Beyond the title and narrative, there is also the matter of color. The film takes its inspiration from In the Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, an unpublished play by Tarell Alvin McRaney, in more ways than one. At times heart-tugging and heart-wrenching (sometimes at the same time), there are many things to love about Moonlight, beginning with its source. Weighing the film with these heaviest of laurels only serves to put an albatross around its neck, dashing expectations along the way and undermining its beauty in another way. However, the truth is that Moonlight is good but not THAT good. To say that Academy voters gave Moonlight the Best Picture trophy due to white guilt or a self-back-patting PR-move truly undermines a beautifully acted and shot achievement in filmmaking. Given the backlash surrounding the 'Oscars So White' brouhaha, however (in which the Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences barely put forth any African-American nominees), this independent gem improbably claimed the year's top prize.
Truly, in any other year or awards cycle, this film might have found itself in the also-ran category. In this R-rated Oscar winner, director Barry Jenkins chronicles the childhood, adolescence and burgeoning adulthood of a young, African-American, gay man growing up in a rough neighborhood of Miami. It's unfortunate that Netflix canceled this underrated show after just two seasons.As tender as it is tough as it is true, three-tiered coming-of-age drama Moonlight is a near-master class character study that almost reaches the vaunted heights of its A+ reputation.
The joy of the series is in the updated casting, DeWanda Wise's Nola beams with wisdom, fear, artistic knowledge, and carnal desire, while the men and women in her life are fleshed out and… fleshed out, allowing the many sex scenes to play to the senses while reaching for something deeper. Lee's signature, syncopated style-bright colors, up-close-and-personal confessionals, jolts of pop music and album art, Bruce Hornsby's melancholy piano filling the gaps-is intact, tracking Nola through the gentrifying brownstone labyrinth of Fort Greene.
But who is she? Spike Lee made his directorial debut with 1986's She's Gotta Have It, and 30 years later, expands the character study into his first TV series, a rhythmic exploration of sex, Brooklyn, and Black life. Nola Darling is an artist, an activist, a Brooklynite, and a sex-positive polyamorous pansexual with three emotionally volatile boyfriends.
Campion's direction is dangerously erotic, while Benedict Cumberbatch gives one of his all-time great performances as a man so uncomfortable in his own skin he inflicts his pain upon others. He is similarly inclined to do that to her son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who arrives at the ranch on summer holiday from college studies, but instead decides to take him under his wing, figuring he can mold him into the kind of man he thinks is worth being. He worships a rider named Bronco Henry and calls his softer brother George (Jesse Plemons) "fatso." When George marries a widowed innkeeper (Kirsten Dunst), Phil makes it his mission to mentally torture her. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Phil Burbank, a rancher who prides himself on the dirt under his fingernails and his ability to live with as few amenities as possible. The Piano director Jane Campion's return to feature filmmaking after more than a decade away is an absolute triumph, a chilling exploration of a man driven to cruelty by the pursuit of a masculine ideal in the American West.