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. The first stage of the film showcases the early stages of development through higher …show more content…
Even though Juan tries to help Chiron by teaching him how to swim and stand up for himself, he is ultimately contributing to the dysfunction in Chiron’s life. The second theoretical perspective present in Moonlight is the developmental theory. The developmental theory examines the changes that families experience over their lifespans. (Benokraitis, 36). The framework of the film fits perfectly with this perspective, as the film is split into 3 parts, representing 3 stages of Chiron’s life. Each part is signified by the name Chiron goes by at that point in life. Stage one he is called Little, stage two he goes by Chiron, and stage three he is known as Black. We watch as Chiron grows and over this time period learns how to handle different situations. One of the most prevailing developments throughout the film is how Chiron deals with his mother’s addiction. As a child, there isn’t much anything he can do. But as a teenager, he first reacts with compliance, which later develops into anger and unwillingness to even address the situation. His peers tease him about his mother’s addiction, but Chiron will not do anything about it. In the third stage of live we learn that Chiron, now going by the name Black, is a drug dealer himself. One could argue this is due to the socialization he had to drugs throughout his life. Socialization is the process of acquiring
“Steel Magnolias” is a story about the close-knit relationships between six eccentric Southern women living in a small town in Louisiana. The film has a home spun, unpretentious feel to it. The plot alternates between humorous, everyday events with good-natured quips and the seriousness and heartaches to life’s unexpected crises. Through the laughs and tears, the six women learn to endure hard times and emerge from the struggles with grace and dignity. The film is set in the 1980’s with a tight knit homespun atmosphere. The Southern belles who are goofy on the outside but strong enough inside to survive any challenge that life deals them. Friendships help with a
The vision Christopher Nolan had for The Prestige (2006) was to add to the outbreak of street magician film, whilst playing a large dramatic subplot equal in grandeur to the magical performances within the film. In the final sequence of the film, I will analyse how the cinematography and sound resolves the plot so that it summarises the themes present in the film, whilst also invoking a response from the audience. Nolan predominantly uses close up shots, non-diegetic sound (music) and dialogue collaboratively to convey the dramatic, personal subplot of the characters and their relationships, whilst appealing to the audience bringing forth an emotional response from the audience. The heavy, slow, dramatic atmosphere of the ending sequence uses various techniques to summarise and uncover the underlying mysteries of the events throughout the film and consolidate themes introduced during the exposition.
Princess films are beloved classics that range from the beloved Disney franchise, to live action films such as the Princess Diaries, to historical tales as those seen is polish films. No matter what the format or genre these films typically have a prince searching for his love the princess and contain recurring scenes. The film The Princess Bride offers a new comedic approach to this classic genre. While scholars have explored how princess films are able to succeed through the use ideas such as nostalgia or nationalism, The Princess Bride succeeds through the use of comedy. Through the use of comedic devices such as mistaken identity, absurdity, and good old-fashioned slapstick comedy, The Princess Bride is able to parody the traditional
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.
“Here’s Johnny!” A famous line from The Shining, when Jack Torrance goes mad and is hacking at the bathroom door with an axe to mutilate his wife, Wendy and son, Danny into many little bloody pieces for disobeying him. The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film directed by Stanley Kubrick. Jack Torrance played by Jack Nicholson, quits his job as a school teacher and takes a job as caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel in Colorado during the winter, hoping to cure his writer 's block. He moves in along with his wife, Wendy portrayed by Shelley Duvall, and his telepathic son, Danny played by Danny Lloyd. Danny is later told that he has an special telepathic ability called shining, hence the title.
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 Movie steel of Magnolias is about six women that come together in this hilarious and heartwarming story of life, love and loss in a small Louisiana parish. At the center of the group is Shelby Eatenton, newly married and joyfully pregnant, despite the fact that her diabetes could make childbirth life-threatening. Terrified and angry at the possibility of losing her only daughter, M'Lynn Eatenton looks to her four closest friends for strength and laughter as she battles her deepest fear of death in order to join Shelby in celebrating the miracle of new life.
“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.
I feel as though Moonlight followed a young troubled black boy throughout his life and was a story of finding oneself. I believe that the idea of what black masculinity should consist of is largely what this movie is based around. The development of Chiron’s sexuality was also a key player in the development of the plot of the movie. The idea of a gay black guy growing up in a rough neighborhood like Chiron did is often not captured in cinema and was done well in this movie.
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.
Set in the predominantly African-American Liberty City neighbourhood of Miami, Moonlight unfolds in structure as numerous key turning points in the life of a boy named Chiron. Meek in personality and small in stature, the rudderless nine-year-old Chiron (Alex Hibbert) we meet is ostracised and physically bullied frequently by his classmates. Only one friend named Kevin (Jaden Piner) extends some form of friendship to the boy his
The New York Film Festival, to hold at Lincoln Center, it is the city's exhibition of art films. This year's program is for documentaries and short films, also for best aesthetic quality. Moonlight depicts a young man facing the possibility of being gay. The film was altered from a play by Tarell Alvin McCraney. The artistic work shows Chiron's life, and the film digs deep into the lives and minds of characters with precise detail. All the characters in the movie are black - even the title is suggestive of the color of the skin. It is a work refers to the great conflict.