Filled with surprises
FILM REVIEW: Moonlight
Behind the scenes of a gay black man’s life
Moonlight is too abstract a title for this gritty, streetwise portrait of a young man’s growth into a fearsome screen presence who comes to embrace his twofold transformation — as a bullied black kid into one you would not wish to meet, and his self-acceptance as gay on his own strong terms. But the story is redacted from Tarell McCraney’s In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, a play far from any Valentine sogginess. The film — a lustrous achievement that should earn Oscars — undercuts expectations, and never judges choices lived out by its protagonist, Chiron (played by three actors: Alex R Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes). With the fluidity of assured stagecraft Chiron enacts his life in three phases. First he is a lost child with a crack-addled mom (Naomie Harris), no visible father, and tormented as a “faggot” at school.
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