March 2017: MOVIE: Moonlight: Silence is Golden

The screenplay writer and director, Barry Jenkins, takes the audience on a journey through three phases of Chiron's life. Chiron is tender, highly sensitive child, whose crack-addicted mother is unable to raise him. She is worried that he is bullied at school. Chiron who is left to fend for his himself first finds a companion in a Cuban crack-dealer named Juan who takes him home. Juan, nurtures the boy like a father for his son, while for Chiron, Juan becomes the closest thing to a parent. At school, Chiron also bonds with another boy his own age named Kevin. As the boys grow up and become teenagers, they share a special moment on the beach at night when Kevin caresses the back of Chiron's head and kisses him. For Chiron, it is the first time in his life that he is shown affection.The next day at school Chiron's world comes crashing down when the ringleader at school recruits Kevin into the gang and makes him beat up Chiron. After he is treated in the hospital for his wounds, Chiron for the first time in life takes revenge and returns to school where he storms the building and slams a garbage bin over the ring leader's back.  Chiron is arrested and disappears from Miami.Flash forward ten years later. An adult Kevin, played by André Holland finds Chiron's telephone number and tells him he has been thinking about him.  The camera switches to the adult Chiron, then played by Trevante Rhodes, and to the viewer's surprise, Chiron is longer the skinny and spindly little black boy that everyone that could not take care of himself. Instead he has physically transformed into a bundle of muscles. Not too long thereafter, the two meet again and Chiron finally opens his heart. Moonlight is a journey from one tender moment to the next, each filled with raw beauty of the human condition. No one leaves the movie theater unruffled.