Up Above: Denis Villeneuve's "Arrival" and Barry Jenkins' "Moonlight"
Moonlight opens with darkness as Boris Gardine's "Every Ni##e$ is a Star" seeps through the blank screen. From the get-go, there is a signal that this is a different black film, a different LGBTQ film. Moonlight doesn't compromise for celluloid the harsh reality of the bubble in which these characters wander. Although Gardine's anthem was recently used to open Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly , an album where the black American experience was reexamined with Lamar's unapologetic, vibrant prose, Jenkins' film explores the complexity of black masculinity and sexuality while pointing the lens on the community itself. While familiar narratives that have been explored in Oscar winning films such as Precious serve as tent poles in Moonlight , Barry Jenkins has directed a poignant, soulful picture that marries the rawness of Hustle & Flow with the grand homoerotic beauty of Brokeback Mountain . In the character Chiron, who is intimately p