Moonlight - SHORT VERSION
UPDATED:
Moonlight’s Oscar-Winning Ode to Vulnerability, Growth, and Love
By Amy Chen
Moonlight began as a play script originally titled In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, written by Tarell McCraney in 2003. A decade later, Barry Jenkins, who had already been on the hunt for inspiration for his next film, picked it up at Borscht Arts Collective in Miami.
After reading McCraney’s work, Jenkins found pieces of his own childhood in the script, as both men had grown up in the same inner-city neighborhood of Liberty City, Miami, with mothers struggling with crack addictions. The playwright and director rewrote the original piece into three chapters, centering the plot on Chiron as he comes to terms with his sexuality and deals with his mother’s drug abuse.
The resulting screenplay is made up of characters taken from fragments of both Jenkins’ and McCraney’s lives. An unlikely father-figure to Chiron appears in Juan, a character who is based on the father of McCraney’s half-brother. Paula, Chiron’s mother, is a mixture of both Jenkins’ and McCraney’s mothers, and thus has a much more dynamic personality than a two-dimensional, crack-addicted Black woman.
Filming began in early October 2015 in Liberty Square, Miami, Florida. To Jenkins, the set locations were vital to establish an authentic ambiance, and he made an effort to film in locations where he had once lived. The pastel hues of the run-down housing projects complemented the blue-toned theme of the movie. To avoid the risk of actors adopting the mannerisms of other actors, Jenkins worked to ensure that the three actors playing Chiron and Kevin never met on set [2].
Moonlight has received an unanimous positive critical response, with a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes [4]. The film not only took home the Best Picture award this year at the Oscars, but was also nominated for seven other awards, winning three in total. The Golden Globes recently hailed Moonlight as Best Dramatic Picture, and Jenkins made history as the first ever black person to be nominated for the Best Director and Best Picture awards in the same year. When asked to address the movie’s enormous success, Jenkins simply expressed to the Los Angeles Times that “we didn’t make the movie with any expectations” [3].
[1] http://www.indiewire.com/2016/10/barry-jenkins-moonlight-interview-1201737807/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIgkDjqZQCo&t=213s
[3] http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/moonlight-film-made-oscars/story?id=45328120
