As one of the three actors who played the protagonist in Moonlight, Ashton Sanders didn’t get nearly as much acclaim or exposure as some of his talented co-stars, but I always felt like his was the most haunted, captivating, and demanding performance in Barry Jenkins’s film: He gave the teenage Chiron the vulnerability of a man awkwardly confronting his sexuality, and the submerged tension that eventually led to his blowup. And he did it with remarkable grace; you couldn’t keep your eyes off him.
That grace is center stage in Native Son, Rashid Johnson’s visually striking and stylized film of Richard Wright’s classic novel of class, race, and guilt, which just premiered at Sundance. As Bigger Thomas, a 20-year-old bicycle messenger in Chicago who finds a job driving for a wealthy white businessman and his family, Sanders turns his character’s inner conflicts into action and gesture. He moves like a dancer — shoulders swaying, head nodding, hands trembling. This is a star in the making, but he seems determined to get there in a most unusual way.
