Review of Moonlight (2016) by Alex S — 03 May 2017

One unfortunately miscast and misscripted film. All is believable until.

Chiron grows up. Parts 1 and 2 are great but the massive belly flop of part 3 extinguishes the votive candles lit up till then. What's happened to the dream deferred, the promise of this film?

I mean, do you really think a tough guy dealer couldn't manage to find a sexual partner of some sort in all those years? So this script manages to perpetuate the myth of gay male passivity.

The writer didn't really know where to go with the script in Part 3. His decision traps the movie in the very homophobia, in-the-closetness that it purports to denounce. It's a movie that stays deep in the closet. No pride here. On the down low from A to Z which is pretty sad but just right for Hollywood. Casting Trevante Rhodes in the role of the adult Chiron is the central error of this film, no longer a sensitive thoughtful man but now a smug, narcissistic, muscle clad hunk who no doubt spends every leisure moment lifting weights. He does not manage to project a conflicted personality. No edginess. From Chris Rock to The Rock physically. The character's transition is simply not credible or emotionally coherent. Perhaps another actor might have pulled it off. But the choice of Trevante Rhodes cements the fundamental flaw in this script, an emotional disconnect between the parts so that all young and adult Chiron have in common is their ethnicity. When I told a Black female friend about this movie, she said she didn't want to hear about it it due to its subject. She is a mother of a young boy. This brought home to me the pathos and truth of this subject, the heavy, suffocating lid that societies put on same sex sexual attraction.