No. TatinG, no. Moonlight is not all about drug dealers and drug users. Yes Juan is a drug dealer, and yet he is the only character to embrace and help Chiron. The movie highlights the contradiction in that. Chiron’s mother is an addict, but this movie most definitely does not glorify that. To reject this movie because of one characterization is to miss the bigger picture.
The director and writer both survived troubled childhoods with mothers who were crack addicts. They did not make this film to glorify drug addiction. Far from it,
I saw that a little differently. Seemed Warren tried to gain back control of the mic but once the card was taken from his hand by one of the La LA Land cast he went with it. He did regain control of the mic by thanking the man and edging his way back in a minute later – then gave a very clear explanation of what happened.
But Viola wasn’t in Hidden Figures - she won for Fences, which I have heard her talk beautifully about before. She talks about telling the story a a regular man etc. Last night seemed a little different, though perhaps I am taking her words too literally. She did give a great performance in Fences.
@TatinG
I’ll be the first to admit, that I was not a big Moonlight fan, though I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s a movie about drug users and drug dealers. Sure those characters are key to the story, but it’s really a coming of age story about a boy struggling to find his identity and his place in a society and community where the odds are very much against him.
But yes, Mahershala’s (the drug dealer) character was portrayed in a sympathetic light.
I did love Manchester by the Sea, I guess it was easier for me to relate to it, and I do see some parallels between both films, in that both have a theme of how we support others in times of great adversity. And they both have scripts where the dialogue in very real and raw. And of course some beautiful acting in each.
A movie that makes a drug dealer a sympathetic character is not for me. Drug dealers kill people for profit, they ruin lives. I could not possibly sit through a film that treats such a person as a sort of hero.
@TatinG I would suggest you see moonlight. It’s really not about the drug dealer at all. I’m a HUGE Mahershala Ali fan and I was surprised he won an Oscar. In my opinion his role was not Oscar worthy. I do think the young men that played Chiron in different stages should’ve been nominated. They were fantastic especially the youngest.
Whoops! @wisteria100 you are correct. Viola was linked to Hidden Figures in that she was considered for one of the roles. I did not see Fences – was it based on the lives of people who are now deceased or was it purely fictional? With the graveyard reference preceding the quote you highlighted I interpreted it as “bringing people back to life” through acting.
With regard to Moonlight, I agree with @fireandrain. This movie does not glorify drug addition or dealing drugs. If anything, the message is the opposite. I didn’t know until reading @fireandrain’s post that the writer and director grew up with crack addict parents. What I got in this movie is that the story of the main character, the child as he grows up, shows that the odds are stacked against a child growing up with no love and affection or basic parenting (by a crack addict mom), and he is destined ultimately as an adult, for a life on the streets. Kids like this stand a slim chance of making it out. In fact, I am happy to learn that the writer and director did make it out in a big way. While the Mahershala character does deal drugs, he is not what I call a sympathetic character. Rather, it shows that even someone with a “job” like his, MIGHT be a very good, caring person inside (he is in this movie…taking this young child under his wing with good intentions), but lives a life of the streets/dealing, likely because he grew up in such an environment and never made it out of the cycle. The young boy who grows up in the movie, doesn’t either. He seems like a good person too. It is more a matter of their environment and upbringing that works against their odds in the world.
I remember Ali from “House of Cards”. He played the lobbyist Remy.
I do think Casey Affleck was amazingly good in “Manchester by the Sea”. One could read his mind by looking at his face. He didn’t have to say anything.
@HarvestMoon1
Fences is fictional and the movie was developed very closely from the play of the same name by August Wilson. Both Viola and Denzel had the same roles during the Broadway run and each earned a best actor Tony for it.
It is set in 1950;s Pittsburgh and examines the life of a sanitation worked embittered by the fact that he did get a chance to play major league baseball because of his race. Viola has referenced her father when she has spoken about the main character. Not so much the baseball part, but just that it is a story of a black man with a story to tell
@HarvestMoon1 Fences is not a true story. The author, August Wilson, wrote a ten play cycle about the black experience in Pittsburgh – each play focused on a decade starting with the 1900s and ending in the 1990s. I think the author was trying to bring focus on the lives of regular working class people that can be easily forgotten and I think that is what Viola Davis was referring to.
I still have to see the movie (waiting for Netflix at this point). I saw the play on Broadway with James Earl Jones and it was great. I have no doubt that Denzel Washington and Viola Davis have done it justice.
Moonlight does not in any way glorify drugs or drug dealing – quite the opposite. Of the three or four most memorable scenes in the movie, one is the out-of-control crack-addicted mother bullying her teenaged son mercilessly to give her the little bit of money he has so she can buy drugs, and another has the central character at 7 asking the drug dealer who is the only source of stability and love in his life, “Do you sell drugs?,” and “Does my mother get drugs from you?” It also makes clear in later episodes that Juan (the character played by Ali) was killed.
On the other hand, does the movie humanize drug dealers? Sure, it does. Juan is presented as someone who pushes drugs and threatens violence (and is surely capable of violence), but also as a working man who is capable of love and sensitivity, and who carries a weight of guilt about how he earns a living. And the central character, Chiron, is also a drug dealer in his mid-20s, although by the end of the movie there’s reason to hope that he won’t be continuing down that road.
The man who wrote the original play on which Moonlight was based, Tarell Alvin McCraney, has talked about how the most important father figure in his life when he was a boy was a drug dealer who treated him like a son, until the man was killed by a rival organization. The interactions between Juan and the young Chiron in the movie are based on McCraney’s actual experience.
McCraney and the film’s director/screenwriter, Barry Jenkins, grew up in the same neighborhood and went to the same schools a couple years apart until high school. They didn’t know each other then, but they had very similar lives and very much shared the same frame of reference.
If one is going to give away major plot points, it is common courtesy to write SPOILERS in all caps at the top, and then space down a few times so that people have a heads up.
Off the wall question: The song “Audition” from La La Land sounds so much like “The Rainbow Connection” from The Muppets Movie. Or am I musically challenged?
Agree, @doschicos and @Nrdsb4 , at least the second time I can recall a major plot point has been given away (the other was La La Land) I have not seen Moonlight yet. Very disappointed to have so much revealed about what happens to a character.
Actually I Googled “Rainbow Connection similar to Audition” and other people have thought the same thing. The songs are very, very similar melody-wise.
@partyof5 - agree with you about Mahershela - Thought he did a fine job but others in the movie were better.
Naomi was terrific, but no way was she going to win up against Viola, and the competition on that category was also fierce from Michelle and even Nicole. I cry every time I see that little Michelle scene from Manchester played somewhere – that’s how good she was.
I encourage you to read about Viola Davis and to read “Fences” and the other plays in the Pittsburgh Cycle. Viola Davis was dirt poor growing up but she does not blame her parents. They both worked. I’m sure she feels a connection to the characters in August Wilson’s plays.
Apparently there are two sets of envelopes placed in two briefcases, overlooked by PwC, at either side of the stage, so they don’t have to shuttle the envelopes from one side of the stage to the other, as presenters enter from either side of the stage. When winners are announced, I suppose the other duplicate envelope in the other briefcase is discarded. It would have to be, wouldn’t it, to avoid confusion?
Somehow the duplicate Actress in a Leading Role made it into Beatty’s hand. My guess is that the two briefcases were stuffed correctly – they would have caught that error at some point – but when the Actress in a Leading Role was announced, the PwC overseer tossed the Best Picture envelope instead of the duplicate Actress in a Leading Role envelope. Then he had one envelope left in his case, the wrong one. Didn’t check it. Beatty entered the stage from doofus’s side and he was handed the wrong envelope. I’m speculating on the exact chain of events, but it sounds about right.
I don’t blame Beatty. He could have seen the heading on the envelope when it was handed to him, but presenters aren’t expected to do PwC’s job. Beatty actually sensed that something was amiss, and hesitated. Dunaway simply blurted out the film title that she saw on the card. No fault with either, but the reputational blow to PwC is pretty large.
