Moonlight (2016) Review: Three Ages of Tenderness

Is Moonlight worth watching?

Yes, with some reservations. Moonlight is a gorgeous, deeply felt portrait of a young Black man growing up in Miami, and its best scenes have an intimacy few American dramas manage. Barry Jenkins directs with rare sensitivity, and the performances across all three stages of the hero’s life are superb. The reservation is that the film’s restraint sometimes tips into distance: its leaps in time leave large gaps, and viewers who want a fuller sense of how its central character changes may find it more beautiful than satisfying.

What is Moonlight about?

Moonlight follows Chiron through three chapters of his life, each played by a different actor: as a withdrawn boy nicknamed Little (Alex R. Hibbert), as a bullied teenager (Ashton Sanders), and as a guarded adult (Trevante Rhodes). He grows up in a poor neighbourhood of Miami with his mother, Paula (Naomie Harris), whose drug addiction makes home an unpredictable place.

In the first chapter, the boy is taken under the wing of Juan (Mahershala Ali), a local drug dealer who, along with his girlfriend Teresa (Janelle Monáe), offers Chiron the steadiness he lacks at home. Across the film, Chiron’s closest bond is with his friend Kevin, played at different ages by Jaden Piner, Jharrel Jerome and André Holland, and the story traces a young man trying to understand who he is, including his sexuality, in a world that punishes softness.

Jenkins adapted the film from material by Tarell Alvin McCraney. It is an American production in English and runs 111 minutes. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Ali won Best Supporting Actor.

Three actors, one inner life

The film’s structural gamble is casting three actors who look only loosely alike and trusting them to feel like one person. It works because Jenkins pays so much attention to behaviour: the downcast eyes, the hunched shoulders, the silence that becomes armour. Hibbert and Sanders capture a child and teenager who absorb far more than they can say, and Rhodes, in the final chapter, plays a man whose hardened exterior barely conceals the boy underneath.

Mahershala Ali’s performance deserves its reputation. In limited screen time he creates one of the most complex father figures in recent American film, a man who is both kind and part of the damage around Chiron. Naomie Harris is fierce and frightening as Paula, and André Holland brings a warmth to the adult Kevin that gives the final chapter much of its charge.

Colour, sound and closeness

Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton shoot Miami in saturated blues, pinks and greens, turning an environment often shown on screen as bleak into something sensuous and alive. The camera stays close to faces and bodies, sometimes circling the characters, sometimes staring directly back at the audience, which gives the film an intimacy that borders on the uncomfortable. A swimming lesson in the ocean early on is one of the most tender scenes of its decade, simple in content and overwhelming in effect.

Nicholas Britell’s score, built from strings and slowed-down textures, reinforces the dreamlike quality, and the use of music throughout helps link the three chapters emotionally where the story leaves gaps.

Where the ellipses cost it

The same approach that makes Moonlight distinctive also limits it. Jenkins cuts away at crucial moments and jumps years between chapters, leaving the audience to infer how Chiron got from one state to the next. Much of the time that trust pays off. At other times it can feel as if the most important parts of the story happen off screen. Some supporting characters, Teresa in particular, fade after the early chapters, and the middle section’s school-bullying material is more conventional than the rest.

Who should watch Moonlight?

It suits viewers who appreciate character-driven, visually lyrical drama and stories about identity, masculinity and belonging. It is essential for anyone interested in modern American independent film or in queer cinema. Expect depictions of drug addiction, bullying and violence, along with strong language, handled without sensationalism but not softened. At under two hours it is not a long watch, but it rewards full attention.

If it resonates with you, consider:

• Whiplash, another intense study of a young man shaped, for better and worse, by a powerful older figure.
• The Godfather Part II, which also moves between eras to show how a man is formed by his past.

More character studies can be found among our drama reviews.

The verdict

Moonlight is a film of extraordinary tenderness, beautifully acted and photographed, and its place in modern American cinema is secure. Its elliptical storytelling occasionally leaves the audience outside rather than inside Chiron’s experience, which is why it lands as a strong recommendation rather than an unqualified one.

Rating: 3.5/5