The film unfolds from three relatively independent stories, and each part is preceded by a naming chapter: Little, Chiron, Black, which reminds me of the first three chapters in "Yellow Sea": Taxi Driver, Murder And the Korean ethnic group. Just as "Yellow Sea" describes the protagonist's destiny and living condition with his identity as a code name, "Moonlight Boy" also uses three separate titles to show the role and personality of a boy at three different stages of his life. .
The movie poster is made up of three actors who played male protagonists in different periods. The faces of each of the three actors are stitched together. The three seemingly separate periods, three stories, and even three actors who have no similarities in appearance are really real. Shows the growth story of the same boy.
Unlike the growth story of "Boyhood", the angle chosen by "Moonlight Boy" is actually very narrow. There is neither a starring role in one shot for twelve years, nor a life sketch in which it is entertaining, and it lacks that kind of youth. A full-fledged pink plot.
To put it simply, this is not a movie that wins with "realism". The story it tells can easily make you get out of life and overlook this bitter drama from a God's perspective. Some of its plots may come from someone's personal experience, but most viewers can feel and move, but it is difficult to generate common emotions.
What is valuable is that even such a film full of blacks, homosexuals, drugs, bullying, and single parent elements can still maintain a fresh and dull tone in the tone. So that when you are grabbed by a certain plot in the film, you can still find that it is a little freshness about growth in its bones. It contains your common sadness and melancholy, but not the roughness that reveals a sense of familiarity. And pain.
Just as everyone is enthusiastically discussing the shots and soundtracks in the film that pay tribute to Wong Kar-wai's movies, the director uses a poetic lens with oriental aesthetics to shoot black-themed movies that have always given a rough impression. The extreme nature of the viewers has formed a more unique style of images.
The story represented by the three key words in the film, each paragraph is clicked and will not be described in depth. Together with the three chapters, the storyline is divided into time nodes representing the three periods of childhood, adolescence and youth.
Because his mother was addicted to drugs, little Chiron knew the drug dealer who was willing to take care of him without the help of his family when he was bullied. Then he discovered that the drug dealer who regarded him as his adopted son was the source of his mother's drugs.
When Chiron grew up a little bit, the childhood shadow did not dissipate with age. On the contrary, the increasing bullying of the classmates around him, the madness and moodiness of his mother, the appearance of Kevin, the giving of feelings and the final betrayal, all these are impacting Chiron's meek character bottom line. The film finally ushered in his explosion at the end of the second chapter. Counterattack. This period of resistance seemed unpredictable, but it was reasonable.
Judging from the progress of the film, it took only five or six minutes from the same-sex scene of the two on the beach to Kevin beating Chiron in public. This kind of contrast is more intuitive in the eyes of the audience, as if the relationship between the two people was still lingering in the first few minutes, and in the next few minutes, the two of them became bullies and the targets of bullying. The speed of change is far beyond ours. Imagination. In this comparison, Chiron's sudden defiance later on is much more reasonable.
Therefore, it is the complexity of the family and environment that made Chiron form a weak, introverted, nervous and shy personality in his teenage years. This is also the main story of the first two chapters. In the last chapter, Chiron has grown up, and everything around him has changed. Rather than saying that the director focused on his meeting with his old friend Kevin, it would be better to say that the focus of this entire chapter or even the whole film was actually the conversation between Chiron and Kevin in his kitchen that night.
Kevin asked him, "Who are you? Who the hell are you?"
Chiron, a big man with gold teeth and full of muscles, is indeed very different from when he was a child.
Chiron replied, "I am who I am." Then he asked Kevin, "What about you?"
Kevin said, "I have never been who I am."
Including the question of Chiron and the drug lord at the end of the first chapter, when he was a child, he had a motherly love but was corrupted by drugs, and the villain who was a very sinful person but gave him love. , The concepts of these two people have caused confusion and doubts, and when they look up, they are doubts about society and troubles with the environment.
And when the philosophical question of "who are you" appeared in the third chapter of the film, Chiron's childhood questions seemed to be self-defeating.
What we experience in each period may gradually fade with age and time. But the way we look at things, and the selectivity of emotional retention, will never change from start to finish. This is everyone's character.
No matter what kind of person you become, whether you are satisfied with the status quo, you will never forget your original appearance. There is a big difference between my own expectations and the final result. Only I know if I accidentally live like other people. And when you look down on all of this, you may feel that the result is not the most important thing. The important thing is how you walk step by step, the important thing is who has been with you, and the important thing is the period you have experienced. Period-the growth process that belongs only to oneself.
This is exactly what the first two chapters of the whole movie want to express.
Just like an adult Chiron driving a car with a "BLACK" mark, just like he would be attracted by the moonlight beach by accident, he cares more about the memorable past, rather than who has a family now and who is going to sell drugs. Become the "bad guy" he once questioned. And those who have passed away, grievances, grievances and bad times, may have long been forgiven and forgotten.
This is why we like stories about youth and growth.
Therefore, unlike "Yellow Sea", "Moonlight Boy" has a happy ending. In the last scene of the film, Chiron stood in the moonlight and turned his head faintly by the beach. His blue skin and eyes blended with the blue background around him.
I think if you add a chapter to this end, it might be called "Moonlight". On the one hand, I reminisce about the warmth of that night, on the other hand, I am relieved and missed the bitterness and tenderness of the past. That kind of self-examination, openness, and subtle emotional release all melted into the childhood Chiron's eyes at the end. In the end, this melancholic look was performed by the little actor, which seemed to be the director's answer to Kevin's phrase "I have never been the real myself" on behalf of Chiron.
Under the promotion of the general environment, he silently followed his own growth trajectory, from the beginning "Little" to "Chiron" and then to the last "Black", whether it was his last appearance or what he has always been, no matter what. No., it's just himself.
Perhaps the meaning of Chiron and Kevin meeting again is not to show the audience what the two teenagers who were once ambiguous have become. But: You and the world have changed, and I suddenly discovered that I am still the one myself, and you are still "the only man who has touched me."
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