggle with.

The third act of this movie begins with Chiron's mother in recovery.  When a parent starts to recover from addiction, it's a beautiful thing.  It's also a complicated thing.  In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, this recovery scene would end with a big apology and Chrion either accepting it with a dramatic embrace of his mom, marking that period of his life as "closed" because of the healing power of forgiveness, or he rejects it, launching into a self-righteous tirade where she's put in her place.  Instead he quietly listens.  It's implied he accepts, but we also see through his inability to articulate his feelings how deeply the damage is already done.  This isn't the end of anything.  It's just the beginning.

I cry every once in a while at movies.  But this is the only movie scene that can make me bawl.

Having a parent recovering from addiction means you become their cheerleader, the way they should've been for you when you were younger.  It's a weird role reversal.  You're relieved the chaos of their addiction no longer has power over your family; you're proud of your parent for the progress they've made; you're sad about the lost time; you're angry about all the pain you've been through; you're uncertain, perhaps even uncomfortable, about needing to be a responsible pillar of support for your own parent.  But, whichever reaction you feel strongest, the effects of what you went through in childhood are still there.  Nothing your parent does can undo that.  It will always be a part of both of you; you just have to learn to make peace with it.

Quiet Boi Protagonist

In 1963, beloved heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, nicknamed "The Gentleman of Boxing", was set to defend his title against the "thug" Sonny Liston.  It was the ultimate showdown between a "good" black man vs a "bad" black man.  The writer James Baldwin went to interview each of them before the fight.  This is part of what Baldwin said of Liston, the "bad" black man:

"While there is a great deal of violence in him, I sensed no cruelty at all. On the contrary, he reminded me of big, black men I have known who acquired the reputation of being tough in order to conceal the fact that they weren't hard. Anyone who cared to could turn them into taffy."

To throw out maybe the understatement of the century, the world can be a cruel place.  It can be especially hard for boys who are sensitive and gentle.  Particularly when, after these boys don't react to hardships and injustices with posturing or violence, the world reacts with discomfort and bewilderment.  Boys are supposed to respond with, as the writer I quoted earlier put it, "masculine bravado" to their problems.  A sad, melancholy first grade boy with damp eyes often makes people far more uncomfortable than an angry, aggressive first grade boy trying to take his rage out on the world.  This creates an incentive for boys to- as Baldwin masterfully puts it- act tough in order to conceal the fact they aren't hard. 

Chiron isn't hard.  He simply wants some tenderness in his life, and retreats within himself when the world doesn't allow him the vulnerability enough to signal for it.  In the first act, he has two mentors who allow him to be comfortable with himself, but one of them dies.  In the second act, we see his gentleness often taken advantage of until he is driven to his breaking point.  By the start of the third act, what Baldwin says of Liston also applies to Chiron.  He has became a drug dealer who takes shit from no one.  There's such a deep tragedy to it because we know exactly how he got there.  We might also ask how many young black drug dealers just like Chiron end up in prison after the world has closed off so many other doors to them, but that's a subject for a different post.

As we get to know this life Chiron has created, we see just how deep his toughness goes- but also his loneliness, his isolation from others.  But hope is not lost.  Kevin, a bisexual friend from high school who played a painful role pushing Chiron to his breaking point as a teen, contacts Chiron.  Chiron goes to visit Kevin at his job.  Kevin cooks for him: a symbol of healing and nourishment after everything Chiron has been through.  Chiron still doesn't break the tough, stoic exterior he's been forced to cultivate his entire adult life, but there are at least cracks.  When they go back to Kevin's place, the inarticulate Chiron finally confides to Kevin that he hasn't even been held since their days together as teenagers.  The movie ends not with a Hallmark confession of love and romantic kissing, but with Kevin holding Chiron.

It's a perfect ending that seems understated, but for Chiron is an explosion.  It's a knocking down of walls.  It's the proof that behind that tough man is still that gentle boy.  It's him taking a moment to be vulnerable and human no matter how much he has been made to suffer for it.  As someone who himself was quite gentle and sensitive as a boy, who grew up in a working class Latino neighborhood that sometimes pushed me to be tough to avoid going through some of what we see Chiron go through in this movie, that ending always hits me like a ton of bricks.  It's a real triumph, precisely because it's so understated and poetic.

Closing Thoughts

Of course, all of these layers I just discussed are intertwined.  Each affects the other, because as human beings we are everything- our social identities, our individual personalities, our greater human longings and aspirations.  Barry Jenkins reminds me of James Baldwin in that way- while some artists can hone in on exploring the individual depth of a person, and others can explore how their social identities affect them, Baldwin and Jenkins showcase an ability to explore both.  Which is why Jenkins was such an inspired choice to direct the movie adaption of his novel If Beale Street Could Talk after this movie.

I work two jobs.  One is at an after-school program at an elementary school.  One thing I try to do is be a supportive, nurturing person for all my students.  This includes boys like young Chiron, like young me, who don't respond to problems and hardships with masculine bravado.  Some of these boys I work with, even the younger ones, have already started to internalize the idea that there is something wrong with their lack of aggression.  That there is something wrong with them.  I do what I can to teach them that it's okay, that they don't have to worry about being vulnerable or sad.

I think of this movie a lot when I deal with those boys.  It's a real testament to what good art can do.  That's why, to me, it's a modern masterpiece.