Moonlight | True Tenderness

Moonlight, the 2017 Oscar Best Picture winner, is a cinematic masterpiece that can teach us the value of being true to ourselves and acknowledging our inner tenderness.

We are victims of our environment. We adapt to society’s norms and other’s expectations. It’s hard to know how we truly are when we are always told how we should be. We want to fit in, so we put on stereotypical masks and hide our true self behind clothes, lifestyles and attitudes.

Chiron (or Black, or Little) is raised in an environment where men are expected to be tough and ’macho’. The stereotypical black man is the drug slinger, the muscle, the hip hop gangster.

Juan—who is Chiron’s main role-model and father figure—is a drug dealer, but he also has a soft and tender side that he reveals only to Chiron and Teresa. He tells Chiron: ”At some point, you gotta decide for yourself who you're going to be. Can't let nobody make that decision for you.”

Children do what grown-ups do, not what they say. Thus when Chiron grows up, he becomes a drug dealer like Juan. He gets a fancy car, fancy clothes, gets beefy, etc. He builds an image of himself as a tough gangster. But that’s not who he really is. He suppresses his true self.

There is a story that Juan tells Chiron about when he was a child, when an old lady told him that "In moonlight, black boys look blue.” This is where the film title comes from. But what does it mean? Well, Chiron’s most true and revealing moments happen at night, in the moonlight. Those scenes are the beach scene and end sequence, which both take place at night. This helps us understand the meaning of moonlight and blue. In the moonlight, in the night, people drop their tough facade and show their true, tender selves. They become "blue". In the moonlight, even the toughest are softness. In moonlight black boys are blue, and we see who they really are.

The film poster portrays Chiron’s inner struggle to define who he is. It shows three sides of himself, at three stages in life: as Little, vulnerable in blue light; as Black, tough in grey light; and Chiron in the middle in red light. Children are mainly ’unspoiled’ by society’s norms, thus Little is blue. Chiron as a teenager is struggling to fit in, trying to bridge the gap between who he is and who he is expected to be. As an adult, Black is playing the role of a tough gangster, though that’s not who he is on the inside. Chiron’s insecure adolescence and the rough environment made him lose track of himself and fall into a role. It is as Kevin says in the end: ”Never did anything I actually wanted to do, was all I could do to do what other folks thought I should do. I wasn't never myself.” Kevin managed to find himself, but Chiron didn’t.

Moonlight is a humane film, a plea for tenderness and authenticity. The truth is that we all have an inner tenderness, even though we may not show it. We need moments when we can be our true, tender selves, and we need people we can be ourselves with. Moonlight teaches us not to judge other’s by their appearances, because we are all vulnerable under the masks we put on.

In the moonlight, we are all blue.

Submitted April 16, 2017 at 11:28PM by Hampus-Andersson http://ift.tt/2p820eH