Moonlight

By: Kat Smith

4/5 Stars

*Trigger warning: physical violence and abuse.

Summary

When this movie came out a few years ago, I heard a lot of good things about it. And I have to say; it definitely measured up to my expectations. Moonlight follows a black gay man as he grows up. The movie is broken up into three parts–Chiron as a child, as a teen, and then finally, as an adult. Chiron’s life isn’t easy, and at some parts this movie is especially heart-wrenching to watch. As the viewers, we get to follow Chiron and see how his life changes him, shapes him, and how he becomes the man he becomes. We see how even a little bit of kindness goes a long way, and how certain people make a lasting impact in a person’s life.

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Spoilers Start Here

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Okay, first of all, let’s start with the important stuff. Janelle Monae is in this movie. And she rocked the roll of the pseudo-adoptive mother figure that Chiron so desperately needed. Obviously, that’s not the most important take-away from this film, but, you know. Janelle Monae.

Anyway, the movie starts with young Chiron being chased by a group of boys who are intent on beating the crap out of him. The poor kid is so terrified that he ends up hiding in a fairly decrepit abandoned house, where he is then rescued by the man (named Juan) who later becomes his father figure. Incidentally, this is also the man who sells his mother drugs, and after meeting the young struggling boy, Juan is forced to confront the harm that he is perpetuating in Chiron’s life.

This was a fantastic twist, because viewers are forced to see Juan as a person and not the evil caricature of a drug-dealer that is often seen on TV. He truly cares for Chiron. He takes him swimming in the ocean and allows him stay at his house for a night or two because he didn’t want to go home. But he is also an enabler to Chiron’s misfortune. Of course, if Paula (Chiron’s mother), couldn’t get her drugs from Juan, she would go somewhere else. But Juan didn’t have to be the one to sell to her.

Mahershala Ali does an amazing job of playing Juan’s guilt out on screen. It’s a complicated situation, and there is this underlying sense that Juan doesn’t really want to be doing what he is doing. Unfortunately, we don’t get any more backstory than that, because in the next chapter of Chiron’s life Juan is dead. But more on that when we talk about part two.

When Juan meets Chiron, Chiron refuses to tell Juan where he lives. Juan takes Chiron home in the hopes that his girlfriend (Janelle Monae!!!!’s character Theresa) can get him to talk. Instead of trying to force the information out of him, however, she says “he’ll talk when he’s ready,” and leaves it at that. Chiron eventually does talk and Juan takes him home, only to have a brief encounter with Paula in which she tells him to stay away from her son.

But Chiron refuses to stay away from Juan, and ends up back on his doorstep with questions. During one of these visits, Chiron asks Juan one of those heartbreaking questions that children ask when they have been mistreated by their peers.

“What’s a faggot?” Chiron asks.

“A faggot is a word used to make gay people feel bad,” Juan says.

“Am I a faggot?”

“No. You’re not a faggot. You can be gay, but you don’t gotta let nobody call you a faggot.”

Juan handles this situation in such an amazing way. It’s clear from the way Juan acts during this scene that that he wasn’t expecting this little boy to ask him something like that, but he answers honestly and clearly while still letting Chiron know that being gay is okay. This is one of those scenes that is so difficult to watch, because even though Juan made sure to be accepting of Chiron, it is painful to see such a little kid ask a question like that. It’s the kind of question that tells you how much this child has been through, and how far he still has to go.

In Part Two of this movie, we see Chiron in adolescence, still being bullied by his peers. He hides out in the school until the very last minute so that he doesn’t have to face the bullies outside. Even so, there is one person that Chiron relates to, and has related to since he was a little boy. Kevin, a charismatic young man who refers to Chiron as “Black,” walks a tightrope between the school bullies and his longtime friend. When everyone else seems to view Chiron with disdain, Kevin is there with some good-natured jokes and company.

Chiron eventually gets up the courage to leave school, and is harassed by the other boys for going to see his stand-in mom, Theresa. But after having been told by Paula that he needs to “find somewhere else” to stay that night, he has no other choice than to go to Theresa’s.

The environment at her house couldn’t be more different than Chiron’s home with Paula. Theresa is supportive and is truly interested in Chiron’s life and how he is doing. She always makes sure that he knows he has a place with her if he needs somewhere to stay, and she sends him home with some money just in case.

This doesn’t go over well with his biological mother. Paula is both threatened by Theresa’s influence with her son and in great need of it, as she can’t provide him with the same necessities that Theresa can. Mainly, her selfless attention and affection. Paula often leaves Chiron to fend for himself, kicking him out so she can “have company” over and shoot up with the drugs she can’t get enough of. Because Theresa isn’t addicted to a substance, she can give Chiron her time, her love, and material possessions. Paula needs her for this reason. She needs Theresa around to take care of her son, and to provide him with money that she later takes off of him to feed her habit. But she resents this need, because she can’t give Chiron any of that herself, and so she takes it out on her son.

When Chiron comes home from Theresa’s, he is assaulted by his mother, who demands the money he came home with. Denying it doesn’t do any good, as Paula won’t take no for an answer physically grabs at him until he ponies up the cash.

Besides Theresa, it really seems that the only person in Chiron’s life that he finds any sort of emotional support from is Kevin, who he makes a surprise encounter with on the beach late at night. Chiron and Kevin talk and smoke, which eventually leads to Chiron’s first sexual encounter. Chiron tells Kevin that that was his first time with anyone, which makes his betrayal the next day so much worse.

Kevin is pressured into beating up Chiron for the students who make it their duty to make the poor boy’s life a living hell. Kevin attacks Chiron outside of the school, and because the other boys are there, is forced to keep hitting him every time he gets back up. He yells at Chiron to stay down, but he doesn’t and is beaten badly.

This leads Chiron to attack the boy who set Kevin on him, and he hits him hard across the back with a wooden chair, breaking it to pieces and sending the boy down to the ground immediately. As he proceeds to beat the boy, his teachers and fellow classmates rush forward to hold him back. This scene leads to Chiron’s first arrest.

Part Three starts off with Chiron, who is now in charge of his own street corner just like Juan was. A lot has changed for Chiron in the interval of time since we last saw him, and he is no longer the nervous boy who tried so hard to stay out of trouble. Now he’s a man who stands up for himself, but he is no less stuck than when he was a boy. He has become sucked into the world of drugs and violence that he didn’t want to be in when this movie started, an endless cycle that is so difficult to escape.

When Chiron receives a phone call from Kevin, who is now a cook at a restaurant in Miami, asking him to stop in one day, if he has the chance. He doesn’t say so right away, but it’s clear that he is looking to mend fences, and Chiron doesn’t totally know what to make of this new twist.

It isn’t until he goes to visit Paula, who is now in rehab, that he makes a decision about what to do with Kevin’s offer. Paula is another character who has changed quite a bit during her time off-screen, and she is now committed to getting clean. During her visit with her son, they have an emotional talk about his childhood, how she doesn’t want him to work the streets like she did, and how sorry she is that she wasn’t what he deserved.

“I mean, you ain’t gotta love me,” she says. “Lord knows I did not have love for you when you needed it, I know that. So you ain’t gotta love me. But you gon’ know that I love you.”

This sparks something for Chiron, and inspires him to drive to Miami to the very restaurant where Kevin works. Kevin and Chiron’s reunion is bittersweet, as things are so different than when they last knew each other. Kevin is working on turning his life around, and although he has compassion for where Chiron is in his life, he is shocked to find that he is selling drugs on the street.

Although they are in such different places in life, Chiron and Kevin find a middle ground in each other, and their past experiences. They manage to find a place of forgiveness and compassion and intimacy. All of which are things that Chiron had been shutting out for the last decade of his life.

“You the only man that’s ever touched me,” Chiron says to Kevin, “The only one.”

The movie ends with Chiron and Kevin cuddling together in Kevin’s apartment, Chiron finally looking at peace. This is a great ending scene that pulls everything together and allows Chiron to finally have a bit of healing. After struggling with himself for so long, not just his sexual identity but his whole self, he is able to find a safe place to land.

For a majority of Moonlight, Chiron isn’t allowed to be safe. He lives with a mother with addiction problems, is constantly picked on for being gay, and is in a community in which the gang lifestyle is difficult to escape from. Chiron didn’t get to have a childhood or even an adolescence in which he was well cared for and comfortable in his own skin. His life is full of difficult decisions and pain. It isn’t surprising that he tried to shut himself down to keep from dealing with it. What makes this movie amazing, though, is that he was willing to give himself another chance at the end of it. Deciding to change your whole life isn’t something easy. Deciding to accept yourself and what you’ve been through isn’t easy. That takes courage. And by the end of this movie, Chiron had that in abundance.