Moonlight is a coming of age drama film starring Trevante Rhodes as the character nicknamed ‘Black’(a man who has repressed his true self on a gangster façade) who was Chiron in his early adult life, Ashton Sanders as ‘Chiron’ (dealing with his mother’s addition) in his adolescences and Alex R. Hibbert as ‘Little’ (the name given as an insult thrust upon him which he should reject) in his infant life.
Moonlight is based on three stages in Chiron’s life and explores the battles he faces with his individuality, identity and sexuality with growing up in Miami and the emotional and physical abuse he had to endure from his peers in school and his home life. The movie is extremely popular due to the content but also how the movie was made and blended together. The three chapters presented forecast the fragility, mutability and complexity of a person identity over time by casting three different versions of Chiron.
Moonlight was not a movie where it was intended to extremely wow us or give us knowledge on something, we didn’t already know with young people having struggles finding themselves and facing the truth about themselves. Rather the movie allowed us to be involved and follow a life that not a lot of people would consider living by viewing the conflict of poverty, queerness, masculinity and blackness individually. We are given three chapters following Chiron’s phases in life and his struggles being in a broken home, identifying as a gay man but also being afraid and denying his sexuality, not knowing who he truly is as an individual and not knowing love from anybody until Juan (Mahershala Ali) and Teresa (Janelle Monae). The movie emotionally connects with a lot of people, as we are all different people at different stages in our lives. There is continuity between the actor’s performers but to an external observer they are not the same person.
In Moonlight the choice explores the relationship between external persona and internal self. Chiron’s identity is always interacting with his community, shaped by how they see him and label him and how he responds to the communal perception. A key part of the story is that the community knows things about him before he knows them about himself. People want to place him in a category before he understands what that means. This structure I the movie reveals the universal seed in Chiron’s struggle for self-awareness but at the same time there is an important particular story of the young black man who is trapped by society expectations of masculinity, in the meantime he escapes a of force of authentic persona from the help of a few who throw him a life line.
Overall the movie was beautifully directed and produced. It gives you a sense of comfort to know that it is ok to be you and not to be ashamed of who you are and that you shouldn’t seek the validation of others on being you because you fear of how they view you as an individual. You can not allow people to control the type of person you are just to please them.
