![]() ![]() Indeed, by setting up black and blue as complimentary colors, the film creates a paradigm shift in the existing symbolic order. The way we perceive blackness is entirely dependent on the presence or absence of other factors. Black is a general signifier which we understand here to refer to the brown pigmentation of Juan’s skin, which under certain lighting conditions is neither brown nor black but rather, blue. Black in this sentence is not referring to the literal color, but rather to an identification of Juan as black. Juan initially received his nickname from a Cuban woman who told him, “In moonlight, black boys look blue.” This sentence almost seems to suggest the superfluous nature of color as a rigid property or signifier. Although Black is the name given to Chiron by Kevin, it is the name that Chiron keeps when he takes up Juan’s mantle in the third act of the film. In creating a stock which does the exact opposite, Jenkins and crew are pushing back against an industry standard and echoing Juan’s words of wisdom.īlue and Black are also related to each other in the film through the pseudonyms of Juan and Chiron. #Moonlight movie skin#In fact, many of the first film stocks were deliberately designed to enhance light skin tones, and mute darker colors. Juan tells Chiron at the beach, “There are black people everywhere.” While this may be true in reality, it has not been true on film. ![]() In other words, the visual presence of the space enhances the physical presence of the black characters and vice versa. ![]() The complementation of color mentioned in the previous paragraph serves to intrinsically link the characters to Miami. The color palette of the film acts similarly here. For instance, the use of the 360 degree camera pans attempt to situate characters in a complete three dimensional space rather than on a stage divided by the camera’s field of vision. Moonlight is a film that plays with the notions of how characters take up space on screen. The complementary color of brown is blue, and therefore the intensity of the blues enhances the on screen presence of the black characters who inhabit the world of the film. Inherently, the magnification of these colors also serves to contrast that of the skin tones of the film’s characters. #Moonlight movie movie#However, the enhancement of blue tones in the movie serves a dual purpose. The sky and sea become bands of aquamarine, turquoise and indigo, lending the environments a certain impressionistic quality. The immediate effect of this is to enhance the beauty of Miami, where the film takes place. Indeed, the colorist for the film, Alex Bickel, deliberately used a variety of filters in the editing process for the film to deepen the blues to the point where they appear nearly luminescent. Easily the color that is most noticeably present throughout the film is blue. One of the most immediately apparent optical aspects of the film is that of its richly saturated color palette. Moonlight is an incredibly visually striking film. ![]()
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