Moonlight

Or: Manhood

Based on the semi-autobiographical play by adaptor Terrell Alvin McCraney (already immortalized for his future epitaph “Exit— in pursuit of that a*s) Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight is a watery and moving wash of memory and experience. Following the life of Chiron AKA Little AKA Black (played in innocence by Alex Hibbert, adolescence by Ashton Sanders and adulthood by Trevante Rhodes) coming of age in Miami, as his spirit is crushed and reformed by poverty and cruelty, Jenkins view (and his cinematographer James Laxton) sweep and twirl us though intimate and breathtaking sweeps of the camera sinking us into Chiron’s point of view. The detail ’s it picks out and the cunning of its prospective are splendid in execution but all the spinning can lead to occasional feelings of nausea.

Moonlights most striking feature is it’s intimacy. the eroticism (in all three chapters) sprays from off the screen like a grocery store mister: ever surprising and all pervasive. The vulnerability of these men and boys, either as kin or as friends is stunningly simple and runs rings around the usual heavy and shorthanded expressions of Hollywood. And once it settles into a distinct “memory” or story it takes on a symphonic beauty, as a swimming lesson given by Juan (the ever excellent Mahershala Ali) Chiron’s protector, or a determined march to exact vengeance against the school bully Terrell (Patrick Decile), or a cuban dish made with love and slow motion by Kevin (Jaden Piner, Jharell Jerome and, in this scene by, André Holland). The slow story, constructed in the same shots, of Chrion taking up the mantel of his former protector also has a bleak poetry.

The film is blessed by a splendid cast who marinade themselves in this swelter soupy world, even, indeed especially, young Hibbert. Even Decile and the bystanders throw themselves in fully to their pieces, exuding without performing. Jenkins’s script, geared towards realism, doesn’t give his cast much in the way of sterling lines to spin but most can carry it off via expression. One notable performance is Naomi Harris as Chrion’s mother Paula, showing both a tired sweetness and a unfettered violence when drug addled. Another, supremely sterling performance is Holland. His Kevin is sweetness itself, and the mingling of desire, bashfulness, confidence and cool as he feels out where his long estranged friend stands towards him, towards them. It’s no wonder Rhodes’s eyes dilate and his breathing becomes heavy; what a gift for two actors to give and receive. Their patience rescue the film from it’s sometimes languorous, Eno-y pace and serve as the bright, entrancing glimmers in its sorrowful, watery slosh.