The film may not depict the territorial violence of the crack trade, but it does not shy away from showing the effects over time of both the drug epidemic and the war on drugs in a black community such as Liberty City, in northeast Miami. He tells Little that it’s okay to be gay, he’ll know when he knows, and he doesn’t have to know now, but he can’t let anyone call him “a faggot,” in the same spirit as teaching him not to sit with his back to a door-a call to Little’s sense of self-preservation. Or maybe Juan is touched by the boy’s suffering when he asks, “Am I a faggot?” After all, we know nothing about Juan other than what we have seen. And it might say more about us than it does about the film that we are surprised that a gangsta character gives a child a thoughtful explanation. “What’s a faggot?” “A word used to make gay people feel bad,” Juan answers. In Jenkins’s film, the homoerotic moves the story, including the quickly established bond between the physically powerful man and the vulnerable child. But even as a refuge from Little’s crack-addicted mother, the nobility of surrogate fatherhood doesn’t overcome what could be called modern puritanical society’s disquiet at the homoerotic scene of a dark-skinned black man cradling his miniature in the vast blue. Juan, a drug boss, rescues him from a boarded-up apartment in a block of “dope holes.” A solitary kid tormented between school and a home where he is not wanted is drawn to a protective stranger. The film begins maybe in the early 1990s, when “Little” is a bullied, neglected schoolboy. Black”-each episode separated by a decade or so. But Moonlight isn’t trying to be realistic about anything, even as it confounds what we expect from stories about young black men, starting with the film’s texture, its intricate soundtrack, tantric pace, and beauty frame by frame.Īn elliptical growing-up-lonely story, the film concentrates on three stages in a gay man’s life-the chapter titles say, “i. It’s about a homo thug from that street world of the fatherless where masculine pride is supposedly all and tests of manhood are brutal. We don’t hear gunfire and there is no pounding soundtrack, just as it has no bohemian artists or middle-class triumphalism about family. Moonlight is a love story in a place where we don’t usually find a gay one and at the same time it’s very different from other black films set in the ’hood, mostly because of what it doesn’t focus on. An old woman saw him “cutting a fool”-it’s not always possible to get what he’s saying-and told him that in the moonlight “black boys look blue.” Juan tells Little that he used to be a wild little shorty like him, running around with no shoes when the moon was out. He is from Cuba, where there are also black people, though you wouldn’t know it-to look at the Cubans in Miami, he means. He has told the troubled boy that black people are everywhere, that we were the first people on this planet. “So your name is Blue?” the boy, Little, asks after he has learned that he can be free in the waves. Already in the beginning, after a blue car, its blue interior, white T-shirt and pillow tinted blue by morning light, blue sneaker soles, and blue plastic trash cans at the beach, comes an extraordinary scene of a black man holding a black boy’s body on top of the ocean, the camera lowered until it is fractionally submerged, enclosing the baptism by swimming lesson in pale sky and rolling water. The Oscar-winning film Moonlight gives an impression throughout of being tinged with the color blue. Offer valid on groups under 20 guests.Jharrel Jerome and Ashton Sanders as the teenagers Kevin and Chiron in Moonlight Does not include specialty, holiday or firework cruises. Live DJ, spacious dance floors and full service barsĬall 1-88 or visit Spirit of Chicago on the web at a 15% discount on Spirit of Chicago Lunch and Dinner Cruises.* Use promo code: NPCRUISES15.New menus with vegetarian and gluten-free options.Three climate-controlled interior decks with panoramic windows.From dinners for two to corporate outings, Spirit is fun for all. You’ll love the Spirit menu featuring a variety of culturally-inspired recipes incorporating fresh, organic ingredients. Eat, drink, dance and take in the incredible skyline with a lunch, dinner or specialty cruise. Spirit of Chicago is ready to show you the city.
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