1 hr. and 50 min, color, 2016
Have you ever been lulled and
seduced by the sound of soft ocean waves?
Have you ever found them hypnotic?
That sound plays a big part in the story of Chiron, an African American
boy growing up and struggling to find his sexual and social identity. We first see him as an elementary school age
child in Miami being chased by ruffians and hiding out in an abandoned shack,
frightened into mute withdrawal, until a tall grown man named Juan (Mahershala
Ali), who happens to be a drug pusher, rescues him from the nasty, bullying
malevolence which he is facing and takes him under his wing.
Juan soon discovers that Chiron
has no known father and is up against a drug addicted mother (Naomie Harris)
from whom he receives no love. He soon
meets and comes under the watchful and sympathetic eye of Juan’s woman friend
Teresa (Janelle Monae), who gives him a home away from home where he can stop
in as the need arises. This offer gives
him some respite from the pain he endures at his mother’s hand and opens up new
territory for him to explore, though it is not quite a total rescue.
One standout scene consists of
Juan teaching Chiron how to swim. It is
a major moment when that gentle surf I have already mentioned works its
charm. It feels to me like a baptism of
his spirit. The camera literally gets
into the ocean with the two of them and performs in a kind of ballet
motion. We watch as over time the kid
catches on to how to conduct himself safely in the calm waters, a new vista
opening up for him. Juan tells him he is
“in the middle of the world”. This is
quite literally true, water occupying about three quarters of the globe’s
surface! It is in this scene that the
first sign of joy begins to appear on Chiron’s face.
But Chiron is greatly conflicted
when he learns of Juan’s profession.
Without a strong rudder he faces a huge crisis propelling him into a
drastic, startling move that sets his sail in a dangerous direction.
Juan is a Cuban who has been
hustling all his life but has apparently mellowed over the years, possibly due
to the sickness from which he is soon to die, one never identified. He left me wanting to know him better, to
explore what he as a child went through.
Maybe another movie can be made, set at an earlier time, telling his own
tale of stand-up-or-be-knocked-down.
(Ali won the Oscar this past season for Best Supporting Actor.)
The life of a child living in a
thicket of poverty and neglect is not new on screen, but this is no blistering
indictment of anybody or anything. There
is no aura of bleakness despite this setting and there is no political pulse
beating behind the writing. It is not an
especially controversial presentation, though in the not too distant past it
would have raised eyebrows in the black community in its treatment of a black
child who discovers that he is gay and whose discovery is not held in a
negative light. The aura and pace of
the film are low keyed, soft, gentle, without frenzy or delirium, even though
there are a few incidental characters who are hostile and bullying. He is called a faggot and subjected to
various indignities. It remains for Juan
and Teresa to assure him that the barb does not apply to him and that he has
ample time to decide whether he is gay or straight. Juan also tells him that only he can decide
what kind of life he is going to live.
The kid’s story is told in
three extended chapters, covering the space of about fifteen to twenty years,
beginning with preadolescence, jumping to late teens, and ending when he is in
his middle twenties. A different actor
portrays him in each chapter – Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevente
Rhodes respectively. A friend named
Kevin shows up in all three segments, also portrayed by different players. He is someone who plays a very important part
in Chiron’s coming of age.
Barry Jenkins is the director
of this gem, an African American graduate of Florida State University, only
thirty-seven years of age and already, after only three modest movies before
this one, displaying great genius. Lots
of people recognize this, as evidenced by the Oscars “Moonlight” won for Best
Picture and for Best Screenplay, an honor which he shared with fellow writer
Tarrell Alvin McCraney. The movie also
won the Golden Globe for Best Drama. He
is not an activist or an iconoclast. He
treats his characters as young American men, who just happen to be black,
trying to find the center of themselves through the maze of peer pressure,
growing pain, bewilderment, disillusionment, emotional upset and discovery.
At the same time Jenkins does
not misrepresent the quirks of the subculture in which the story takes
place. There is much dialogue that some
might find a little difficult to understand.
I confess that I had to consult another writer’s plot summary before
some links were connected for me. There
is a lingo that pervades much of the action that I found curiously interesting
even before I got the translation. Just
the sound and pace of it has its own appeal.
Jenkins sets the story in the environment in which he himself grew up
and where he could wield the language meaningfully and astutely. But of course there is never a flood of
words; this is a lean script but at the same time a very crisp one. The dialogue is mostly and appropriately
slang.
Late in the film, after
violence and betrayal have impacted upon both, Chiron and his mother have a
reconciliation that stands very much alone in my memory. It is a very emotional scene, but not
overdone or in the slightest soapy.
Great acting all the way through the movie by Naomie Harris! She really delivers! As far as I am concerned she has the most
difficult role to fill in the entire screenplay. What a bridge of emotion she has to cross!
Facial expressions play a major
part in assaying the inner life of Chiron and Kevin, especially in the closing
half hour when they are alone and weighing the content of the lives the two of
them have thus far led. It is a
brilliant piece of work in and of itself.
(Here Kevin the grownup is portrayed by Andre Holland.) I was deeply
moved by the course their simple conversation takes and the non-verbal messages
they send back and forth with their eyes and their body language. By the close of it Chiron has undergone a
very simple breakthrough that points to a significant change that we are to
assume will not be all that long in coming about, even though the exact form of
it remains unknown. I was on the verge
of tears following them as they groped for words to express deep seated
feeling, trying to cut through the pretense and the buddy/buddy palaver and the
shame over past mistakes. The last few
minutes, overlaid with the sound of those gentle waves on the shore, left me
almost in a trance. Beautiful and
breathtaking!
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website:
enspiritus.blogspot.com. To know
about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.
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