We Went to See Moonlight: And I Give it a Reluctant, but strong Recommendation.

Yesterday Jan and I followed our almost regular program of going to a late matinee and then to dinner.

We’d feared we were going to miss Moonlight, but I think because of Oscar buzz it has had a second life. And, so, we were able to get to the theater while it is still making the rounds as first run.

If you google “moonlight” and “review” you will see it is wildly popular among the professional reviewers. My google search has A. O. Scott from the New York Times telling us “Perhaps the most beautiful thing about Moonlight is its open-mindedness, its resistance to easy summary or categorization.” Paul Assay at Plugged in is quoted as “Moonlight, as mesmerizing as the movie is, isn’t just filled with problematic content: it gives us a message counter to what we believe God tells us.” And, Peter Debruge at Variety says, “A socially conscious work of art as essential as it is insightful.”

These are all reviewers I read, and whom I trust. And, what they say is true. And. Can I say I liked this movie? I don’t think so. But, I hope you catch the complexity of the sentence. I’m glad I saw the movie. It is about the most beautiful film I’ve seen, among the most, anyway. James Laxton, the cinematographer has already lined up awards for this film from Independent Spirit, Critics’ Choice, and the New York Film Critics Circle. And now is in the run for the Academy Award.

In addition to an Academy nod for best cinematography, it has nominations for seven other categories including best picture, best director, best adapted screenplay, best supporting actor (Mahershala Ali), best supporting actress (Naomie Harris), best film editing, and best original score. It rivals La La Land in the academy sweepstakes. Ninety-eight percent of the two hundred, twenty-five professional reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes gave it a positive nod. And eighty-seven percent of the twenty-five thousand and change film fans who chose to record their view at Rotten Tomatoes liked it.

I think Rotten Tomatoes’ plot summary captures the deal: “The tender, heartbreaking story of a young man’s struggle to find himself, told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love, while grappling with his own sexuality.”

All true. In addition to the acting, and I have to add, directing by Barry Jenkins, the cast is strikingly good.

Because of the structure of the film, the only actor to play a single continuous character in the movie is Naomie Harris. And, oh my, she is compelling starting as the harried mother, then descending into crack hell, and finally, scared and wounded, but a surviver. And, yes, even with such a brief part, Mahershala Ali conveyed a world of depth, a power that speaks to a level of acting skill the sophistication of which I can barely appreciate. The principal character Chiron in all three of his ages played by Alex Hibbert as a child, Ashton Sanders as a teen, and Trevante Rhodes as an adult – each is haunting, seared into my mind. Amazing, beautiful, and always, always, sad. Felt similarly about Kevin, also played compellingly by Jaden Piner as a child, Jharrel Jerome as a teen, and Andre Holland as an adult.

The hard part is also, probably, what give the film most of its power. This is a harsh and sad world they all live in, where everyone is crushed, and success is marked merely by surviving. It is incidentally a world created entirely by neglect and prejudice, a world that never had to be. But is. The hellish landscape against which the story plays out is the world many of our citizens live in today. And, hauntingly, it feels like it is the world we all are stumbling wildly, recklessly toward living in tomorrow, the consequences of unchecked greed, and hatred, and all consuming certainties.

So, like it? Hard to say “like” for a film that so harshly holds the mirror up for our, for my viewing.

And, there is something in survival. There is something in small blessings. And small blessings, while hardly stewn across our path, are there; like small flowers here and there poking up from broken concrete in an asphalt landscape.

Who knows, maybe in the last analysis, that’s all there is.

And with that hesitation, well, all of ’em, I reluctantly agree, this is a powerful and beautiful and haunting movie.

It is worth seeing. I hope you do.