A traumatized life

Moonlight, which in January won the Golden Globe for Best Picture, tells in three chapters the story of Chiron, from growing up as a young boy, to being a high schooler, and then when he is fully grown. Chiron (called Little as a boy, and Black when he grows up), is a character you can’t take your eyes off of, even if what you see is heartbreaking.

His mom (Naomie Harris) is a spiraling drug addict, his dad is absent, and the kids at school are constantly belittling and terrifying him. Like many critics, The Washington Post called the film “bold, inspiring”; but this film is crushing, aside from a couple of sweet scenes as when a surrogate father (Mahershala Ali) teaches the frightened boy how to swim in the ocean. The acting and filmmaking are lovely, though the conclusion of the film is ultimately meaningless and confused.

The story is mainly about growing up, but it also follows Chiron’s struggle with same-sex attraction in a specific culture hostile to any hint of that desire. He wears loose jeans, and two classmates in baggier pants accost him for wearing “tight pants.” Gay slurs follow him throughout his upbringing. He acts on his desires only once, in high school, an encounter with a fellow high schooler that is one of two sexual scenes in the movie. (The film is also rated R for language, brief violence, and drug use.)

The film is affirming of his pursuit of a same-sex relationship, even if Chiron doesn’t affirm that himself—he is so traumatized he doesn’t know who he is. Juan, his surrogate father, tells Chiron the typical American individualist’s line: “Decide for yourself who you gonna be.” Thanks, Juan.

Who Chiron is, is lonely and silent. In one scene from his childhood he comes home from school to find the house empty and the TV gone, likely sold to support his mom’s crack habit. He boils a pot of water, then pours it into a partly filled bathtub, adding dish soap to make bubbles so he can give himself a bath. After so much talk about absent fathers in low-income neighborhoods, this is a film that looks at the damage present but dysfunctional mothers can do.

When Chiron finds relationships with genuine love, it feels like an oasis—and ultimately the genuine love you see in the movie is from his family. If the movie had kept its focus on those relationships, even amid his struggle with sexuality, the movie would have had a powerful emotional arc. What’s more meaningful over all the years than his one sexual encounter is Chiron’s relationship with his mother, with his surrogate father Juan, and with Juan’s girlfriend (Janelle Monáe), who steps in to mother him when his biological mom is on a bender.

Indeed it’s strange that the focus remains on the one high-school encounter when the film invests much more time in these family relationships. The film opens with a scene involving Juan, and it could have closed with the moving, healing scene toward the end between a grown Chiron and his mother. Instead the movie saves its pinnacle moment for a confusing final scene between Chiron and his friend from high school—leaving the audience with a sexually ambiguous ending and unresolved sorrow for this man.