MOONLIGHT: The Overrated Film Gaslighting Film Critics

What happened to the art of film criticism, the kind of visceral, honest prose delivered from titans like Pauline Kael? We are witnessing its noisy death rattle and few seem to care.

Moonlight, the newest film from director and co-writer Barry Jenkins, is a literal coming-of-age story, chronicling the journey of a young, gay black man, Chiron, into adulthood amidst the rougher parts of Miami. Chiron’s story is told in three sections with a different actor playing the titular character in each section: young Chiron, called Little (Alex Hibbert), teen Chiron, called Chiron (Ashton Sanders), and adult Chiron, called Black (Trevante Rhodes).

If you’ve come out from underneath your rock at all in the past month, you’ve heard of this film. Moonlight has garnered 141 wins and 221 nominations thus far this award season, including its win at the Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture – Drama.

Yes, This Film Is Bold And Important

Leaving the tiny theater where I managed to find someone screening Moonlight, I had no doubts about the impact of what I had just witnessed. Barry Jenkins managed to depict in painstaking, believable detail, the decline of a young, sweet, black youth into a hardened criminal. The film does a wonderful job of highlighting the environmental factors at play in this all-too-common transition.

Even more wonderful to witness is the toxically masculine, normatively butch third iteration of the protagonist who we, the audience, know is gay, shattering a host of prejudice and convention the moment we see Black’s glistening gold teeth. This is rare and much needed. I get all that, I promise I do.

Moonlight is Good, Not Great

To be clear, Moonlight is a beautiful film with some outstanding performances. Mahershala Ali deserves an Oscar for his role as Chiron’s surrogate father, Juan, and Janelle Monae is stunning as the impenetrable Teresa. Most impressive is the way the three Chirons were able to mimic and preserve the overall aura of the character throughout the film, down to his gait and peculiar manner of holding a fork.

The color-grading and editing are exemplary. Nicholas Britell’s score is unique and vivacious; I would never have considered the choices that he made with that grating, haunting concerto juxtaposed with scenes of ostensible hope, choices that ultimately elevated the film. Moonlight is a good movie–that’s what I’m getting at. I would recommend that anyone go see it and I should think it has a good chance at changing a few perspectives. It is not, however, the best film of the year.

Why is it that relatively no critics are talking about the film’s flaws? Has anyone asked themselves this? As of this writing, Moonlight has a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, an 8.6 on IMDb, and a whopping 99 Metascore. Almost 200 critics have submitted reviews on Rotten Tomatoes alone, a site that has come under fire recently for overly harsh ratings.

If We’re Being Honest, Moonlight Is Far From Perfect

There are plenty of issues with Moonlight to discuss. The cinematography isn’t anything to rave about. James Laxton’s plodding pans and seemingly random use of a Steadicam have never been called into question. Trevante Rhodes, who played Black, never convinced me for a second that he was Chiron, a conceit that is integral to the film’s pathos. The script itself is filled with tropes like the crack-addicted mother which, admittedly, was given invigorating life by Naomie Harris.

The film’s worst crime was its lack of honesty regarding sex. We’re supposed to buy that Chiron, after receiving one mind-blowing handjob in his teens, never touched another man or woman for a decade? I understand that he was conflicted, heartbroken, and spiritually crushed, but that’s the sort of thing that just…comes out in a human being. We know he’s not asexual, because he strongly desires Kevin (Andre Holland). After over 90 minutes of brutal honesty, it was a crushing blow to the film’s integrity to see the story capped with such a poetic ploy.

Ideology Vs. Aesthetics

The whole point I’m dancing around is that we’ve allowed the message of the film, its ideology, to color our perception of its artifice. Perhaps that’s okay, but I have this sinking feeling that it is not—that it’s actually very, very bad. The societal import of a work of art is vital to our understanding of it as a whole but should not make a work of art beyond reproach.

Renowned film critic Owen Gleiberman stated on Bret Easton Ellis’ podcast that he felt more than a little hesitant to express his dislike of Moonlight for fear of being lambasted by fellow critics or labeled a racist by the movie-going populace. That notion is absurd and frightening.

I’m not here to talk about political correctness or the so-far-left-they’re-almost-fascist politicking of so many these days, but it’s clear that much of that zeitgeist has bled into the world of film and, by extension, film criticism. I’m a liberal, but a person should be able to dislike a film without it being anything more than that. During the Golden Globes, my Twitter feed was drowning in a sea of outraged, spitting-mad fans sharpening their pitchforks as Moonlight lost in one category after another. That would not have been the case with a film of equal aesthetics and less ideological weight.

I know this phenomenon is real; I feel it myself. I felt awful walking out of Moonlight bereft of any sort of rapture. I thought, “Am I crazy? Am I an awful person?” I waited weeks to write this article, fearing the scorn and backlash I might get. It’s early in my career, I can’t yet openly hold such bombastic opinions! What a silly notion. Being confidently opinionated is the whole point of criticism. Too much of criticism today is essentially marketing. Reviews are 300-word puff pieces of no substance whose dual purpose is to earn the site ad revenue and put some butts in some seats.

In A Word

I say, “Nay!” To hell with that. Moonlight is an effective, moving film with a lot of meaning. It is not the best film of 2016, or even the most powerful, and the fact that the film adds a great deal to societal discourse does not make it so. Criticism has been hamstrung by political correctness and an over-emphasis on ideology, relegating a noble artistic pursuit to the base level of marketing.

Do you think Moonlight is the best film of the year?