![Moonlight.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmNnEhDrtdoWjh7C5kz6yZnwe6xrM38sFQztuynfdLyW5w/Moonlight.jpg)

I absolutely love Moonlight -- it's a film that takes a serious look at how society can both positively and negatively impact a person's life and change their perception of themselves. There's no doubt that society, for some, can be the constant weight of various expectations on the shoulders of the vulnerable; while some manage to deal with such suppression, others hide in a shell -- a shell that tells a different story to what it contains.

Moonlight follows Chiron's life in three different parts: his childhood, his teenage years, and adulthood. Chiron, in the eyes of the ignorant, is a child that is different from most. He comes from a broken family that is rich in neglect, drug abuse, and prostitution. Each of these awful things plays a major part in how Chiron grows out of childhood and a young adult.

Chiron begins to explore this rough exterior as life goes on. His personality changes and he becomes someone that he clearly is not, and it's a sad outcome caused by years of pressure on his peers for being gay, as well as the neglect caused by his mother. Chiron explores this facade of masculinity in order to push away those who have always kept him down in the dirt; he tells everyone just through his appearance and personality that he is no longer the fragile child he once was.

Having been raised more by a not-so-good Juan in a more adult manner than his own mother, Chiron slowly gets caught up in the same shady drug-dealing ways later on in life. Chiron knows this isn't who he wants to be: he doesn't want to be the person that provides drugs and neglect to the households similar to the one he had to grow up in. 

Moonlight's third part is Chiron's eventual realisation that he doesn't have to hide away and pretend to be a person he never was, and it is made apparent when he comes into contact with an old childhood friend of his that has always acknowledged the harships Chiron had to deal with -- his friend, sadly, was never strong enough to stick up for him, and also explored his tough-guy exterior in his youth in order to be ceased from the oppressive ways of society.

I love that Moonlight manages to be so much more than a coming-out story; it's so much more with its exploration of childhood struggles, poor parenthood, and the pressure that others place on us to simply be people we do not want to be.