Moonlight Film Analysis

The film Moonlight was released October 21, 2016. Moonlight is all African American cast, and was awarded over 25 awards including the Academy Award for best picture. This film is a coming of age story that follows the dramatic ups and downs of the life of Chiron, a young Africa American man growing up in Miami. The plot begins from the time he is in elementary school to the time he reaches adulthood. The plot is structured in three stages of the life of Chiron and touches on the topics of the struggle of dysfunctional households via socialization, sexuality and sexual identity, physical and emotion abuse, and the process of accepting ones self.

This is a criticism of Moonlight, a film directed by Barry Jenkins. It is a coming-of-age story, telling the journey of a young gay black man named Chiron. Through linear character development the film follows a young Chiron from adolescence into adulthood while growing up with alpha males in Miamis black ghettos. The Story is told in three parts, with a different actor playing the lead role in each section: a young Chiron named “Little”, as a teen named “Chiron”, and an adult named “Black”. Despite a compelling lead performance by Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris, and its great soundtrack, Moonlight falls flat and never gets out of the shadow of its typical cliche plot, all the while, the film continued to never overcome the obstacle of

The movie Before Night Falls directed by Julian Schnabel offers viewers a glimpse of how the homosexual community in Cuba was being mistreated under Fidel Castro’s regime. The true story is told in the eyes of Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas. The film depicts Arenas life in Cuba and all of the awful experiences that he had to deal with as a homosexual. Eventually he was arrested for false accusations of being a molester, however, he was actually under arrest for being a homosexual. Between the 1930s and 1990s, the Communist Cuba was abusive to the LGBT community as shown in their actions of harassment towards homosexuals, imprisoning the homosexuals, or sending them to re-education camps.

Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight depicts the coming-of-age of a young black boy as he struggles with and endures abuse for his sexuality, causing him to hide his internal conflicts. The life of the protagonist, Chiron, is split into his three main stages of life, with each part focusing on the physical and emotional abuse he endures due to his homosexual orientation. When the viewer first meets Chiron, he is running from bullies. As he ages, the bullying follows him, causing him to harden and avoid vulnerability in his adult life. Jenkins uses climactic scenes in Chiron’s life to portray how prejudice against black sexuality forces him to conceal his true identity. In Moonlight, Jenkins’ cinematic style illustrates Chiron’s public and private

The black characters in the novel are all victims of this “separate but equal” mentality; the younger characters yearn for real equality and the older characters have settled in to their lives by accepting their “fate.” The existing structures of society in Bayonne, Louisiana prevent black characters such as Grant Wiggins and Vivian from ever breaking out of their social class; both are forced to remain in their lives as teachers of young black children who will also grow up to live limited lives. Wiggins says of his classroom, “I’m the teacher... and I

black man fights against, constantly trying to identify himself. At the same time, black men have found approaches to detach from this narrow minded image that society has created for them including; sports, education and family. The black male struggles to gain his own identity because there is already a firm image created for them that the white man visualizes the black male and the expectations of the black male. However, it isn’t just the society that plays a role in the development of the black males identity, there is also the consideration of how black males are brought up or raised in their current lifestyle situations. For example, athletes,

Barry Jenkins’ award winning film Moonlight is based on the coming of age play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, written by Tarell Alvin McCraney. This story follows Chiron Black in three different phases of his life. This film highlights many of the things that plague black boys questioning their identity, but does so in a way that captures the innocence and vulnerability of the process. At first glance, one may think Moonlight is just another stereotypical coming of age story – a young black boy with a drug addicted mother and no father, living in a neighborhood riddled with drug addiction, who is confused about who he is. It does play into those stereotypes, but with good reason. Those tropes highlight the contrasts between the life he is ‘supposed’ to live, and who he really is (even if he doesn’t realize it).

Many times we do not feel like we are an individual, but another piece of a giant puzzle of other pieces just like each other. This is similar the story of the narrator in Invisible Man who is a young African American Man living in 1930s American society. After he is expelled from school, the narrator is forced to go to the north in search of employment to work and then return to school. However, life is not as easy as he thought it was going to be and is forced to confront the reality that he is black and many different things come along with that. On his journey, it becomes clear to him that there are many stereotypes that are associated with his race, which then translates into racists ideologies that forces him to realize that all along he has been an invisible man, hidden amongst other people and forced to be just like all the other black people, rather than take on his own identity

“The most exciting moment is the moment when I add the sound… At this moment, I tremble.” (Akira Kurosawa) Sound is arguably the most important concept in cinema studies, being there ever since the beginnings. It can radically change the way a motion picture is looked at and it can render what the director may sometimes find hard to depict using only his camera. Looking upon silent cinema one discovers an era which wasn’t at all silent, but rich in sound of different forms, from the simple narration of the images shown on screen, accompanied by a piano, to the complex score later composed specifically for that film. An example of that complex score is shown in Sunrise, a film by F.W. Murnau, which lies at the border between silent cinema and sound cinema. Considered to be one of the first films with an actual score, Sunrise is a great example of the multitude of dimensions and effects sound can have.

Humans are constantly criticized for being “different,” so forming an identity within a judgemental and violent community proves to be mentally exhausting. Moonlight (2016) by renowned director Barry Jenkins, vividly depicts three different stages of the life of a boy named Chiron while he transforms from a young boy to a man who struggles with coping to find who he truly is. Living in a poor crime-ridden neighborhood in Miami, Florida, Chiron goes through many trials and tribulations throughout his life to find who he is in a society that gives no mercy to anyone in it. Throughout this story, Chiron battles with forming an identity for himself as he comes to terms with being a homosexual black male who is trying to conceal the utmost fragility of who he really is. Through clever techniques used within the diegesis and mise-en-scene, Moonlight illustrates the difficulties a low-class homosexual African American man must experience throughout his life to be accepted into society as a result of not always conforming to ideas surrounding gender and race.

Imagine if you go outside your front door and you look left. There are two people dealing cocaine. You look right and there is someone being robbed with a gun. The movie Moonlight tells a story about a kid named Chiron who was different from everyone else, because he is different he got picked on and got taken advantage by everyone else including his mother, Paula. When Chiron had an opportunity to start all over he pretended to be someone he wasn’t so he could survive and be respected by others. The film shows Chiron in the parts of his life, when he was a kid the others called him Little, throughout his teenage years he was called Chiron, and as an adult he was Black. The movie took place in Miami, Florida in the “hood” around the 1980’s

Identity is transitional. Not one identity is held constant throughout one’s life. Thus, the intersectionality of one’s identity conveys how complicated humans are. This complex nature of humans is brought to life in the movie Moonlight. Directed by Barry Jenkins, this coming of age film explores the many facets of identity in the main character, Chiron. Chiron is not the only fully thought character; every named character parallels people of all walks of life. Through the intricacies of the characters, stereotypes are presented and shattered. But, the film’s central point is not to counter stereotypes. Moonlight tells a story of reality where stereotypes are rooted in truth. Consequently, Moonlight plays into a majority of stereotypes of class, race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight is a masterful queer coming-of-age story told in three parts - Two years after Richard Linklater’s masterpiece Boyhood composed a unique passage of time portraying realistic preciousness of a young man on the journey to manhood, Jenkins continues the coming-of-age instrument further from Linklater. Diving into the brutal conditions of Miami streets, Moonlight shatters the dated template of masculinity with a potent story of closeted homosexuality among black men. The film rises above the wrongful stereotypes associated with sexual orientation and urban environments.

From the moment you turn on a Wes Anderson movie, you can easily recognize it’s his due to the unique style. Moonrise Kingdom is one of his most popular and stylized films to date. One scene in particular I want to look into is the scene when Scout Master Ward and the other scouts are introduced. (5:31- 8:39) This scene is important to setting up the rest of the movie. It introduces us to the antagonists for the first part of the film as well as showing that Sam ran away from the camp.

Moonlight is an American drama film that chronicles the life of African-American male Chiron, who is being raised by a careless mother in a harsh Miami neighbourhood. Its most prominent themes are love, stereotypes and identity. The filmmakers create meaning from these through combining different elements of aesthetics (the style or look of a motion picture). Aesthetic effect refers to the practise of using different elements of a film (mise-en-scene, sound, cinematography and editing) to generate film form.