"At Some Point You've Got To Decide Who You Wanna Be..."
Striding hand-in-hand with La La Land for the two most hyped cinematic releases of the year, Barry Jenkins' Moonlight is the type of movie of which its' reputation more than precedes it, gathering overwhelming critical response from across the critical stratosphere and a fair number of Oscar nominations to support its' claim as a modern masterpiece of cinema. Where La La Land managed to actually exceed expectations, so much so that two visits to see it in the cinema just isn't enough, Moonlight is yet another example of a film-going experience which just doesn't seem to correlate with its' preconceived notions of excellence, with it being yes, a movie which is made with a huge degree of gentle care and dedication to its' source material, but is too also largely nonexistent in attempting to create a succinct relationship between its' leading characters and the audience, resulting in a movie which follows in similar strides to Martin Scorsese's Silence earlier on in the year in the sense that although its' craft is admirable, the final result isn't the masterpiece I was hell bent on expecting.
Following in three acts the troubled early life of Chiron, a conflicted and withdrawn character born into the drug-ridden and crime inflicted surroundings of an unnamed geographical area of America, Moonlight delves deep into the organic nature of life itself, with its' central protagonist slipping through year after year without a crystal clear notion of his own true identity in a Boyhood style tale of discovery amidst the backdrop of an atmosphere that bears similarities to the nihilistic portrayal of society within HBO's The Wire. Although each of the three depictions of Chiron throughout the movie give solid performances, the true standouts of the movie are the double-header of House of Cards/Luke Cage star Mahershala Ali and Moneypenny herself, Naomie Harris, who each give rousing and emphatic performances within the quite shocking minimal time they actually appear on screen, amidst a screenplay which relies on the element of understatement to quietly and sometimes tediously get where its' attempting to finally go. Moonlight is no doubt a impressive piece of drama from second-time writer/director Barry Jenkins, but it too is a film which doesn't hold up to the impressive hype surrounding its' release, at least on first watch.
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