Best Films of the 2010s: Moonlight

Lists are beautiful. Films are beautiful. Opinions are subjective. Some films that we see now- some made for kids, some made in other languages, some made in 'trashy' genres- will one day become classics. Which ones? Here's my entirely subjective gaze into the crystal ball with my picks of the best films of the 2010s...

Moonlight

  

Moonlight is a film that is excellent in every aspect, emotional and smart in equal measure. It follows the coming of age of a young boy named Chiron, who is fundamentally disadvantaged growing up in America by his race, class and sexuality. Chiron’s story is split into three segments and in each the character is played by a different actor (Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Treyvante Rhodes). These sections are delineated by the names and corresponding identities he is afforded: Little, Chiron and Black. We might think of these as boy, adolescent and man. These identities are, of course, not self-contained but bleed into and overlay one another. Chiron gets called Little in the middle section and Black in the second section, for instance.

    The film does not preach to its viewers, but immerses them as surely as young Chiron’s surrogate father Juan (Mahershala Ali) tilts and rocks him in the surging ocean, teaching him how to swim. The three sections are patterned by liberating, almost epiphanic moments at the local beach and recurring, awkward encounters with a contemporary named Kevin who seems to offer a safe outlet for Chiron’s burgeoning sexuality. Director Barry Jenkins regularly uses the unusual and immersive technique of having characters conversing while looking straight into the camera lens, in close up. This implicates and involves the audience in the relationships on screen, breaking up the main flow of the story with something akin to visceral photographs.

        For all the raw power and immaculate structure of the script, this film is turbocharged by its all-star ensemble cast. Naomie Harris shows her full quality as Chiron’s mother, struggling with addiction and an inner wildness that often scares her son. Mahershala Ali is a quiet but powerful presence early on, but for me Andre Harris as the eldest iteration of Kevin steals the show. He has found his feet as a diner chef and, though troubled, has never lost his teasing humour or warmth. When he calls up Chiron after ten years of separation, he proves how powerfully love and care can be expressed just in cooking a meal for someone.

    This culinary compassion is something Kevin shares with Janelle Monae’s Teresa. I am high-key obsessed with Janelle Monae’s role in this film as surrogate mother Teresa, who is always ready to tease Chiron into talk with a glass of orange juice, a slap-up meal and her sardonic, warm eyes. Her album Dirty Computer soundtracked my own process of coming out to myself, so when she says ‘it’s all love and all pride in this house’ my breath hitches every time.

     These hugely talented, experienced artists orbit around the three Chirons at the centre of the piece; young Alex Hibbert, eyes so wide they almost pop from his skull; Ashton Sanders, gangly, eyes all skittish anxiety; and Treyvante Rhodes, outwardly macho, eyes too weary to be fully sad anymore.

     I have seen several reviewers who consider the transition between the scrawny Sanders and the bulked-up Rhodes implausible and to the film's detriment. The size disparity is shocking, but thoroughly intentional and Kevin comments on this upon his reunion with Chiron, openly stating, ‘this is not what I expected’. The change rings true to me. Many people do emerge bulked up after prison time because there is little to do there other than work out. I’m lucky due to racial and socioeconomic privilege to have never been close to prison and the sort of radical rethinking of one’s identity incarceration can force. Yet I do know that as a boy, not yet able to articulate that I was probably gay, the first time in life I felt safe from bullies was when I started to fill out and got good at rugby. The physical discrepancy between Rhodes and Sanders makes perfect sense, and Treyvante Rhodes delivers a note-perfect performance in the final section. He says that I ‘built myself from the ground up. Built myself hard’, but the film reveals that identity constructed from a place of fear is always built on shaky ground. Rhodes conveys with many a look that physical growth belies a shivering, shrivelling spirit.

     This film portrays modern, and specifically African American, masculinity like no other and that is why when I watch it, like Chiron, ‘I cry so much sometimes I might turn to drops’. It contains radiant moments that will hit viewers in ways that are hard to articulate. For instance, there is the point in the second section when Ashton Sanders’ hands splay on the beach in a moment of post-coital relief. ‘Sand angels’, I think, every time.

 

That concludes my list of the best films of the 2010s! If you've stuck with me all the way I'm slightly amazed and please do comment your own favourites if you like:)