“Moonlight.”
A24

“La La Land” is forgettable. Yes, it will probably win best
picture when the Oscars are handed out on February 26, because
it’s practically designed for the Academy Awards. It’s a musical,
it’s cute, it’s technically impressive, it flatters Hollywood.
But I have yet to meet a fan of the movie (they are many and
vocal, as “SNL” aptly parodied) who actually listens to
the soundtrack, which when you think about it, opposes the entire
logic of a musical.

It’s also a movie that looks backward. The classics it
incessantly references (“Singin’ in the
Rain,” “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”) defined their genres. Gene
Kelly perfected the art of singing and dancing on the big
screen. 
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone can barely
sing and soft-shoe better than you and I can, and their
characters’ conflicts (why aren’t you pursuing your dream instead
of playing in a successful pop-jazz band?) are lame if not
puzzling. “La La Land” rewards viewers who recognize what’s
pretty and vintage, but it’s skin-deep.

“La
La Land,” inspired by the musical magic of “Singin’ in the
Rain.”
Summit
Entertainment

This wouldn’t be the first time the Oscar best picture has gone
to pat fluff (“Shakespeare in Love” comes to mind), but it comes
at a critical time. “Moonlight,” a smaller film, has a decent
chance of stealing the award, and I hope it does, because it’s
a revolutionary movie in the middle of what might turn out
to be a revolutionary moment in American history. Either way,
it’s the nominee that will prove to be timeless.

From the outside, it’s easy to understand why “Moonlight”
appeals to Oscar voters. The drama exposes the underbelly of an
ignored and blighted corner of the US, and it demands that its
extremely talented actors shout and cry a lot. It’s also, as
critics rightfully point out, in the tradition of movies about
the degradations of black life, like “Precious” and “Monster’s
Ball.” The worst parts of the movie indulge in
movie-of-the-week cliches about crackheads (the addict mom
seemingly transforms out of nowhere by the end to deliver a final
redemptive note).

But “Moonlight” is unique and
life-affirming,
 even soul-cleansing, in a more
fundamental way. This is a movie centered on a poor black man
with gay desires that is not in any central way about being
black, gay, or poor. The director and the writer of the play on
which “Moonlight” is based — who are from the same housing
projects in Liberty City, Miami, where it’s set — deeply
understand how circumstances shape their main character, as we
see through the gorgeous on-location shooting. (Anyone from Miami
or the surrounding area, like I am, will feel the heat just
watching.) But the quiet, stunning revelation of the movie is
that this poor black man with gay desires can’t be pinned down to
any of those things. We watch him define his own identity,
on his own terms.

We’re in the early days of a president who recently
described the conditions of largely black urban centers as
“terrible.” Words like those have long been
used to strip away the inherent humanity
of
 black Americans. We’ve made a lot of racial
progress in 2017, but we’re also a country, as research shows,
that increasingly self-sorts into communities of
people who think and act like us, and who confirm our view of the
world.

Trevante
Rhodes as Black in “Moonlight.”
A24

“Moonlight” scrambles that problem. It’s audaciously and
ingeniously structured in three parts, in which we see the main
character in starkly different stages of his life (he’s named
Little, Chiron, and Black) that are still undeniably linked. The
last chapter shows Black, after a traumatic childhood and having
moved away, inhabiting the image of a hard black man we’ve come
to accept from pop culture. But then we see more — the wonder of
Little, the tenderness and insecurity of Chiron. We see how this
man has gradually shuffled through identities to find which one
is really his.

The ending of “Moonlight” hinges on Black’s romantic
reunion with a childhood friend that is and isn’t what you expect
based on a million Hollywood romances. They make awkward small
talk, there’s the gesture of intimacy in a hot meal, a soul song on the jukebox.

But we’ve never seen two black men reuniting like this in a
major American movie before. That’s not just tokenism. Their
interaction is palpably real, and about much more than sex. It’s
the recognition of two people who know each other so well that
they could never forget, no matter how many years they’ve been
apart or how much they’ve superficially changed. They see each
other for who they really are, when hardly anyone else does. It’s
one of the most remarkable things I’ve seen portrayed on a big
screen.

And that recognition of one man’s individual humanity and
connection in “Moonlight” can help us understand how we look
at each other, too. The movie resists the idea that we’re defined
by our color, sexuality, community, education, income, or even
politics, even while those things determine so much about our
lives. Its blissful lesson is that we’re all just trying to find
out who we are and understand each other — and perhaps we can, if
we really try.

That’s something worth celebrating in 2017 or any other
year.