What kind of film is Moonlight, the best adapted screenplay and the best film in the 89th Academy Awards?

While the Venice Film Festival was in full swing, a film called Moonlight premiered in Trelawney, a small town in Colorado, USA. The media at the scene gave full marks without exception, and the new york Times even asked directly in the subtitle of the film review, "Will this be the best film this year?" . Up to now, the freshness of this piece in rotten tomatoes is still 100%, and the Metascore score is as high as 99 points. Looking at the scores in recent ten years, only the score of Youth 100 can be compared with it, which is slightly higher.

Moonlight is the second feature film directed by Barry Jenkins, which is adapted from the script Black and Blue in the Moonlight. In the open synopsis, it seems that the story told by the whole movie is not the key point, but the words "black" and "gay" seem to be automatically bold and underlined. The word "political correctness" has been criticized again. In this era when everything must be politically correct and the only person you can insult is a "white middle-aged Christian male", political correctness seems to gradually become a kind of political inaccuracy. I don't know how many people cursed and jumped up when 12 Years a Slave won the Academy Award. Everyone only pays attention to another award-winning film noir, but ignores the equally wonderful directing technique and artistic expression of 12 Years a Slave.

This has led to a great difference in Moonlight's views on English Internet and Chinese Internet. In China people's evaluation of this film, "political correctness" seems to be a reason for low score. But in fact, apart from the black theme accident, is this film really as good as another film noir film "The Birth of a Country" this year? In my opinion, it's really not.

If we look at this movie without the labels of "black" and "gay", it tells the story of a boy growing up to be a boy and finally reaching a man. In terms of story type, it is an adult film, which belongs to the same type as the aforementioned Youth, and even the story context is similar.

This is the most valuable place of moonlight. Although Kay Long Xing, the protagonist of the story, is black, he doesn't try to win the audience's tears with racist platitudes. Although the protagonist Kay Long Xing is gay, it doesn't involve any gender discrimination, so let's fight for equality. Kay Long Xing was born with these two labels, just like men and women, tall and short, fat and thin, just everyone's personality characteristics. Moonlight is more like a growth poem, which has nothing to do with skin color, facial features and image. It only tells the first half of an ordinary introverted boy.

The film extracts three stories of childhood, adolescence and adulthood (which may not be mentioned in the film) of black boy Kay Long Xing when he was growing up from 7 to 25 years old. Each story is independent and told separately. Unlike "Youth" following an actor 12 years, "Moonlight" chose three black actors of different ages to play Kay Long Xing in the casting stage. Although it is hard to say that the three actors look alike, the way the film focuses on a single character will not confuse the audience. The movie poster is also made up of three actors' faces.

When we first met the hero Kailongxing, he was so thin that he was running away from his companions. This chase is not a fight between children. The purpose of others is just to beat him up. So Kay Long Xing hid in an abandoned house, but I didn't know it was the unlocked residence of Juan, a famous local drug dealer. Kay Long Xing was later discovered by Juan and stayed at his house for one night. Juan became his adoptive father in a sense. He lives in Juan's house, and Juan and his girlfriend regard him as their own flesh and blood. But Juan's identity as a drug dealer laid the groundwork for the following story: Kay Long Xing's single mother was an addict, and her drugs were all bought from Juan before. This coincidence makes Kay Long Xing's life more complicated.

Kay Long Xing's mother is the reason for almost all of Kay Long Xing's personality. She is moody. When she is normal, she can hold Kay Long Xing and say "I love you". When drug addiction breaks out, he will not hesitate to force him to death, and he will use Kay Long Xing's lunch money to buy drugs. We can find that people around Kay Long Xing basically have both angels and demons. Juan treated him like a biological father, but he was the chief culprit of his mother's drug abuse. In the second chapter, Kay Long Xing's friend Kevin, who may be the only peer in his life who gave him love, is his boyfriend to some extent, but betrayed him the day after they masturbated with each other in the moonlight. This complex personality acts on Kai Long Xing, and to a certain extent, it also creates his complex and introverted personality.

But in my opinion, the director is too eager to shape the personality characteristics of people around Kay Long Xing, but ignores certain rationality. The lack of plot foreshadowing makes these characters slightly untenable. Kevin's role is particularly prominent. Although the masturbation scene on the beach (the only same-sex scene in the film) is extremely restrained and beautiful, in retrospect, some of it came too quickly and was not true.

Of course, this film is Kay Long Xing's growth story, and it is a one-man show. Although it is a bit far-fetched to portray the characters around, it is not a serious injury. In shaping the protagonist, the director's task is almost perfect. We grew up with Kay Long Xing. Like every introverted and lonely young soul, he experienced family torture, peer abuse and self-consciousness. This also makes the end of the second paragraph of the film very inflammatory. Kay Long Xing's emotional outburst was sudden, and the audience was caught off guard by the long-term humiliating resistance. A long shot, several clean clips, clear purpose, put in place.

Such a good sentence also makes people have higher expectations for the next chapter. But unfortunately, in my opinion, the impression of the third chapter is obviously lower than that of the previous two chapters. In this chapter, Kay Long Xing grows from a scrawny black child to a black drug dealer with gold teeth and strong muscle lines. How did he grow from a cowardly soul who hates drugs to the present? The director didn't mention it. He spent most of his pen and ink on the reunion of Kai Long Xing and Kevin, but this reunion scene was too reserved. Compared with the other two chapters, the rhythm of the whole movie and dialogue has slowed down greatly, which has caused a great sense of being out of place and made people feel a little on pins and needles.

This is also the problem of moonlight: it has good sentences, but it can't form good chapters in some paragraphs. In terms of photography style, due to the director's worship of Wong Kar-wai, some scenes can obviously imitate or pay tribute to Wong Kar-wai. However, the confusion of this style has also caused the alienation of audio-visual style. In this film, you can see the long lens aesthetics with great inspiration and realistic style; At the same time, you can also see neon slow mirrors and even surreal chapter changes. Such a change of concept makes people wonder whether the director really knows what he wants. This also allows Moonlight to get a near-perfect 99-point evaluation from Metascore, which is always close. However, despite the inconsistent audio-visual language, the film has a high sense of photography, which also benefits from the work of photography director James Laxton (X-ray Camp).

When we go back to the theme of movies, we can find that there are too few LGBT movies about people of color, and this theme seems to be ignored by the public. Director Barry Jenkins has the courage to make this film, and the homosexual plot in it is very restrained. In any case, it was a great success.

At the end of the film, we see that Kay Long Xing, an adult, suddenly becomes a childhood, with a small body standing alone by the sea and the blue and purple moonlight shining on him. This is the main idea of this movie: never forget how you became who you are now and what kind of person you used to be.