Moonlight

Abstract Black’s introduction is analyzed in this chapter in the order of its two sections, on announcing Black and Black’s business. Each section is structured as follows: summary, questions (for audience, for reader), commentary, and conclusion (incorporating information conveyed, emotion, visceral sensation, and vision). Screenshots and forensic commentary provide step-by-step critical insights into the art of the filmmaker in regard to storytelling, flow of emotion, staging, shooting and editing, and address to the audience. The chapter considers both cinematic art in general and the filmmaker’s chosen discourse for his film, with specific instances of his art related to universal principles. The chapter’s analysis of story and film language follows the introduction of Black from his nightmare of his mother screaming at him as a boy to his business controlling the neighborhood drug trade. Screenplay and film for each sequence are compared—the page and screen of the second episode being notably different—and there follows consideration of the transition into the film’s second act or movement and its opening scene.