Against All Odds, Moonlight Wins Best Picture

This year’s Oscars were considerably less white. After two years running of exactly zero nominations for any minority actors, Moonlight’s surprise win as best picture was an inspiring affirmation for those who know deeply the experience of marginalization. Although the award-presenting itself caused an unprecedented hullabaloo, the film's achievement is founded by a solidly beautiful work entirely deserving of its critical acclaim. Aesthetically, it is a powerfully well-constructed piece of art that tells the universal experience of coming of age with the specificity that allows the deepest kind of emotional response.

Wilkinson outlines some major points that are the foundation to Moonlight’s success:

• Moonlight feels more like a symphony or a poem than a mere movie: "It’s mysterious and open-ended and beautifully shot, and in following Hou’s lead, Jenkins created something mysterious, open-ended, and beautifully shot in its own unique way."
• The cast of Moonlight is extraordinary - which helps show Jenkins’s mastery as director: "But it’s the acting that makes a screenplay come alive, and the manner in which the film was shot is really where Jenkins’s skill as a director becomes apparent."
• In the end, Moonlight’s appeal comes from subtlety, not showiness: "If you didn’t know what to look for, you might miss how good his work is. And yet the story itself still sticks with you after the credits roll. Chiron’s story, about coming to understand who he is in a world that seems calculated to beat him up, is precisely the sort of thing that movie lovers are talking about when they talk about the 'power of cinema'." 

In a deeply political moment embedded in a boiling over of America's complicated history with race and homophobia, Moonlight brings a very personal story to the the forefront of film.