“Moonlight” is about a young, gay boy growing up in Miami around a scene of drug dealers and drug addicts. Some have nicknamed it “Brokeback in the Hood” but that may take away from just what kind-of movie it is and how little actual homosexual content is in it.
What Works: Mahershala Ali continues his great 2016 with a performance as a kindly drug dealer the profoundly lonely and friendless young Little/Chiron/Black (the film is set in three sections where the same character is played by three actors) meets, and Naomi Harris is radically different from her more polished image as Little’s drug addicted mother. Both will likely be nominated for Oscars, and Janelle Monae is against type in a subtle, smaller role.
But what struck me about “Moonlight” was that it’s the first quality drama (I can think of) since “Precious” that is not predominately about Civil Rights or racism or really anything to do with white people or their treatment of black people. There isn’t a sizeable non-black speaking role in the film, and it’s one of the too-few dramas about African Americans that seems genuinely interested in them as characters instead of activist props. Now you might say “but isn’t spending a paragraph of your review talking about race drawing attention to it?” And that’s fair, but I merely want to point out that by just immersing us in this world and making it universal, the film may (ironically) do more to attract a humanizing perspective from a white audience.
What Doesn’t: The third section’s actor (playing “Black”) doesn’t really look anything like the first two. And I was surprised at just how unromantic or how little sexual content the movie actually features. [“Brokeback Mountain” barely does either but it looks like a porno compared to this.] To be fair, most people’s complaints watching “Moonlight” aren’t going to be that it features too little homosexual content, but watching this movie in a regular theater with an all-black audience that actually booed when Black touches another man may make the case for why this movie needed to be less subdued with its actual romantic content or message of tolerance.
What I Would Have Done Differently: “Moonlight” has become a smash-indie hit despite serving a basically ignored demographic of black male homosexuality (in comparison, films like “Pariah” or “She Hate Me” have featured black lesbians for years). The fact that a Baldwin Hills audience made their disgust audible (or felt they should) perhaps shows why more movies like “Moonlight” need to be made.