The 52: Moonlight

   From June 2023 to June 2024 I'll be watching a lgbtqia+ film each week and coming back here with my thoughts, feelings and plenty of hopes we aren't met with the "kill your gays" trope. I call this The 52.

I never knew a whole lot about Moonlight, aside from the Oscar disaster, but when I found out it was actually a LGBTQIA+ film it instantly went onto my list.

Image credit: Wikipedia

There’s a scene, I think quite a famous scene, where Juan and Little talk about the word faggot, and the power of words, and claiming something for yourself. It was all I had seen prior to watching and it was so impactful, this clip of a frightened, uncertain child trusting an adult with the words bullies used against him, trusting his heart, and in this scene I felt the world go still.

Films have a power to… make everything stop. To change a facet of your moment, your day, your soul, and there were so many quiet and powerful moments in Moonlight that I saw and did not see, that I appreciated and that I didn’t, that did that for me and so many others.

I think Moonlight is, for me, a film I understand more, and appreciate more, in retrospect. As I watched I was piecing together the story and I wasn’t entirely sure of the impact it would have on me, but it’s one of the few films in The 52 that, so far at least, I want to sit down and watch again in the near future. There is no denying that Moonlight wasn’t a film made for me. I didn’t understand all of it, and it’s not a movie I cherish after that first watch: but there is also no denying that it is incredibly important, that it has more power than hundreds, thousands of films. 

Split between childhood, adolescence and adulthood (Little, Chiron and Black), we follow the story of Little, a boy who is picked on for the softness others see in him, and we see him grow, the facades he creates to try and fit in, the walls he drops when surrounded with the few people he really trusts, and what remains is a young man who is gay in a world that doesn’t like people to be different, who is drawn to the water and the moon, reflecting off the waves.

Moonlight is, undeniably a special film. It taught me things I didn’t know and, I’m certain, has more waiting for me in the rewatches ahead.

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