On Moonlight

A most beguiling and seductive Oscar winner is Moonlight. A fragmented tripartite, beautifully shot and wonderfully acted and it is these latter skills that made this an enticing watch. We are presented with only one point of view here. That of Chiron as a boy, an adolescent and a young man. What happens in-between these ages and what happens to figures from his life is left to our imagination. This very limited point of view is what makes Moonlight so unusual. There is nothing wrong with unusual and there is nothing wrong with strange and there is an ethereal feel to Moonlight, which is anchored in reality by some hard-hitting doses of struggle; the homophobia, the drug abuse, the loss, the yearning and the potential, ever so slightly, of hope. This balance of beauty and pain is the outstanding feature of director and writer Barry Jenkins’ film.