Moonlight

Barry Jenkins’s 2016 film comes from a text that was never staged: Tarell Alvin McCraney wrote “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue” in 2003, after losing his mother to AIDS. Both men grew up in Miami’s Liberty Square, and both their mothers fed the character of Paula. Chiron’s three actors were kept apart so none copied another. James Laxton shot on an Arri Alexa XT with anamorphic Hawk lenses at 2.39:1, saying the film was never meant to look realistic. Each chapter carries its own grade: Fuji stock first, then Agfa with its added cyan, then a modified Kodak, so a jump in age registers in the opening frame. For the swimming lesson the camera sat in a heavy waterproof housing just above the waves, inches from the actors. Nicholas Britell put the orchestral score through hip hop’s chopped and screwed technique. All of it fit a twenty five day schedule. Mahershala Ali’s Juan belongs to the first chapter alone, and his death is simply reported in the second, with no scene of its own. A good fit if you can take a closing chapter that settles at one diner table, the tension being a sentence neither man will say. Less so if you expect Juan’s story to continue, since the film drops him early and stays on Chiron.