When most people think of Barry Jenkin’s film Moonlight, they think to themselves, “Hey, wasn’t that the film that stole Best Picture from La La Land?” Giving people who have seen the Musical-Romance a bad taste in their mouths. But a lot of people have Moonlight all wrong.

I love La La Land, and I was one of the many who believed the film was cheated, and that Moonlight only won the award because of “social politics.” After many years, I sat down late at night, scrolled through HBO Max’s channel selection, and noticed Moonlight was on. I stopped surfing and watched. I caught Jenkin’s film during its last 30 minutes, and even without having the full context of the story, the movie left me completely at a loss for words. I finally thought, half-bitter about my internal confession, “So that’s why it won.” The film is a masterclass in directing, acting, and cinematography. Also, it holds the record for Best Picture on the lowest budget ($4 million), grossing 50 times that amount worldwide.

Moonlight is a masterpiece as a whole, but the film’s screenplay is its shining achievement. In this post, I’d like to talk about Juan, the protagonist’s father figure, his character introduction in this wonderful script, and how Jenkins uses subtext to convey information about his characters and settings before Juan ever says a word. Knowing how to do this effectively will make your character and their world pop off the page and will be useful for anyone involved in your pre-production process.

Juan’s Introduction

From page one, we learn so much about Juan from solely looking at the description of his car:

“A bright Miami day. Or what we can see of it: our gaze fixed,

looking into the front windshield of a wide, vintage car

(think 60s, American)” (Jenkins 1).

From getting this small description about Juan’s car, the reader can already see that is a reasonably successful person. It’s hard to believe that someone drives something like a vintage Cadillac without being able to take care of himself.

We then get the character description:

“At the wheel [we] find JUAN (30’s, some sort of Afro-Latino thing

about him) pulling towards us and coming to a stop. Behind

him, a shady, rundown apartment building abuts the road,

three boys standing outside it” (Jenkins 1).

Now, some screenplays would give you more information about Juan, probably saying something like “… Juan (30s, Afro-Latino) pulls toward us coming to a stop. He’s an Afro-Latino, muscular, wearing a durag, a grey tank top, a grill, and…” Or something more neat than that, but the problem with this description is it may be correct but it does not leave much room for interpretation.

When a script is completed or purchased, it is distributed between all the departments, one of those departments is the costumes. When the costume designer (creator) and wardrobe supervisor (costume budgeter) read my character description, they will know what I want, but they have no freedom to interpret how this character might dress based on his actions. The description may not line up with who Juan is more likely to be like based on the script.

After that, Jenkins writes these final lines before Juan says something:

“Juan cuts his engine, exits the car and begins across the

street. The boys tense up as Juan approaches, [and] make room as he

continues all the way over to the brick wall behind them” (Jenkins 1).

Considering all of this information, we know that he can assume he is successful, because of his car, but because of the “shady, rundown apartment buildings” we might assume that he lives or at least does business in low-income areas. We also learn more about his character when “The boys tense up as Juan approaches, [and] make room as he continues all the way over to the brick wall behind them.” The reader can clearly see that is a feared or at the least powerful figure to these boys, which could be from his physical appearance, their past with him, the way he carries himself, or some other reason, maybe all of them together.

If haven’t seen the film, Juan makes his money selling drugs in the Miami projects but is still a father-like figure. All the information in those lines, tells you a million things about Juan without the character uttering a single word, which is masterful screenwriting, and writing in this way would be a gift to any creative working on your production.

Conclusion

In other words, subtext is the engine for any great script, whether you use it to describe a character, inform the audience about your story world, or simply make your scenes more interesting; most great scenes have an unspoken thing happening between characters.

I hope this was a helpful post, and I’m looking forward to getting back to you all next week!

In the meantime though, where have you seen great uses of subtext in your favorite movies?

Work Cited:

Jenkins, Barry. 2016. Moonlight. United States: A24.