It might be the best movie of the year, and it's a Black gay love story

November 6, 2016 9:04 PM

Moonlight (official site with trailer)

Moonlight Undoes Our Expectations by Hilton Als (New Yorker)

Is This the Year’s Best Movie? A.O. Scott (NYT)

Barry Jenkins’ stunning movie showers its audience in blessings by Dana Stevens (Slate)

In 'Moonlight,' Growing Up Black, Gay And Poor In 1980s Miami (NPR)

Moonlight Chronicles Discovering One’s Sexual Identity in the Worst of Circumstances by Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D. (The Root)

5 Reasons Moonlight Might Just Be the Best Movie of the Year (Queerty)

Moonlight Director Barry Jenkins on What Scared Him Most About Making Such a Personal Film by Aisha Harris (Slate Represent)

Barry Jenkins on Why the Exquisite Film Nearly Killed Him by Emily Buder (No Film School)

Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Play Got Shelved. Then It Inspired The Year’s Best Film, Moonlight. by Anupa Mistry (Fader)

The Sad, Surreal Experience of Seeing an Audience Laugh at Moonlight by E. Alex Jung (Vulture)

posted by thetortoise (14 comments total)

Makes sense to me. Tangerine(2015) was last year's best movie by leaps and bounds (of technology ;) and also a love story (of friendship) and a Christmas movie to boot! May we all be blessed in Toyland.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 9:09 PM on November 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

I hope this movie wins all the awards and love that Nate Parker's movie was "supposed" to get. More black queer people-living-their-lives stories in cinema, please.
posted by nicebookrack at 9:24 PM on November 6, 2016 [8 favorites]

I saw it last week and I've been sitting on a FanFare post since then, since I wanted to wait until distribution widened before hitting the button, but now this exists, so hooray! Anyway, I intended to link to this (IMO really bad) review in my post from Slant Magazine where the reviewer complains that "so much of the film feels old-hat." On paper there's a certain logic to it, since we've seen the character archetypes that Juan and Paula inhabit many times before. I don't see that as a deficiency, though, and in fact I think it's done very purposefully here: the movie makes us inhabit Chiron's mental space by taking these familiar characters and filtering them through his perspective (one of many ways that the movie so perfectly gets his interiority across), forcing them to negotiate with his queerness. Honestly, it's barely even subtext considering the title of the source play.

But mostly I think that review is bad because its demand that the movie exhibit some formal novelty seems to miss the point so badly. The movie loves its main characters. It acknowledges their pain, but it doesn't fetishize it, since it wants most of all to give them the space to love each other. It wields the medium gracefully to do that, but I can't imagine coming away from it thinking that the way it did so was the point of the movie.
posted by invitapriore at 10:02 PM on November 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

A few more articles I should've included:
How 'Moonlight' Allows Black Manhood To Exist Beyond Toxic Masculinity

Eight black men dissect Barry Jenkins' momentous film

Moonlight Musings & Motherhood: On Paula, Teresa and the Complicated Role of (Bad) Black Mamas in Film
posted by thetortoise at 10:28 PM on November 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

Nothing I've read about Moonlight compares to that opening shot.

(Also, I NEED that version of "Classic Man"... oof.)
posted by raihan_ at 10:54 PM on November 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

I haven't stopped thinking about it since I saw it a week ago. I don't even have words.
posted by janey47 at 11:11 PM on November 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

After seeing McCraney's Brother/Sister plays I am believing the hype. Moonlight probably is the best movie this year and I cannot wait to see it.
posted by caddis at 3:06 AM on November 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

On the October 26 episode of Code Switch Gene Demby interviewed Barry Jenkins and it was excellent.
posted by ChuraChura at 5:17 AM on November 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Saw this and will confirm it is great. Pair with The Fits, a coming of age story also released this year which delves into gender, magical realism, and dance squads.
posted by gusandrews at 6:12 AM on November 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Moonlight was awesome, but wonder if Little/Chiron may have been autistic(or had another mental health issue) instead of LBGT in the beginning of the movie. I second the gusandrews recommendations of the Fits one of the few movies that portrays gender, race, poverty, and public housing in a positive light.
posted by basketballandinternet at 6:25 AM on November 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

The film's creators interview on Fresh Air is not to be missed.
posted by HappyHippo at 6:30 AM on November 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Moonlight was awesome, but wonder if Little/Chiron may have been autistic(or had another mental health issue) instead of LBGT in the beginning of the movie.

I think there are a lot of valid ways to read Chiron, but he could be both. That was my partner's first observation walking out of the movie, that she thought he was autistic.
posted by thetortoise at 6:40 AM on November 7, 2016

I cannot wait to see this. Sadly, no showings in NC yet...
posted by bologna on wry at 12:33 PM on November 7, 2016

Moonlight was awesome, but wonder if Little/Chiron may have been autistic(or had another mental health issue) instead of LBGT in the beginning of the movie.

I just saw it last night, and that interpretation never even crossed my mind since he so canonically matches the "soft" gay kid archetype.

Regardless, he's clearly a kid who is singled out for being "different" (it really captures well how other kids are uncannily good at sniffing that out) and regardless of why, he's (a) had to learn to run and escape for self-preservation and (b) become frustratingly pouty and withdrawn around adults. The portrayal of that latter aspect reminded me so much of so many kids I've known, I have to applaud.
posted by psoas at 8:55 AM on November 8, 2016