Moonlight (2016)

Director: Barry Jenkins

 

Stars: Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, Trevante Rhodes...

Genre: Drama

Country: USA

Summary: A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood.

I've finally watched this movie. I guess you've probably heard of it by now and most of you probably watched it. Rotten Tomatoes puts it on 1st place in their list of 200 Best LGBT Movies of All Time. I disagree with Rotten Tomatoes. My list is a little bit different, but I still think this was a good movie. Tough one, but good. And when I say tough, boy do I mean it! First 80% of the movie gave me such anxiety. A little boy and then a teenager growing up in harsh environment - poverty, his mum doing drugs and neglecting him, other boys bullying him, being gay... The film is divided in three parts: first is the childhood, then the teenage years and the adulthood. From early on in his life he found a friend that later became a crush. His crush betrayed him and treat him sooo badly at one point that the main character's whole life just slid downwards from that point onward.

Chiron eventually became an adult, toughened up and tried to forget about his earlier life, but then unexpectedly he receives a call from his childhood crush who, in my own interpretation, only half-heartedly apologizes to him and wants to meet up. I had such a bad feeling about it as I was expecting Chiron, being a fool in love, to be taken advantage of again and that some tragedy is going to happen, but the movie actually has a somewhat happy ending, if you can call it like that.

I know for certain that I would never forgive Kevin for what he did (that's probably my Mars conjunct Pluto in Scorpio talking). Seriously, if that's love - I don't need that sh*t! I think the strong part of this movie is the subtle nuances that we, as audience, can notice in Chiron - that, even though he's physically sooo different in his adulthood than he was in his childhood, psychologically he hasn't changed a bit. He's still such a vulnerable, sensitive person and life is still tough for most of them. I wish we had seen Juan and his girlfriend meeting with Chiron after all those years as they've helped young Chiron when he needed a place to stay and such things. That would also be a great closure, but this happy ending we got is still better than nothing.