Manchester By The Sea: my choice for best picture

lol I hope you enjoy the movie.

9, where'd you go, my friend? I hope all is well. Apologies for my very late reply to your thoughtful post, life had thrown me off my MC groove as I was pondering "Moonlight," and now that I've come back, it seems that you've left (for now?). Hopefully our paths will cross again...

Regarding "Moonlight" [more spoilers ahead]...

Yes, as you said, reality can be like that. In movies, though, I like looking for that fine line between what feels natural and what feels like filmmaking. Sometimes a movie makes me stop and ask if I could imagine it would unfold like this, or why the filmmakers chose to tell it that way, or if my reactions were too much manipulated. For me that's an interesting part of watching movies.

And it's true that first impressions are incomplete, and we may not have a good sense of what may be going on in someone's life, nor what direction their life may be headed, based on one brief encounter (i.e., we are led to perceive Chiron's mother Paula as a "clean and straight arrow" type of person because she's a nurse and a warm and caring mother in the first scene, and then she's shown to be a drug user, and belligerent and unapproachable in the second scene). And we may not anticipate the degree of change in someone even if we understand its causes and would've predicted it (i.e., Chiron's life change and physical transformation).

But yes, the particular way that the film chose to reveal Chiron's mother Paula as a belligerent, emotionally closed-off crack addict in the very second scene following her first scene as a responsible nurse and a fond and caring mother, and the casting of the adult Chiron compared to teenage Chiron, were two things that gave me pause.

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That second scene involving Paula was so impacting. Right after I watched it, I felt what I believe was intended: a sense of betrayal with the mother, who had initially come across as warm, fond and protective of her son, yet now turned out to also be unreliable and unable to give her son an emotionally stable home life. I was also struck by the quickly changing dynamics of the scene. We had started with a sweet moment between Juan and Chiron at the door, then the (at the time) sympathetic humor of Paula abruptly pulling Chiron into the house and slamming the door on Juan, then a dawning soberness and sharper understanding of Chiron's isolation and sadness as we see a strange man in the house, and realize Paula is a drug user, and see her turn away from Chiron as quickly as she had brought him into the house, and shut the door on him just as she had shut the door on Juan. I think the pace and the emotional turns and the bookending of that scene (the front door and the bedroom door) were great filmmaking.

But afterward I wondered about the character psychology a little bit. If Paula was so concerned about her son or Juan knowing about her habit, how come she didn't check who was at the door before opening it? How come she didn't remove or hide the drugs before pulling Chiron in? Did she think Juan's influence on Chiron was even more troubling and harmful to Chiron than her habit? Maybe she wasn't really thinking; we can gather she probably wasn't in a calm, rational state of mind. Maybe—and this is the conclusion I've settled on, because it's consistent with all of Paula's scenes—there's Paula's overriding conviction that, whatever shortcomings she may have as a mother, *she* is still Chiron's family, not Juan.

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At any rate I think Paula's second scene was a rude awakening for us to Chiron's reality. The two Paulas we've seen by this point are like day and night (and even photographed that way, her first scene a daytime scene and her second scene in evening). To be fair, we did get a hint beforehand that something was amiss about Chiron's home life (e.g., that first night when Chiron indicates to Juan and Teresa that he doesn't want to go home, and readily accepts Teresa's invitation to stay the night at her and Juan's home, even though he'd only met them for the first time a few hours ago). Still, I wasn't prepared for the stark difference in feeling between the fond and protective Paula of the first scene, and the cold and closed-off Paula of the second scene. They felt like two completely different people (and I know that substance abuse can do that to people... heck, regular stress and fatigue can do that to people), which added to our sensitivity to Chiron's isolation. I can see that being Jenkins's intent.

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I don't imagine it was Jenkin's intent for the teenage Chiron (Ashton Sanders) and the adult Chiron (Trevante Rhodes) to be such clearly different people, though! I understand the point he was making about Chiron, that we're meant to see that Chiron had worked hard to transform himself into a physically and psychologically intimidating man. But yes, I just think they went a little far in that direction. I couldn't help having the distracting thought that the two actors were fundamentally of a different body type. But it's a minor nitpick, like seeing the seams in the filmmaking, that's all.

(It speaks to Rhodes as an actor, though, that despite the obvious physical differences, he still evoked the essence of younger Chiron in his body language. Wary, guarded, shy... darting eyes, downward glances, a hunched, closed-off posture.)

That said, I also realize that Jenkins wasn't going for a completely realistic film in the first place. There are stylistic visuals that give the film a dreamlike quality, that mix the present day with what feels like memories. It's a beautiful, well done film. Cheers, 9.

Cool. One thing I always thought was great and kind of funny about those old IMDb boards was how you could reply to ancient posts by people who weren't active there anymore, and it didn't matter. It was fine. People acted like it was perfectly normal, and would jump in on any ole' conversation whether they'd ever been part of it or not. LOL I loved that.

Yeah, Moonlight won. I tend to talk like it doesn't much matter what the Academy thinks, because, well, it doesn't, to me. :)

I do still favor Manchester, have yet to see La La Land, it keeps getting pushed down on my list.