Love at First Moonlight

The Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue adaption is a queer trauma in a straight drama. Emerging from the distressed boroughs of Miami, Moonlight shines bright as a coming-of-age story and highlights emotions and identity issues within inverted commas. A violent meditation breathing life through childhood, adolescence and adulthood of the protagonist, the movie unravels like a quasi-Brutalist work of art. So severe but so brilliant.

            “Am I a Faggot?”

If a pregnant pause could be more pregnant then this moment would be it. When the innocent Little asks the Cuban drug dealer Juan, the whole world comes to a full stop. Perhaps it is not the waning Little who cannot play football, fight back against bullies or being a nobody but Juan teaching him how to swim, go back to his abusive crack-addict mother and an advice to go on a path of self-discovery that makes Little big.

“Who is you, Chiron?”

The repeated daggers thrown by everyone only adds 50 shades of grey into Little’s adolescent avatar. Ashton Sanders has inquisitive eyes that takes you into 120 Days of Sodom where the sons and daughters of libertines only seem to see every surviving hope in defeat. It is perhaps the kiss with Kevin that spews moonlight over a breath of weed. Immersive yet momentary.

“Who is you, man?”

Punctuating tough moments with tougher moments of silence, Chiron’s metamorphosis into hip-hop grunge seems softcore with the occasional visit to his mother weaved by Nicholas Britell’s pieces of orchestral music. If Mozart could appear like Hotline Bling then Vesperae Solennes de Confessore does the complementing trick. Maybe worthy of B J Thomas’ I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry during the anarchic scene of Black coming to meet a remorseful Kevin and rekindling love to moonlight and back. 

          If your love fell into the mists of Moonlight then which song would be playing? Write in the comments below: