Summary
We open on the curb of a street in Liberty City, a tough neighborhood in Miami, as a souped-up classic car, its dashboard decorated with a miniature crown, pulls up and parks. Juan, a confident drug dealer, emerges from the car and crosses the street to greet Terrence. It becomes clear that Terrence is an employee of Juan's who deals crack on this corner. Juan asks Terrence how business has been, and Terrence answers that everyone has paid up, offering the money to Juan. Juan tells him to keep it until the weekend.
A man approaches them asking to buy. He appears slightly crazed and seems to realize he's not being respectful towards Juan. He apologizes and moves down the block to retrieve the drugs from another man posted at a corner. Just then, several boys run past Juan and Terrence, seemingly pursuing one little boy.
We leave Juan to follow these little boys as they chase Chiron (nicknamed "Little") through an abandoned lot. Little takes refuge in an abandoned apartment complex, slamming the door shut just in time to foil his pursuers. The other boys throw things through the already broken window to try to hurt Little, who cowers in the corner. As his antagonists seem to retreat, Little explores the apartment. He finds a crack pipe and holds it up to the light.
Suddenly, loud knocks sound at the door. Little freezes, expecting the boys, but it's Juan. He enters, asking Little if he'd like to go eat some food. Little hesitates. Juan says, "C'mon. It can't be no worse out here."
At a fast food joint, Little eats ravenously and dodges questions from Juan, who threatens to take away Little's food unless he talks. Little casts his eyes down and shrinks into his seat, resigning to his dinner being taken away. Juan laughs and apologizes, but Little still seems too proud to give in.
Unable to figure out where Little lives, Juan takes Little home with him and warns him that his girlfriend, Teresa, will get him to talk. They arrive and Little watches, unable to hear, as Juan and Teresa discuss the situation. Teresa gets into the car with Little.
Later that evening, Little digs into a meal made by Teresa and explains that his name is Chiron, but "people call [him] Little." He tells Juan and Teresa that he lives in Liberty City with his mom, but gets silent and stops eating when they ask about his father. Juan entreats Little to tell them where he lives, but Little refuses. Teresa buckles, allowing Little to stay at their place that night.
The next morning, Juan brings Little home, finding his mother, Paula, worried sick. She scolds Little and seems resentful of Juan's attempts to care for her son. When Juan tries to fist-bump Little goodbye, Paula pushes Little inside. Inside, Paula tries and fails to coax an explanation out of Little. She gives up and cuddles him, but he doesn't seem interested. He tries to turn on the TV, but Paula tells him he can't watch TV—only read—as punishment for failing to come home the previous night.
At school, Little and his peers play a hybrid of soccer and football, kicking balled-up newspaper down a field and tackling each other. When Little leaves the game, apparently disinterested, a little boy named Kevin, follows. Kevin asks Little why he lets people pick on him and tells Little he needs to show the other boys he's not "soft." Kevin forces Little to wrestle him in order to prove this, and eventually, Little begins to engage in the fight, successfully fighting Kevin off. Exhausted, the boys lie on their backs and pant. Kevin gets up and tells Little, "See? I knew you wasn't soft."
Analysis
In this opening chapter, director Barry Jenkins acquaints us with the impressionistic style that will shape the film. Little's world is tactile, just like him—it centers on running, broken glass, and fried food. Thus, Jenkins' style likewise focuses on these physical realities, adopting an intensely subjective approach to telling Little's story. This is particularly visible when we break from Juan in the opening sequence to run with the boys chasing Little through an overgrown lot. In the single shot that captures the boys running, the camera is shaky, because we, like the boys behind Little, are on his heels, panting for air. In adopting such a subjective camera, Jenkins situates his audience in Little's subjectivity, where we will not only watch but feel his journey throughout the film.
Jenkins also introduces us to some of the film's core motifs and themes here, including the dichotomy between the inside and the outside. When Juan invites Little to go out for food with him, he quips, "C'mon. Can't be no worse out here." Of course, Juan is referring to the fact that Little is hiding in a dangerous former crack den, but his words also take on deeper meaning. Over the course of Chiron's journey, the notion of being open about his sexuality, often colloquially referred to as "coming out of the closet," is a freedom that Chiron is afraid to pursue. Thus, Juan's words gesture at the division between one's outward behavior and the true, interior self that Chiron will struggle with throughout the film. Later, Chiron will hesitate to leave school, peering down at the bullies that wait for him below, echoing this first scene.
As we, just like Juan and Teresa, become increasingly curious about the details of Little's home life, we come to understand the difficulty his lack of role models creates. Of course, this will become one of the film's chief themes, as Chiron will struggle with who he can truly look to as an example throughout his childhood. Although we understand Juan's background from the first shot of the film, we also quickly come to trust his and Teresa's goodwill towards Little, introducing us to the moral ambiguity that will shade Little's experience with this couple. Even when Chiron reaches his house, greeting his hard-working mother, we feel his mother's downfall foreshadowed, particularly when she forbids him to watch their TV, which she will later sell for money to buy crack. Little's network of parental figures who are sometimes present, sometimes absent, in turn positive role models and bad ones, begins to paint the film's complex picture of the relation between identity and environment.
Importantly, we are also introduced to the character Kevin in this section. In the scene in which Kevin forces Chiron to wrestle him, Kevin encourages Chiron to be less "soft" and more "hard." This distinction between "soft" versus "hard" will continue to provide one of the chief motifs in the film, one that ties into themes of masculinity and performance. Here, Kevin knows Chiron is not truly weak, yet he urges him to perform strength by wrestling him. Kevin will ultimately continue to perform traditional masculinity in the film, whereas Chiron will struggle between the ideals of being himself and being a "man."
On the whole, this chapter also introduces the viewer to the particular world in which Jenkins sets Chiron's journey: that of Liberty City, Miami in the thick of the 1980s crack epidemic. Chiron's world is one of nuance, and Liberty City is neither a good nor a bad place. Indeed, Jenkins finds beauty here, and throughout the film, in even the crack-stricken neighborhoods. When Little holds a crack pipe up to the light, for example, he is momentarily mesmerized by its refraction of the sunlight. Food, too, will continue to serve as an ordinary reminder of what one can share with others, and for Chiron, Teresa's food will always serve as enticement for him to open up.
