Moonlight

A film hasn’t touched me like this in quite a long time  The complaints I see of wishing the ending was more punchy and Chiron being “devoid of character” don’t hold weight when you consider the journey young queer men go through when the world seems to define who you are before you do. Chiron isn’t allowed to the luxury of finding interests or developing a “character” because he has to learn how to survive first before he can find what he loves. Chiron, like many queer men, grows up playing a version of himself that had to sacrifice authenticity to fit in; which is why in the third act when Chiron shows up with this big brooding build for some reason he still seems to be uncomfortable and out of place in this new body when you would think it brings him confidence. He’s putting up a front. His task as an adult is to pick apart which parts of himself were truly his and which parts of himself were only there to protect him. The ending doesn’t need to be some big emotional cathartic moment because it was never truly Chiron’s ending; like many other queer men our life begins much later in life when we learn we don’t have to hide anymore. For Chiron this new beginning is when he finally meets Kevin again as an adult. This is a story about the performance of masculinity, specifically black masculinity, as much as it is about queer love. Their themes are intertwined and the story unfolds in a way that is paced and shot beautifully with so much care and love for its characters and this world. My only minor complaint was I wish we got to see more of Juan and what his dynamic would’ve been with Chiron as an adult, but I understand the decision from a narrative perspective to leave him out.