If you’ve seen the uncut version of Barry Jenkins’s film Moonlight about a black American boy discovering his homosexual identity you will be shocked to that two of the film’s love-making sequences, one homosexual and the other heterosexual, missing when it releases in India this Friday.
While one can on some level argue that gay sex cannot be shown in an Indian film since homosexuality is still not legalised here, the sensitively designed sequence in Moonlight is not technically a love-making sequence. It is implicitly shown that the film’s young teenage protagonist gets a hand-job from his best friend.
Says a source, “The censor board has ordered the entire hand-job to go. We only hear the protagonist say he is sorry for what happened. Indian audiences will not get what he’s feeling sorry for.” Also, ordered out of the film is a dream sequence showing the protagonist’s best friend making out with a girl. Besides these two cuts the soundtrack has been cleared of all expletives included ‘bitch’, ‘dick’, ‘f***’ and ‘motherf***er’.
Says a source, “The CBFC has done a sanskari job on the language of the American African community.”
Wonder what director Barry has to say about his masterpiece being sanitised by the Indian censors.
