2016 Muriel Awards: Best Direction

Sorry guys, I'm running out of clever intros for these pieces. At this point, I scarcely think you need those anyway - the categories are big enough that you just want to see who won and read their awesome pieces and you couldn't care less about my yammering. Moving on...

Third place:

Jim Jarmusch - Paterson [99 points / 15 votes]

Second place:

Martin Scorsese - Silence [108 points / 18 votes]

And the Muriel goes to...

Barry Jenkins - Moonlight [142 points / 21 votes]

"One of the most striking scenes in Moonlight is early in the film, as nine-year-old Chiron/'Little' (Alex Hibbert) is given a swimming lesson by Juan (Mahershala Ali), the drug dealer who has taken him under his wing. It's the first moment where we see Little, who has been mostly silent so far, start to open up and trust Juan. As Juan holds the boy in the water, the image is reminiscent of a baptism, and it feels like something of a a holy moment between the two characters.

"Watching Moonlight for the first time last fall, I noticed the strong winds, overcast skies and choppy waters in this scene and wondered if, while shooting the scene, they were racing against an incoming storm. Later, I read that's exactly what happened - a storm was coming, and director Barry Jenkins had to scrap his plans for the day and work out, with his actors, a more direct way of capturing the scene. The scene is almost certainly more interesting as a result - the rough weather, the waves splashing against the camera and the immediacy of Ali and Hibbert's performances give the scene a charge that underscores the significance of the moment to Little and Juan.

"This openness and willingness to adapt to the moment is one of the most important skill a filmmaker can possess. We tend to recognize great filmmaking in big, meticulously orchestrated gestures, and Moonlight has its share of those - when it comes to audacious tracking shots and lyrical slo-mo interludes, Jenkins can go toe to toe with the best of them. But it's his sensitivity to the moment that allows him to draw such fine-tuned performances out of his cast - a mix of experienced performers and newcomers - and bring Chiron's story (which, in many was, is close to his own) to life in such a specific, poignant way that even viewers whose own experience is far from Chiron's can't help but open their hearts to him." ~ Andrew Bemis

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