Finally saw Moonlight so if anyone needs me I'll just be wrecked forever.
There is so much I loved about this movie: the performances, the writing, the subject matter, the way it was shot, the colors, the mood, the structure--and of course, the music. Obviously music can lend much to a film, but often, it's this ancillary thing, for better or for worse. It's backdrop, or filler, or something annoyingly anthemic meant to drive home that we're interfacing with life in the 20s or the 80s or whenever. In Moonlight, the music feels spiritually connected to the scenes, the conflicts, the characters themselves. In the moments when the emotional intensity renders a character speechless, the music becomes everything they cannot say. Jidenna's "Classic Man" plays while Chiron is driving alone to Miami, and resumes later, when he starts the car to give Kevin a ride home. The volume is low when Kevin teases Chiron about his lifestyle, about having gotten hard, and rather than respond or engage, Chiron turns up the volume, and "Classic Man" fills the car and the scene, a playful answer to Kevin's questions and bemusement. Earlier, in the restaurant, Kevin plays Barbara Lewis's "Hello Stranger" on the jukebox, the song played by a patron, according to Kevin, that made him think to call Chiron after so many years had passed. So the song about a stranger, selected by a stranger, is also the song that electrifies the space between two men whose love has estranged them, has carried them to the furthest reaches from each other and brought them all the way back. The song does heavy lifting without ever feeling heavy-handed; the moments of them listening to it and looking at one another from across the room are achingly beautiful. We feel every difficult feeling that exists between them while listening to the sweetest, simplest "shoo-bop shoo-bop" refrain.