On Moonlight (On The Futility Of Hiding)
"My name is Chiron. People call me Little."
“I’d do anything for you… (in the dark)” - Frank Ocean
“There's a wound in the past.” - Ryan Beatty
*Significant spoilers for Moonlight (2016) ahead.
A couple months ago, I was in Washington D.C., in an Uber, on my way to see Moonlight (2016).
At the time, D.C., much like Chicago, was in the midst of its annual fake spring. The sunlight was unambiguous and there. The birds were chirping. A man was flying his kite. I was visiting my friend Valerie a month before D.C.’s famous cherry blossoms would appear, yet I could already feel their conceptual presence. I could imagine the ample green spaces we passed by filled to the brim with communal life. But as soon as the wind picked up and the sky began to darken, these visions quickly dissipated. Winter was still here — and maybe it would never leave again. It was a troublesome thought, so we ducked into the warmth of the Uber and ignored it for the moment.
I was nervous. Traveling always makes me nervous. There is something about a new place that imbues every moment with a sense of importance, of existential possibility. You are hyper-aware that this life is not your own, that you are merely renting it for the week. The people you meet are not your people. The parks you go to are not your park. The coffee shops are not your coffee shop. But they’re somebody else’s. Who is this person? Are they living the right life? Have they figured it out? Have I gotten it all wrong? Has life been waiting for me here this whole time?
I was also nervous because I am always nervous to see Moonlight. I’m nervous to talk to people about it. I’m nervous to show it to people. I feel myself become shy and evasive. I feel a much younger version of myself peeking out into the world.
I return to Moonlight almost like a religious text. Every so often, something compels me to return to its pages and remember the lessons that I have strayed from. I think of Florida — how it can hold tenderness and cruelty in the same fist. I hear the waves. I think of my friends, my mother, my father. I see Chiron’s eyes — I remember his eyes very clearly. Eyes that carry invisible weight, eyes that are languageless and full. I think of my own. I feel connected to something greater than myself, something that has finally given me permission to rest.
This all washes over me in the Uber. Traffic is atrocious — I am afraid of being late. I don’t want to miss any part of the experience. I wonder if there will be previews. You always think there will be previews, but occasionally you go to a theater that doesn’t do previews and they think you’re dumb for not knowing that. Who knows how D.C. theaters do things? Let’s just get there on time and not find out. To distract myself, I make passing jokes to Valerie about our visit to the Capitol earlier that day.
We settle into a moment of stillness at a red light. We’re enjoying the silence when, out the window, I see someone that I know.
An old friend. They’re walking across the crosswalk. I know them. I haven’t seen them in six years, and now I am looking at them, walking. It is all I can do. The light changes green, and we pull off.
I begin to explain to Valerie what just happened before I’ve even registered it myself. I begin in the same light-hearted tone we were speaking in before. As I go on, I feel a sadness creeping into my throat. I feel 18-year-old Thomas, 11-year-old Thomas. I am an adult, I tell myself. An adult. This is just a word, though. The feeling is the same, scabbed over, more powerful this time. It is always there, I realize. It is always hiding. It is always there.
After the movie, I consider messaging my old friend, telling them that I saw them walking. I consider thanking them. Familiar fears resurface: the fear of rejection, or even worse, apathy. The fear of making things weird. The fear of someone meaning more to me than I did to them.
I feel at home on the outside of these unopened doors. I feel at home in hiding, waiting for the discomfort to pass.
It appears that I have not learned what Moonlight was trying to teach me. It appears that I still think a life lived in hiding is one worth living at all.
The characters in Moonlight are trapped. Trapped in cycles of generational trauma, trapped in a world that has carved out little space for their existence, trapped in their reactions to this trauma: in hypermasculinity, substance abuse, and homophobia. The film considers how the enormity of this trauma divorces them from their humanity. It considers whether there is any hope of return, any hope of a world in which they can simply Be.
Our guide on this journey is Chiron, aka Little, a young Black boy living in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami. Already, Chiron has internalized his separation from the world — he understands it as something that can only punish his true self. We see him fleeing from a group of bullies into an abandoned dope spot. We see his reluctance to join the other boys in a playground game.
In this moment, Kevin teaches Chiron a lesson that all little boys internalize at some point.
LITTLE: I ain't soft.
KEVIN: I know, I know. But it don't mean nothin' if they don't know.
It’s a tragic scene in many ways, yet there’s beauty in it as well. As a boy, the playground is a kind of safe haven. In school, your rambunctiousness is often chastised by teachers, but the playground is free from such constraints. Some boys are older than you, bigger than you, but realistically, you’re all kids. Your physicality poses no threat. As a result, playground lessons like these feel self-contained — you don’t yet realize how their emphasis on emotional suppression will one day stifle you as a man. It is also the rare time when physical touch is not policed for signs of femininity or queerness. Listen to how the boys in this scene giggle at the bottom of the dogpile. Their bodies exist freely — the world has not grabbed hold of them just yet. It reminds me of the strange sense of tranquility that settles over a neighborhood the day or two before a hurricane.
This idea of the masculine as something combative yet tender is also expressed through the character of Juan, played by Mahershala Ali. In Juan, we see a man who’s a product of his environment, yet has not allowed this to strip him of his compassion for the world. It’s what compels him to protect Chiron, to extend to him for the first time something resembling love. Through their relationship, we see Chiron slowly emerge from his nonverbal shell, which has been his only defense thus far against the cruelty that surrounds him. In the ocean, Chiron’s swimming lessons carry a baptismal connotation — we feel as if, for a moment, the water can wash away the world that has already hurt Chiron so deeply.
Yet, this salvation is short-lived. Juan’s ethical balancing act (his care for Chiron and selling of drugs to his mother) crashes and burns, and he is killed off screen.
Chiron is in high school now, and the hypermasculine dynamics he was first exposed to on the playground have reached their natural, violent conclusion. Playful wrestling has turned into physical and psychological torture. The boys are still boys, but they walk around in man-sized bodies. Chiron’s nonverbal shell can no longer keep them at bay.
With nowhere else to turn, Chiron finds himself once again by the water, Juan’s memory lingering in the wind. He’s joined again by Kevin, who’s also struggling to adapt to his environment. Whereas Chiron’s weapon of choice has been to withdraw himself from the world, Kevin chooses to attack it through macho posturing. His sexual boasting covers up the adolescent fears that all young people face. But in this environment, sexual prowess (or the perception of this prowess) is what proves his worth to the other boys, and by extension, what keeps him safe from the ridicule that Chiron is subjected to.
The boxes these two find themselves in are generations old. They’re filled with lessons passed down by men who, like Kevin and Chiron, were forced to meet the world on the world’s terms — in many cases to stay alive. They’re the product of a history that has unendingly violated their personhood in an effort to contort them to fit patriarchal ideals. These boxes promise men power and status via the murdering of their emotional selves and the subjugation of those around them.
Can Kevin and Chiron, can we, ever hope to break free from such boxes? This seems to be the central question of the film. Our boxes may look different from one another’s, but we’re all inside them. We’ve all internalized lessons from people who have been hardened by the world — and who aim to harden us in preparation for it. We all know what it feels like to perform who we have to be rather than simply be who we are.
It seems fitting that the ocean allows Kevin and Chiron to momentarily break free from their boxes. Only the water is older than they are. Only the moon. The ocean, the moon, offer a glimpse into something infinite and healing, something greater than their circumstances. Under moonlight, the two are awash in a blueness that asks nothing of them. Free from expectation, they are able to chance a moment of intimacy.
Before they kiss, Chiron pauses. Is this another sick joke? Will the rug be pulled out from under him once again? He can’t risk it. But no, it’s real. It’s safe. He surrenders. In this moment, something nameless and universal is transferred between the two, something Chiron will spend the next decade of his life trying unsuccessfully to forget.
As the third act begins, Chiron is unrecognizable. He understands what the world is, and what it isn’t. He understands what it wants from him. He is prepared to give it what it wants. He will never make the same mistake again.
Chiron has subconsciously followed the example set by Juan and is dealing drugs in Atlanta. However, Chiron’s reconstruction of his mentor is missing something. Whereas Juan met the harsh world around him with tenderness, Chiron responds to a harsh world with more harshness. Love can have no dominion. His armored personality won’t allow it.
It isn’t until Kevin's unexpected phone call that we see the cracks appear in this facade. Chiron has no time to prepare himself for Kevin’s “Hello.” The shyness, the long pauses return. As they speak, both Kevin and Chiron struggle to orient themselves to each other. There is both nothing and everything to say. They can feel that night on the beach. They can feel Kevin’s peer-pressured assault of Chiron the next day at school. And they can feel the weight of the years that have passed them by.
The floodgates have opened. Chiron, I assume, knows there’s no way to close them. He makes the 12+ hour drive from Atlanta to Miami with no plan. There is truly nothing left for him to do.
In Kevin’s diner, Chiron’s entire life is under review. A lifetime of tension is self-contained within this slowly emptying diner. The two begin an intricate conversational waltz, dancing around the enormity of what’s buried beneath the surface. They ease into a banter, and Kevin’s responsibilities in the kitchen and at the register create natural intermissions for the two to gauge their standing with one another.
This shy, tentative connection is shattered when Kevin pulls out a picture of his son. Chiron’s demeanor immediately drops. There is no more avoiding the reality of the different trajectories these two men’s lives have taken. Chiron feels the distance between them. He can feel the weight of his own unlived life. He realizes that while Kevin still cares for him, this care has not come at the expense of life itself, like it has for Chiron. Kevin has moved on. He’s found peace. To Chiron, there is a sense of something beautiful and terrible slipping away.
In the intimacy of Kevin’s home, Chiron is still looking for answers, still looking for a way to get Kevin to understand. The chasm between them is only widening, and their banter only seems to make things worse. Finally, there is nothing left for Chiron to do. Nothing left but to forgo a lifetime of hiding. To take the leap. He must finally tell the truth:
CHIRON: “You the only man that’s ever touched me.”
It is an impossible thing to say, and yet, he says it. It is an impossible thing to bestow upon somebody — a lifetime of trauma reckoned with in a single sentence — and yet, he does it. In saying this, the final bricks of Chiron’s fortress crumble to the ground. I feel the sensation of a completed circle. There is a silence of about 10 seconds as Chiron prepares to say these words. In this silence, you see decades of pain weighing him down. You can feel his shame at living a life outside of himself. You can feel the darkness of the box he has called home, the box his mother lived in, the box that his entire Liberty City neighborhood has been placed inside of. Somehow, somehow, he rises. He breaks through. He says the thing, for a moment risking the possibility of freedom.
It makes me consider how easy it is to lie to ourselves — how, in many ways, it is required of us. How so much of our lives exist in reaction to things, in retreat. For many of us, life can feel like a never-ending series of concessions of self — one long compromise with the world that takes us further away from who we know ourselves to be at our core. Before we know it, we become unrecognizable. Then, this unrecognition becomes familiar. Time passes. We grow acquainted with it. We think, yes, this adult self, this life that surrounds me, is who I am. We age, and life begins to present arrows that point backward. Something is stuck in the past. We haven’t the language to name it. There is only the silence of the years, the same long silences that permeate Moonlight. We live a life that never truly gets off the ground, and then we die.
It terrifies me. It terrifies me that when Kevin asks the question, “Who is you, Chiron?” (in many ways the thesis behind the entire film), Chiron, who has been living a lie for over a decade, says earnestly:
“I’m me, man. I ain’t trying to be nothing else.”
He believes it. Maybe not deep, deep down, but deep enough down to where he can’t even acknowledge his self-deception. It’s taken a chance call from Kevin to snap him out of it. Without this call, Chiron would have lived the rest of his life in denial of what he knows deep down to be true.
Many of us never receive our proverbial call from Kevin. We’re never forced to reckon with the younger parts of ourselves that we’ve left behind. We have responsibilities. We have rent. Families. There is a reason that living a life untrue to oneself is the top regret of the dying. The world we have created is one that runs on exploitation and profit. It is fundamentally opposed to accepting who we are at our core. To acknowledge that our sense of self has been distorted by forces that don’t have our best interests at heart is too heavy a cross to bear. In many cases, this would mean the fracturing of identities, the end of relationships, the crumbling of careers. It would destroy us, fully and completely. There is no way we can risk this.
And yet, the ocean beckons.
That’s what the movie is saying, I think. That to risk authenticity is the point. That there is no use pretending. That it always catches up to you, even if it takes your entire life to do so. That a life lived in hiding from one’s true self is the worst tragedy of all.
It seems significant to me that the moments that sustain Chiron throughout his life are the only moments in which he feels truly himself. One might interpret Kevin and Chiron’s moment on the beach as them hiding, but this, I feel, misses the point. As young men — young Black men — coming to terms with their identities, it's their performance within the world that keeps them hidden. It’s what they have to embody — it’s a costume they put on as children on that playground and didn’t realize they could take off. So many years later, it’s only through relinquishing this facade that they can begin to see any hope of a happier life.
It does not always feel like it, especially now, but there is a life that can be lived authentically. There always will be. There always was. I am still trying to discover it myself, but I can feel it, there, beneath everything. I’m still learning about it, but I know, somehow, that closing myself off from it will destroy it. I can’t do that.
After Chiron makes his choice, to risk being seen in all his brokenness, Moonlight ends. We see a shot of Little, by the ocean. He looks back at us with searching eyes, as if to ask if we remember the child within us. If we have spoken to them in a while. If we have taught them how to swim.
After I got home from D.C., I DM’d my old friend on Instagram, telling them that I had seen them out the window of my Uber. I thanked them for being a friend to me back in the day. I told them that their friendship was more important than I realized. That they made a difference in my life.
Their response was thoughtful and affirming, and as I read it, I could feel something inside me shift, something become unstuck. A choking sadness came over me, and it felt nice. I cried and felt better. I felt closer to life, closer to myself.
This is all I want, really. This is all I can hope for.
I feel like you really captured the spirit of Moonlight. Thank you for writing this, Thomas 🤍 Much to think about…
Holy shit, dude. This broke me open. Bravo, bravo.