Moonlight - a tale of sympathetic dichotomies

I cannot say that Moonlight was in my top 10 movies to see this year - but having won an Oscar for best picture, I thought it would be worth seeing - so I joined my usual arty meet up group on Sunday afternoon. I must admit that I was quite tired walking in, having read my book over lunch time and I was perhaps a bit too relaxed to fully get into this movie. It is quite slow and sometimes tedious as we meet the young black school boy Chiron, who is very introspective. He seems both vulnerable and shy and it takes us a while to begin to understand. His mother is seeking escape through drugs and it is not clear whether he is being bullied or that he just does not fit in. I am not sure that I would have picked up his sexuality issues if I did not know - he seemed genuinely unsure as a school boy and even a teenager about why he did not fit in with his friends. This may have become more difficult as he befriended Juan, his mother's drug dealer, and they had an almost father - son relationship. There were perhaps a few too many contradictions and inconsistencies, but I guess that might just be life as experienced by a fragile gay boy in the testosterone driven black drug scene. It is almost inevitable that he joined those who destroyed his mother's life, but the ending does hold out some hope, if you are feeling positively inspired....