Moonlight, directed by Barry Jenkins

i've seen it!

my husband loves it and has loved it for years and made me watch it when we first started dating

i found it forgettable, but now i want to rewatch it

moonlight, i loved though.

not a white person, not a black person, not sure how to score the fact that i loved moonlight.

Moonlight > MfM, but not really by a million miles.

someone tell me about all these countless films about gay black people.

I know you're probably talking about "hits," but there are a fair number.

Medicine... is not very good, and the time is right for the Moonlight backlash to claim the first film as the superior.

it's not, but i suspect future barry jenkins films could resemble it more closely.

Best Picture! Didn't see that coming.

Neither did Warren Bratty.

Moonlight feels right

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/arts/music/moonlight-movie-score-music-oscars.html?_r=0

Chamber music might not seem like an obvious candidate to be “chopped and screwed”: remixed and slowed down in the style pioneered by DJ Screw when he transformed Houston’s hip-hop scene a generation ago. But that unlikely inspiration helped give the film “Moonlight,” whose score is nominated for an Academy Award, its otherworldly sound.

The unusual idea emerged when the film’s director, Barry Jenkins, was batting around musical possibilities with its composer, Nicholas Britell, and Mr. Jenkins mentioned his love of chopped and screwed tracks. (The style can give songs a woozy, psychedelic flavor.)

“When you slow the music down, the pitch goes down,” Mr. Britell, 36, said in an interview in his Manhattan studio. “And you actually get this audio texture which is deepened and enriched and you hear more things in it. It sort of opens it up and stretches it out.”

“I chopped and screwed the recording,”

Did you though? You pitched it down. Good job.

I've only heard the main theme that was on Song Exploder and it seems like people are making waaay too big a deal out of it. Haven't seen Moonlight yet however, so I'll assume it works really well in the movie.

I didn't buy the steady goodness of Ali and Monae but accepted it as part of the movie's structure.

Yeah, it helped that they played it just right.

The critic Mike d'Angelo wrote a lengthy critique on Letterboxd, the main points that struck me as solid were 1) Chiron is a total cipher, aside from the suffering inflicted on him by others and 2) the Act II climax is overdetermined, following up bliss with violence inflicted by the beloved.

"Raise the stakes," the Syd Field types insist, and so not only does Chiron regularly get bullied by assholes for being different, but said assholes also subsequently pressure the one person in the world who's expressed sexual desire for Chiron into beating the living shit out of him. It doesn't get much more shameless than giving the miserable protagonist a single fleeting moment of happiness and then instantly (I think it's actually the very next scene) snatching it away from him in the ugliest possible way. Likewise, I confess to mostly rolling my eyes at Chiron's final incarnation. Is it plausible that he would harden up considerably to escape his world of pain? Absolutely. But is it plausible that he would almost literally transform himself into the man who had been his childhood protector, right down to the wardrobe? That's more Screenwriting 101 nonsense: "Your ending should circle back to your beginning." .... Dial it down 50%, make him slightly more menacing rather than a barely recognizable musclebound badass (with a wounded little boy inside; kudos to Trevante Rhodes for conveying that so beautifully, even if I find the concept ridiculous), and I'd probably be as moved as everyone else.

https://letterboxd.com/gemko/film/moonlight-2016/1/

agree 100%

It doesn't get much more shameless than giving the miserable protagonist a single fleeting moment of happiness and then instantly (I think it's actually the very next scene) snatching it away from him in the ugliest possible way.

enh I think this is a pretty common experience for adolescents in one way or another, though I agree w/ everyone else on the third section being too far a leap

It's definitely not a movie that lends itself to this type of scrutiny

It does happen, but the script was in a rush to punish him.

Love hurts shrug.gif

imo Moonlight is an interesting inversion of the usual Oscar movie, where you generally have fine-enough writing paired with unremarkable / pedestrian directing (or worse) - for me almost everything that worked about Moonlight was purely aesthetic

kid who played teen Kevin was in my friend's son's class at LaGuardia (ie "Fame") High School, saw them in a play there

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C5p0RCZUsAA6kc0.jpg

is the transformation really that hard to believe? scrawny little kids become hulking adults all the time. they even make a big deal about his appetite. and it seemed to me that the incident at the end of the second section, with the chair, was him discovering a persona that could protect him. id almost go to other extreme; in that the performance showed his fragility so clearly it seems hard to believe anyone would buy that he was a tough guy in the first place.

worst part of this was the score and that they killed of Ali in the first act (but that's the source's fault)

I thought killing off Ali was a bold but brave decision. Story first, characters later.

is the transformation really that hard to believe? scrawny little kids become hulking adults all the time. they even make a big deal about his appetite. and it seemed to me that the incident at the end of the second section, with the chair, was him discovering a persona that could protect him. id almost go to other extreme; in that the performance showed his fragility so clearly it seems hard to believe anyone would buy that he was a tough guy in the first place.

― ryan,

I believed the metamorphosis; I didn't believe the movie's enchantment with repression.

yeah, Like Every Gay Film Ever ('cept not anymore, necessarily)

FWIW, this could be a relevant read (just published today)

http://www.theroot.com/to-be-held-by-moonlight-1792774994

I thought the score was the most outstanding element of this.

i like that that article emphasized the theme of touching, since that is the element i found most moving about it. franco berardi's eulogy for mark fisher defined depression as an "inability to be touched" and that phrase immediately brought this movie to mind. and even though i accept and defer to the smart critique above of the second act betrayal there's something about its inversion of "touch" into violence which seems meaningful for the struggle of the two characters. that being touched or allowing yourself to be touched also creates that vulnerability in the first place.

I actually think Moonlight and MbtS complement each other in interesting ways w/r/t commenting on homosocial norms, trauma, and coming of age

Embarrassing admission: I don't remember Ali getting killed off.

it happens btwn the first and 2nd acts, is why you don't remember (though it is referenced)

I actually think Moonlight and MbtS complement each other in interesting ways w/r/t commenting on homosocial norms, trauma, and coming of age

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), 28. februar 2017 00:15 (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's interesting. I was all ready to write something about the similarities between Moonlight and La La Land, particularly that they both end with a reunion of old lovers after years apart. Though that was obviously also partly because they were the two frontrunners.

I mean, MbtS *also* features such a reunion...

Y'all should watch Being 17 when it's out on DVD in a few weeks: a better film about being gay, young, and black. But that's where I'll stop. It's not fair to compare André Téchiné, a 35-year veteran, with Barry Jenkins.

Hm. I might prefer Moonlight? Both are good, though, but there's a hunger to Moonlight.

Arrival also deals with how past trauma has unraveled a relationship, right?

I don't remember Ali getting killed off.

The reference is to not seeing Teresa since "the funeral." It's not explicitly stated he was killed, though the assumption by the viewer is natural and presumably intentional.

Did anyone else think Naomie Harris' performance was uneven at best, and her character rendered in overfamiliar terms? I didn't recognize her as Ms Moneypenny/28 Days Later/White Teeth/Brit actress etc.

she made no impression on me

i'd have to ReScreen to double check but iirc there is an explicit reference to Ali getting killed, one of the bullies saying "Juan's dead, can't save you now" or something?

explicit reference to him being dead, though not how he died

ohhh ok misread. i thought "killed off" in the context of the movies meant by the writers, not literally murdered

finally watched this. 2 walkouts at the midday screening. presumably people who found it 'slow' and not what they expected from a best picture winner. or maybe it was just too black and gay. either way, if i hadnt known about his previous film, id have thought this was a debut.

jenkins obv knows about images, but im not sure he knows that much about drama, or narrative, or connecting the viewer with emotion. for the first two parts, i felt like i was watching something very well observed, but not that felt, though obv the beach scene, and the beatdown scenes were hard not to feel, so maybe that isnt quite what i mean.. the last act is the one i wish had been longer. that ending, coming right after chiron reveals the most heartbreaking line of the film (and one of the most heartbreaking lines of any film ive seen lately actually) was almost jarring. it should not have ended there at all. ridiculous. i hope jenkins doesnt have the disease of the Abrupt Spike Lee Ending.

aside from all that, the performances in this were incredible, though mahershala ali's part was too small i think to deserve anything. the real prize winning parts in this are the guy who played grown up, gold fronts wearing chiron (who doesnt look like the teen but who cares) and the teenage chiron. their performances are quietly devastating. jenkins is brilliant at small scale drama, those small emotional moments, and he seems good at getting those out of his actors. not sure about the mothers addiction narrative. i think that should have been placed a little more in the background.

it is an odd best picture winner though. its more a festival fave than a big crowd pleaser. but if it introduces more ppl to modern arthouse fare, then thats no bad thing.

i loved the screwed songs on the soundtrack BTW (though the caetano veloso song seemed not to belong). not really listened to any C&S stuff in about ten years so it def made me wanna go and seek it out again.

the ending really annoyed me TBH. if it was an earlier era, id have maybe assumed they ran out of money to complete it but here, im thinking they just didnt write anything more for it. :( its like the ending to the pilot for a TV series, not an ending to a 2 hour feature.

I was taken out by the Caetano Veloso song as well, it's so connected to Talk to Her in my mind. But it's a Spanish song, and he's traveling back to Miami, so in a way it fits? Though it does seem to also pointedly go against expectations.

wasn't the Veloso song juxtaposed against the scene of Chiron on the turnpike? It didn't work.

Yeah. It's on the turnpike, towards home. Worked for me.

wasnt it in a WKW film too? (i forget which one)

ML reminded me a *bit* of carol, not just cos of the LGBT theme, but in how that also felt a bit removed and overly stylised, though moonlight wasnt nearly as distant as that one, and carol didnt make me well up like ML did at the end

its more a festival fave than a big crowd pleaser.

The movie won the Oscar as a Trump-counterrevolutionary act + OscarSoWhite corrective.

wasnt it in a WKW film too? (i forget which one)

ML reminded me a *bit* of carol, not just cos of the LGBT theme, but in how that also felt a bit removed and overly stylised, though moonlight wasnt nearly as distant as that one, and carol didnt make me well up like ML did at the end

― StillAdvance, 2. marts 2017 12:58 (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Could be, Jenkins has underscored how much he was inspired by Wong and Hou (and it has annoyed me bit to see the disconnect between how much Jenkins talks about Asian cinema, and how often reviewers just say it looks 'European') but they sing it live in Talk to Her :) Fantastic scene.

With both Carol and Moonlight, I thought the stylization connected well with the narrative. Carol is of course stunning to look at, and much more self assured than Moonlight, and is based on fifties photographs, many of them by female photographers, such as Therese. I thought it worked as a way of underlining how so much of what Therese has to do is to learn how to look at and be looked at differently. Moonlight almost seemed to try and figure out what it was in realtime, what a black gay film in 2016 even means, the same way that Chiron has to. And not everything worked - for me it was a lot of the camera-movements, that seemed stereotypically American indie-film - but I was captivated by all of it.