Moonlight, directed by Barry Jenkins

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.

The Caetano song was in Wong's HAPPY TOGETHER.

carol is very icey. a film that seems to think being 'cold' makes it a superior film experience.

with hou, most people dont know his films. and his style of filmmaking is so different to american or european arthouse, im not sure most ppl know what to make of it.

wong is an interesting one, as no one seems to talk about *him* since the 90s. his ranking isnt what it was. so its interesting to see jenkins almost rescuscitate his reputation. obv, in the mood for love is still a classic, but WKW is sort of forgotten about IMO.

icey is sort of a compliment. i just think the characters and their relationship were poorly developed. amazing to look at, nothing to connect with.

Carol lept to my mind too as it was another film half in love with easeful repression.

seriously, i demand a sequel to ML

you cant have chiron tell kev what he did (trying top avoid spoilers here) in that last scene and end it there.

Kev didn't put the cilantro on Chiron's beans.

The ending didn't bother me at all tbh.

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

I nearly had to walkout for at least a break cuz I felt vaguely motion sick from the camera movement

Both Jenkins and Hayes seems obsessed with performativity, the way gender and identity is acted out. Chiron being told he has to walk and talk a certain way, so as not to be instantly recognizable as gay. And when he becomes stereotypically straight, he also becomes stereotypically black - his final name change is a bit on the nose - at least in the eyes of others.

This was very, very good.

i happen to be reading john updikes 'the centaur' ~ interesting to learn abt the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiron

I feel bad, but I found this kind of... bland? Some great performances (Harris aside) but so much cliche.

I really wish it was better. I couldn't say I could give it any more than 5 or 6 /10. It's just so... underpowered.

I like that quietitude about it. Very breezy film, given its abrupt ending. Great soundtrack. Overall, the journey to that fragile masculinity was well done but some of it just didn't scan.

Happy Together is a good call - like to re-watch it now.

I was watching some of OJ - Made in America. The first part where it talks about the projects and its traumas immediately after, so a lot of that story seemed well captured.

its a very delicately put together movie. sometimes too much so. very aware of its own sensitivities. but thats this kind of filmmaking for you.

does make me think more of in the mood for love in that sense, more than HT.

I found it flimsy - as a character study, as a mood piece, as a Miami movie - but I couldn't tell if that was deliberate (i.e. vagueness-as-universalism) or bad screenwriting, or just me as a Brit missing some obvious signifiers. The repellence of that Sunday Times writeup made me want to like it more than I actually did.

the Miami part of the movie was its least convincing

You'd know by default, Alfred, but I kinda liked how it was showing a Miami that was empty. Not deserted, just...quiet, and unlike the media stereotype which is all I've ever known of the area.

http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.2581256.1459270695!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_750/296williamsl-20010630-10812-jpg.jpg

http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/DorothyCondoms.gif

As I say!

I've heard it all the way here, back in St. Olaf!

No queer cultural touchstone is safe from a Horny Grandmas ref

In this case, offered merely as a corrective to The Turdcage.

A quick point... there's something significant i haven't seen discussed in the first (major?) scene btwn the 7-year-old boys: the urging by Kevin that Little not "be soft," and the fight/play/wrestling that follows. No one (outside of a clinical context) is allowed to say out loud very often in America that children are sexual beings, but given the future path of these two boys, it seems partly like an act of nascent sexplay.