Barry Jenkins
4 titles · american lyrical
In Moonlight, one boy is followed through three chapters of his life, and each of them gets the close, unhurried attention a film usually saves for somebody else. Faces fill the frame and look straight down the lens. If Beale Street Could Talk stays on a pregnant woman's face while she works to prove her fiancé was framed, and Medicine for Melancholy gives two strangers a full day of San Francisco after a one-night stand neither can remember. Violence happens mostly off screen. Jenkins films the long look afterwards, and holds it until you are inside it.
Signature
- Faces in close-up, often looking down the lens.
- Chapters spread across years, letting time do the emotional work.
- Colour and score used closer to memory than to realism.
- Violence kept off screen, the aftermath filmed instead.
fit
