Analyzing and Deconstructing Moonlight (2016) Directed By Barry Jenkins

Moonlight (2016), written and directed by Barry Jenkins, originally named ‘In Moonlight, Black Boys Look Blue’: an autobiographical play written by Tarell Alvin McCraney, is a masterfully done atmospheric film. The film follows the protagonist, Chiron- a gay man and a black man through his three stages of life: childhood, teenagehood, and adulthood in the impecunious Miami, Florida. As the story progresses, it is clear that Jenkins’ intention with this film is to paint a perfect portrayal of black homosexuality in the hoods, the real-life depiction of intersectionality. With such complexity, what contributes to Moonlight, its economy, and its significance to understanding this intersectionality is shown through the innumerable amount of symbolism, the theme of the film, Jenkins and James Laxton's (Moonlight's cinematographer) cinematography, the characters, the format, the dialogue, the different camera movements, the score and soundtrack, the lighting and more. What makes up this film to be so uniquely different from the conventional black film or gay film is that Jenkins merge the two genres together to create this sense of intersectionality throughout the storyline, mix and matching different compartments and elements of art films and contemporary films that make up the story that it tells.

The story follows Chiron from when he was a kid up until he as an adult. The structure of this film is a deliberate choice made by Jenkins, adapting the unconventional way of storytelling. Jenkins splits Chiron’s life into three major yet common parts: his childhood, titled ‘Little’, his teenagehood, titled ‘Chiron’, and his adulthood, titled ‘Black’. This unique structure serves not only as a statement to draw the viewers in, but it serves more as a commentary by Jenkins on the topic that is the intersectional ‘black homosexuality’. When Chiron was a kid, he was named little. It is a nickname given to him by his friends, and it became the identity that he lived by. He was, indeed, little in life. He did not talk much, he did not stand out, he was shy and he hasn’t grown into who is really is. It is only when Juan- the head drug dealer in the Miami area became his guidance and acted as a parental figure to him that he starts to get this inner calmness and inner tranquility. Then comes the mid-stage of Chiron’s life: his teenagehood. In this stage, he was named Chiron, his given name. He wore more blue (see 3rd paragraph), he started to socialize more and he had his first kiss with a male. This stage of his life is significant to the film and to his character. During this stage is when he grew into his true self, a person that can stay true to himself, that embraces his sexuality. It is in this stage of his life that he made the move with a male, it is a contrast from when he was in his ‘Little’ stage of life and asked Juan whether or not he is a ‘Faggot’. In the last chapter of his life, he is ‘Black’. He becomes this macho drug dealer with fronts in his teeth and a muscular physique. It creates a strong clash with the shy skinny kid that he was. In this stage as ‘Black’, Chiron grew into what that is the society’s ideal type for black masculinity, this strong, muscled man with money, a nice car, and gold teeth. This is a social commentary made by Jenkins, conveying the message that black men in American society are often pressured to be someone they are not, to put on a mask to merely fir in the social norms of the hood. As later revealed in the film, when Chiron reunites with the boy that shared his first kiss on the beach as a teenager- Kevin, he told him that he had never touched another guy since their first night. This is crucial when understanding Chicon’s character and the society that both he and we live in. The idea that in order to live, especially as a black man in the United States, sometimes we have to pretend and hide our true selves. Moonlight takes on many social topics as its inevitability follows the film’s main character- a black gay man.

Jenkins, when writing this film, intentionally placed many (obvious or not) symbolisms in the film in order to get his message across. The film’s main color scheme consists of the color blue, it is seen in the still shot of the film poster and in the majority of the scenes and character costumes. The color blue is a clear symbol for Chiron’s true inner self. That we noticed that he wears the color blue, and when Kevin wears the color blue, it is always when they are intimate, whether that is when Kevin got asked to beat Chiron up, or when they shared their first kiss together. The color blue also, inevitably, follows water and the ocean as it is the color of it. In the scene when Juan asked Chiron to come into the ocean and taught him how to swim- an activity that black people stereotypically don’t do, the overall hue of the scene was tinted blue and the ocean was an intensive marine blue color (Appendix 1). As Chiron floats on the water, we hear the classical music playing, overshadowing the background noise of people talking and the waves. The classical music Chiron hears here comes hand in hand with the blue hue, as they are a representation of his inner true self and of his inner peace. It is when he is with the water where he floats that he was with tranquility. The swimming scene shows Juan’s vulnerability as he immerses himself and Chiron in this body of water of the great unknown that even he, a powerful drug dealer, cannot have control over, by them swimming, it is Juan’s way of guiding Chiron into finding comfort in fear. This scene also plays a significant role in Chiron’s life as it has a great impact on shaping who he is and who will he become, but it is an act that also resembles somewhat of baptism, perhaps for the establishing of his true identity and sexuality. The same blue-classical music combination also appeared in another scene where it shows Chiron’s blocking out of the outside world and emerge within and connect with his inner peace, this scene in their hallway when Chiron’s mother- a heavy drug user and addict, was asking Chiron for some money to buy drug, and when Chiron told her that he did not have any money on him her mother screamed at him (Appendix 2). Here Jenkins removed the diegetic audio of his mother screaming and yelling at him and replaced it with a piece of non-diegetic classical music in the background as the refrigerator standing behind Chiron shines a blue sheen. The color blue will be repeated and included in almost all of the acts in the film, within Chiron’s teenage stage of life: Chiron, as Chiron grew out of his childhood self and yet still is trying to figure out who is really is, his sexuality and how to embrace his feelings. We follow Chiron to his school and when he meets the teenage Kevin, we see an almost neon-pop-of-color blue in the background as a striped wall (Appendix 3), by the end of Chiron and Kevin’s conversation, we see Chiron walks in front of the blue wall, it is almost like he is walking into the comfortability of his feelings and sexuality, that he is starting to truly embrace who he is and what he feels. Later in act two, the same repetition of the color blue comes up once again when Chiron and Kevin meet at the beach, returning to the water in reference to the swimming scene in act one, and Chiron confesses his true feelings to Kevin, the whole scene is tined blue and even in Chiron’s shirt that there are elements of blue stripes on it. In the middle of their conversation, the camera cuts to a high angle looking upon Kevin and Chiron who are sitting on the beach (Appendix 4), smoking and casually talking, Jenkins intentionally manipulated the camera, putting it in a position much like it is the sky or the moon, and that these two young teenage boys are sitting under the moonlight in their purest self, stripped away from any formative stigma the society has on them. As this scene progresses, Chiron and Kevin share what is Chiron’s identity-forming first kiss intimately then and there on the beach (Appendix 5), and it is then we see a turn in how Chiron character’s personality changes and he shows himself, Kevin, and the audience who he really is. This is also in reference to the swimming scene earlier in act one where Juan acted as a mentor, as a guide, as someone who Chiron can trust and learned how to be comfortable in himself and we see now that this figure has shifted from Juan to Kevin as Chiron is being the barest of himself and being vulnerable in front of him, as a result of his learning to find comfort in fear. We can see at that comment Kevin and Chiron perfectly compliments each other. We see this compatibility between them visually in a later scene at school where Kevin is sitting in the cafeteria with Chiron’s bully Terrel, with Kevin wearing a blue polo shirt with white stripes, and then we see Chiron wearing a white polo shirt with blue stripes on it (Appendix 6). Then when the kids all gathered around outside where Terrel asks Kevin to hit Chiron, using the word ‘faggot’ once again, the camera moves around Kevin and Chiron in a circular manner, intensifying the tension between the two, knowing what we know and what they know. The camera then stops surrounding them when Kevin finally hits Chiron and he falls to the ground, this is the moment that gives into how Chiron will behave in the next chapter of his life as his trust in people is completely shattered and was ultimately hurt once again. At the final act, which the act three of Chiron’s life as Black, when Kevin and he rekindled their feelings and love for each other in the kitchen of Kevin’s place, we see Kevin changed from his uniform from work into a clean blue t-shirt (Appendix 7), symbolizing his purest love and care for Chiron. This is one of the most important moment in the film and also in Chiron’s journey to finding himself as he revealed to Kevin that he has not touched another boy or men’s body after their first night together, it is then and there that Chiron returns to what Juan has taught him, it is then and there that Chiron returns to his vulnerable self and his trusting self, it is then and there that he truly embraced the comfort of what fear brings even though he didn’t know what Kevin would say in response to this. The color blue is a repetition of a film method that emphasizes Chiron’s inner world of himself (Appendix 8), as the music represents tranquility and the blue tint represents a certain truthfulness, it also helps delve into the theme throughout this film which is love and the frustrations that inevitably follows it. The color, and more importantly, the word ‘blue’ in Moonlight holds a great significance, the original play by Tarell Alvin McCraney titled ‘In Moonlight, Black Boys Look Blue’ is a line repeated verbatim in the film, told to Chiron as him and Juan sits on the beach next to the ocean. This brings the characters a whole new meaning, as a film directed by an African American man, and with this impressive African American cast, the word ‘blue’ almost takes on a whole different meaning, as it might be Jenkins’ way of saying people should be defined beyond their skin color, that there is complexity to being black, especially in the United States, and through the different stages of life and significant events that Chiron goes through, the audience then sees the complexity and the layers of what it is, being a black individual.

The camera movement, the mise en scène also plays a huge role in what makes this film what it is. Jenkins and the film’s cinematographer James Laxton used camera manipulation and the mise en scène techniques with intentions, and these intentions are to show and convey the inner emotions that Chiron feels in the three different stages of his life. We can see the different techniques Jenkins and Laxton uses in all throughout the film, from the very first shot of Juan driving and entering the frame in his blue Chevrolet Impala (Appendix 9), the camera is steady, alsmot like it is not moving. Then the camera follows Juan as he gets out of his car and as he walks toward his friends standing beside the side walk, once Juan stops walking and starts talking, Laxton used a 360 camera movement, swirling camera shot surreounding the three people there in a smooth, seamless fashion. The purpose of these sequence of shots that are more steady than anything is to show Juan’s power and gravity that he has of himself, it symbolized his power and status in the area that he lives in and it is a loud yet calm way of introducing him into the film. Then cuts to a shaky camera shot where we see in contrast of Juan, of Chiron’s childhood self- little running away from his bullies. Here Laxton uses a hand held techniques to create an anxious environment as to build up and tensify the emotion Chiron was going through while he was running. Even when the clip cuts to a shot of Chiron running though a crash in a gate, the camera uses cement of a wall and a shrub to frame them (Appendix 10), it was a perfect opportunity to employ a steady shot yet the clip still came out shaky, this is deliberately Jenkins and Laxton’s way of visually stimulating the audience to feel what Chiron is feeling, discomfort. As Jenkins said in an official featurette with A24: “rather than allowing the audience to remain outside the film, we place the camera between actors, we want to make the audience active participants.”

Another defining element of Moonlight, that of what makes it so great and so unique stems from the underlying value Jenkins gives to the story and its characters, especially Chiron. From the get-go, Jenkins establishes Chiron as a young African American boy who is worth investing time and energy in, contrary to the popular belief of American cinema or cultures in the United States in general. From the very beginning, despite of Chiron’s broken family life, Jenkins presented him as a kid that is worth rooting for, and it is that exact same belief that Juan held when he took Chiron in and offered him guidance. In this film, Chiron is precious, a quality not many television shows or films associate with with their black characters, Jenkins managed to do that whilst portraying Chiron in a real way with the same level of complexity that all black people share.

[Appendix 1]

[Appendix 2]

[Appendix 3]

[Appendix 4]

[Appendix 5]

[Appendix 6]

[Appendix 7]

[Appendix 8]

[Appendix 9]

[Appendix 10]

Reference

Brody, Richard, and Vinson Cunningham. “‘Moonlight’ Undoes Our Expectations.” The New Yorker, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/24/moonlight-undoes-our-expectations.

Halperin, Moze. “Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney Discusses the Piece That Inspired 'Moonlight'.” Flavorwire, Flavorwire, 21 Oct. 2016, www.flavorwire.com/592191/playwright-tarell-alvin-mccraney-discusses-the-piece-that-inspired-moonlight.

Thrasher, Steven W. “Moonlight Portrays Black Gay Life in Its Joy, Sadness and Complexity.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 29 Oct. 2016, www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/29/moonlight-movie-barry-jenkins-black-gay.

J, Nick. “Moonlight: Crash Course Film Criticism #13.” Youtube, CrashCourse, 13 Apr. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlz9CCZSJ5I.

Scott, A. O. “'Moonlight': Is This the Year's Best Movie?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 20 Oct. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/10/21/movies/moonlight-review.html.

Sims, David. “'Moonlight' Is a Film of Uncommon Grace.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 26 Oct. 2016, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/10/moonlight-barry-jenkins-review/505409/.

Stephenson, Will. “Barry Jenkins Slow-Cooks His Masterpiece.” The FADER, The FADER, 8 Nov. 2017, www.thefader.com/2016/10/04/moonlight-movie-barry-jenkins-director-interview.