Moonlight: La historia de una vida

Manchester frente al mar me impresionó más. Estaba llena de emoción, más elaborada y más detallada. Moonlight: La historia de una vida habla de cosas delicadas en ambientes hostiles de manera admirablemente sutil, pero demasiado económica. Se basa en la poética de las intercalaciones del cine arte, los retardadores y los detalles silenciosos de los rostros donde podría expresarse con claridad. Reconozco la muy buena dirección de autor y la alta calidad de actuación. Disfruté viendo la transformación del personaje principal en tres etapas de la vida, examinando su desarrollo interior. Pero sigo intacto. Los Oscar en torno a Moonlight: La historia de una vida son más políticos que merecidos. Es una reacción al «lío» racial del año pasado. Sin embargo, es bueno que haya sucedido, debido al estado de ánimo actual en el mundo, difundido por sus líderes. (27.02.2017)

De las películas nominadas al Oscar de origen afroamericano, esta es probablemente la mejor, pero no estoy completamente seguro de si la nominación como mejor película está justificada. El último tercio de la película es francamente malo y aburrido, si se hubieran desarrollado los dos primeros tercios, podría haber sido un drama angustiante centrado en dos minorías y un fenómeno patológico en la sociedad. Hoy en día, ya no reconocí a Janelle Monae por segunda vez, pero quiero destacar el rendimiento de Naomie Harris, que es verdaderamente digno de un Oscar, porque nuestra Moneypenny actúa como si estuviera en peligro de muerte. (26.02.2017)

A two-part film. Almost everything that is remarkable about it has its downside. Apart from the acting performances, which are the strongest thing that Moonlight has to offer. The division into three parts and the reliance on the outlets come out alternately, in some places an impressive tension arises between the unspoken cause and effect, whilst elsewhere the film feels a little broken or leaky. Laxton's camera, which can conjure up an intoxicating vortex trajectory, sometimes slides into mannerist conventional details. The music sometimes dries out, but sometimes it goes great with what is not directly said (the scene in the restaurant in the third part). It is a problematic emancipation film on both levels - it creates the main character, who is more approximate than captivating. And it speaks of the identities of a minority without deriving them from its relationship to the oppressive majority (like 12 Years a Slave) or making this relationship a main topic at all. Rather than a radical social image, Moonlight is a lyrical portrait of personality changes - and this is where it has considerable limits. The experience from the film is so very inspiring and unsatisfactory... Respect mixed with doubts. (22.02.2017)

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. (05.02.2017)

If there’s one thing you have to grant to this film, it is the fact that Barry Jenkins is a very skilled director, who took on board with him James Laxton, who is s an equally skilled director of photography. And even though all this skill goes hand in hand with the actors, whose performances aren’t bad at all, my biggest issue is with the topic, which is not uninteresting, but I was more into it from the perspective of the Oscar nominations. You see, it’s really hard to me to follow the life fate of young Chiron, who lives in a society that is totally beyond me. There’s nobody in this movie I can understand and I simply watch young Chiron, who has trouble expressing himself and who’s simply observing everything as if from a distance. He probably can’t even see that the things that are going on around him are not ideal, but he can do nothing about it himself, so he’s simply trying to adjust, but despite that he wants to form an opinion of his own. A strange film, well made, but to me it was very inaccessible. It was really hard for me to find any emotion that I could at least catch on to. (14.02.2017)