Everything I Know of Love I Learned From Moonrise Kingdom

gushing about my lifelong obsession

When I was a very little girl who was ostracized by her peers I made myself a promise; no matter how bad they hurt you, no matter what, you will never change for them. You will never dull yourself to be loved. This was, to me, the greatest tragedy that could befall a person. It was such a common YA novel trope back then, and it drove me mad. All of the characters I loved were mocked and belittled; If I am myself, as I want to be, then I might have to suffer. And I will suffer sweetly.

Growing up, it felt like my peers were always speaking a language I couldn’t understand. I didn’t want to learn - I found it strange and boring - but I wanted to be heard. I wanted to feel lovable, the way that other girls were. Where was this innate wrongness in me? Will it always be here? I never sought to change; my promise remained true, but I grew lonely and nervous and quiet. Something about me was just… off.

I believed this to be some kind of unique experience, as if such a thing exists. I now see that every person has some version of this feeling; *where is the person who will find me and understand me and make me feel that all of this passion which I hold so close to my chest is not disgusting, but lovely, and I can be primal and childlike and sickeningly earnest without embarrassment or fear of rejection?*

When the trailer started airing for Moonrise Kingdom, I was ten years old. It was like meeting the gaze of a stranger you know you’re bound to befriend. I begged my parents to see it.

I first watched it when I was twelve years old; the same age as the two protagonists. In one year, I watched it over thirty times, until I could mute it and say all the lines in perfect time. Even now, I believe that everything I am, and everything I know of love, is because of this silly little movie. It served as a beacon of hope, a warm blanket, a prayer, in the worst years of my childhood.

It expressed love in a way that felt genuine; it showed love as I believed it was meant to be felt.

Most of all, it represented something that was wonderful above all else to me; two genuinely awkward, socially inept people who had no intention of changing in order to be loved or accepted. Two kids who take everything far too seriously. There is no flirtation, there is nothing that makes the average viewer swoon - to me, nothing that would have otherwise portrayed love as something unattainably performative.

Wes Anderson treats his child characters with such respect and dignity. They are not to be laughed at, or belittled, or ignored; they are central, and intelligent, they are artists. Adults are merely overgrown children, or children who have lost the spark of hope or creativity they once had. Children in Wes Anderson films are taken charmingly seriously, the way most of us as children wanted to be.

She is a girl who wears beetle earrings on fish hooks; he is a boy who wears his mother’s broach.

Suzy is seen as an angry, troubled, but truly she is just like any other tween girl. She sees the ugliness in the world and it fills her with rage. She seeks escape in fantasy novels.

Sam is an orphan boy who is mature beyond his years. He wants to be a man already - He is adept in survival skills, he paints watercolor landscapes and tasteful nudes, and smokes a pipe. He is desperate to escape the mockery that he is bound to face as a twelve year old boy who doesn’t know how to be anything but genuine. When he punches back, he is blamed; a young boy who wears his heart on his sleeve is an enemy to both peer and teacher.

Suzy and Sam were meant to meet. He looks at her and she looks at him and instantly they sees something that they each thought only existed in themselves. It exists elsewhere in the world and it is waiting for you to find it. One day, you will not be alone. And when you find that person, it’s only right that you must escape together from this prison of formalities, and misunderstandings, and being surrounded by people who will never see you completely. What is the point of life if not to dance foolishly on a secluded beach with the one person that makes life feel worth living?

In a time where I had no friends, this unlovable hole in me that I believed was making me invisible, and a rage that my girlishness could only self-inflict, Moonrise Kingdom gave me hope. One day, this will happen to you. I, too, sat on my bedroom floor and spun old records, and obsessed over fantasy novels, and caused my parents endless grief and stress. One day, a Boy Scout escapee would sweep me off my feet. In my adolescent loneliness, I would cry as I wrote about a boy I often dreamt of, he felt so real and close to me I could hear his voice when I shut my eyes. I imagined that somewhere, there was a boy at the edge of the school yard, back pressed against the chain-link fence, squinting at the sky. He had a sweetness and an ignorance to unspoken nonsense rules I too failed to understand. The other boys would mock him. We would see each other, across the world, across time. I imagined a life with him. Maybe he would paint me. Maybe I would read him my favorite books.

Ten years pass. I lay in bed, head resting on the chest of the man I love, listening to his heartbeat, in the home we share. It is probably my forty-fifth viewing of the film. The iconic opening theme begins, and I burst into tears.

Twenty-five years ago, a boy with glasses was sitting against the lockers in a small-town middle school, nose bleeding down his shirt.

Ten years ago, a girl with messy hair was sitting against the lockers in a small-town middle school, sobbing and screaming into her hands. She wore clip-on beetle earrings.

He tells me he liked the movie much more when he watched it with me; “I see so much of you in it.”

We dance to Le Temps de L’amour in the humid east coast summer heat, and at night I read him Sylvia Plath poems. “I don’t like poetry, but she’s quite something”, he tells me.

Pray and it will find you.

It’s waiting in the tall grass, in a crowded room, it’s squinting at the sky.

It might take half a life, but it will find you.