Moonlight

I liked Manchester by the Sea better. It was emotionally richer and the relationships were rendered in more detail. Moonlight speaks of delicate things in a harsh environment in a commendably delicate way, but also too elliptically. It uses the poetics of artsy visuals, slow motion and static face shots where it could have expressed itself openly. I recognize the director’s skills in guiding the actors as well as the actors’ quality performances. I enjoyed watching the lead character’s transformation in three different stages of his life, examining his inner development. But I’m unmoved. The Oscar fervor about Moonlight is more political than deserved, a reaction to last year’s racial fiasco. Despite that, it’s good that it happened, if only because of the current moods in the world spread by its leaders. (02/27/2017)

A homosexual black man in a successful film? Some honest Czechs will pop a vein. To me Moonlight is simply a good film and a quality drama. Though its theme naturally works like automatic award bait, I didn’t feel any cynicism or insincerity from it. It makes for a pretty unpleasant viewing that is painful in many ways, but to be fully satisfied I needed a somewhat stronger final catharsis. (02/05/2017)

I didn't know what to expect from this film at all, and I must say that in the end, I was perhaps hoping for something more. However, it once again confirms that even a slow pace can engage viewers and keep them captivated throughout. An intriguing character development, where it's almost a pity it wasn't captured in a real actor's adolescence like in the case of the film Boyhood. (02/12/2017)

8 (!!!) Oscar nominations for this? You've gotta be kidding me. My giving this such a low rating might surprise you, but when a film is nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, my expectations naturally go up. If I had casually watched the movie outside of the Oscar season, I might not have been so harsh in my review, but now I just can't help it. I'll start with the positives. Ali's performance is great. And that’s about it, because what follows is a list of negatives. The theme is okay, although seen a thousand times and filmed a million times before, but fine. What was an unpleasant surprise was the performance of Naomie Harris, which was simply lousy and did not fit the movie at all, and her Oscar (and Golden Globes and BAFTA) nomination is actually a total insult to all the unnominated actresses. Alright, let’s just get this over with. Absolutely illogical, some of the storylines fall flat, some would-be artistically effective cuts, a desperately pandering soundtrack (déjà vu of last year's Danish Girl). I could go on. In the competition of similar-style movies, Moonlight clearly loses to Hidden Figures. Above all, what I want to say is that all the nominations that Moonlight received after the "all-white Oscars" controversy would have been a hundred times more deserved by Straight Outta Compton last year. (02/22/2017)

Moonlight is a fragile and sensitive film about the wounds of adolescence and the difficult climb out of the fortresses that we build around ourselves against the pain, which applies to everyone, regardless of ethnic or sexual identity. For some individuals, however, it is even more difficult and painful because of their surroundings. The environment of the African-American community in poor neighbourhoods is by no means exceptional in this respect, but it is certainly meaningful due to what we see in terms of masculine patterns of behaviour and roles anywhere else in the world. In his outstanding screenplay, Barry Jenkins explores the theme of personal identity through three time planes and the three names of the main protagonist, which he typically never chose for himself, but at the same time tries to live with. Not one of them describes him, however, and the tension arising from whether he is able to answer the question of who is in the end is thus even more agonising. Moonlight is one of the few films that truly deserves the problematic Oscar for Best Film, as it does not reflect any contemporary trends, campaigns or politics, but rather represents one of the ideals of cinema – a personal and distinctive work that, thanks to the perfect use of the full range of vehicles of expression, from acting through narrative structure to formal processes distilled from various models (admittedly here, for example, Wong Kar-Wai and Hou Hsiao-hsien), resonates deep within us and leads us to catharsis involving personal and general humanistic themes. In addition to that, it exposes us to a tremendous onslaught of emotions, even though it conceals them below the surface most of the time. (05/03/2020)