The Aching Loss at the Heart of Moonlight (SPOILERS)

It's a real tragedy that Moonlight will mostly be remembered by a lot of people simply as the film caught up in the controversy of the 2017 Best Picture award presentation at the Academy Awards. Presenter Warren Beatty announced La La Land as the winner of the award, but only because he had been given an envelope with Emma Stone's Best Actress win printed on it, the real Best Picture winner being Moonlight. The fact that this controversy will overshadow the film itself for so many is such a huge tragedy because of how staggeringly good Moonlight is. Four years on from that controversial awards ceremony, let's take a look at an overlooked element of Moonlight that serves to be a huge part the emotional backbone of the film. 

First, a quick recap of the film. Moonlight follows Chiron, a boy growing up in Miami, through three distinct chapters of his life as he comes to terms with his identity and his sexuality. 

Part I: Little

We see Chiron as a quiet young boy, "Little", tortured by bullies and crippled with anxiety. He is saved from a particularly traumatic episode of bullying by Juan, played by Mahershala Ali, who looks after him and quickly becomes a father figure to him, alongside his partner, Teresa. Juan teaches him how to swim, among other important life lessons. Chiron's mother, played by Naomie Harris, is a drug addict, and he begins to spend more and more time with Juan, to the disapproval of his mother. In the climactic scene of this opening chapter, Chiron asks Juan about the word "faggot", before asking him if he sells drugs to his mother. When he painfully admits that he does, Chiron gets up and leaves. 

Part II: Chiron

Chiron is now a teenager, beginning to truly grapple with the idea that he might be gay, and what that means. He is still bullied relentlessly. One night he goes to the beach and is joined by Kevin, his friend from his childhood. After talking, they eventually kiss, and Kevin gives Chiron a handjob. At school, Chiron goes to sit with Kevin at lunch before Terrel, a main antagonist and bully of Chiron, sits next to him first. Terrel convinces Kevin to beat up Chiron, in a perverted play on a game they used to play as kids, "Knocked Down, Stay Down". Reluctantly, Kevin beats the shit out of Chiron. Later, a social worker is trying to convince Chiron to tell them the names of the attackers, but he refuses. The next day, Chiron walks into class, picks up a chair and smashes it over the back of Terrel's head. He is arrested, and Kevin watches him being driven away in a police car. 

Part III: Black

Chiron is now a fully grown man. He has transformed himself into "Black", a drug dealer, living by himself in Atlanta, now built with muscle. He confronts his mother, and then later receives a surprise phone call from Kevin, apologising and telling him he is now a cook in Miami. Chiron travels to Miami, and surprises Kevin at his diner. Kevin cooks him a Cuban dish, and they drink wine together. Kevin reveals that he has a kid and is happy with his family, despite the fact that he and the mother are no longer together in that sense. Chiron explains that he is pushing drugs in Atlanta, to Kevin's dismay. Kevin takes Chiron back to his apartment for the night, and explains that while he isn't where he thought he would be in life, he is happy with his family and his job. Chiron explains that he hasn't been touched by anyone since Kevin back in high school. Chiron and Kevin sit on the bed together, and Kevin starts to strike Chiron's head.

The film ends with a shot of Chiron as a child standing alone on a beach. 

The film has rightly been lauded as one of the most important of the 2010s, and acknowledged as a landmark in LGBTQI+ cinema. One of its enduring qualities is how universal its story is, something that seems contradictory when you consider how specific it's story and context is - a story about a young black man growing up gay in Miami. But the masterstroke that director Barry Jenkins pulled off is taking that incredibly specific story and allowing it to open up and speak to everyone in a way that feels truly universal. And I think that a huge part of that is an element of the film that perhaps hasn't received as much attention as it should - the character of Juan. Or, more specifically, the absence of Juan. 

Juan is set up in the opening chapter of the film to be the father figure that Chiron desperately needs, and we are shown Juan fulfilling that role for him in his most vulnerable years. At this stage in the film, it is setting us up to expect not only certain things from Juan as a character, but it is also setting up expectations about what this film is going to be, about how it is going to play out. What it then does is something subversive and bold that quietly informs the rest of the film in a really profound way that, like I said, I think has gone largely unnoticed. 

One of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the film is the final confrontation between Chiron as a child and Juan. They sit around a table with Teresa, and he asks them what the word "faggot" means. The implications of this scene for Chiron's character and what that informs us with so few words about his childhood are devastating, but the scene doesn't end there. Chiron has started to clue into the fact that his mother is a crack addict, and has also started to clue into the fact that Juan pushes drugs on the streets. Looking up and into Juan's eyes, he asks if he has been selling drugs to his mother. With confirmation, Chiron gets up and leaves. This is phase one of Juan exiting Chiron's life and the loss that it inflicts upon him. It is devastating when someone that you look up to and rely upon for support is torn down from their pedestal, and this is exactly what is happening to Chiron. 

But something really remarkable then happens as we transition to the next chapter. We cut into a lonely frame of teenaged Chiron sitting at the same table. We are introduced to Teresa again, who talks about "her house", and we notice that there are only two placemats set up. They don't mention Juan. His absence is referenced again indirectly a number of times without explicitly saying what we gradually come to realise, even though we wish it weren't true. Eventually, when he is being taunted by his bullies for being around at Teresa's house, we are told outright what we know by this stage but wish was not so: Juan is dead. But his death has happened off screen, in a period of time that has just been skipped over by the film. It is a detail that is skipped over and almost exclusively hinted at, but one that informs everything about Chiron's character as he tries to grow up and discover who he really is. The one person that he saw as a father figure, the one person that he looked to for guidance, not only is dead to him because of the revelation of his enablement of his mother's crack addiction, but has passed on without any notice or recognition. He has vanished completely from Chiron's life before we are even able to process how important he was to it. 

This makes the reveal of Chiron's character in the film's third chapter all the more heartbreaking and powerful. He now dresses like Juan. He talks like Juan. He has the same taste for cars as Juan. He has built himself up physically like Juan. He has even ended up pushing drugs on the streets like Juan. His entire identity he has built up around himself as a fully grown man is informed by Juan, just highlighting the gigantic hole in his life and the need that he had for guidance growing up that he never ended up having. Would Chiron have grown up differently if he had Juan around? Is he even aware of how he has grown to imitate the one person that tried to nurture and care for him? It's this loss on a level that no one, especially Chiron, can even begin to understand, that I think imbues the rest of the film with such a palpable and almost unbearable weight of sadness. 

This post was inspired by a section of a video essay from Cinefix, which you can watch on YouTube here. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on my take on Moonlight, or just your thoughts on the film itself, so please drop a comment down below. As always, you can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Letterboxd to continue the conversation about great movies - follow the links on the home page, I'll see you there!