Moonrise Kingdom
/Jiminy cricket, he flew the coop!
~ Scout Master Ward
quick fox: A- | Silver
winding dragon
I love the scene in Futurama when Fry produces an opera for Leela, only to have the Robot Devil leap onto the stage and criticize: “You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!”
Now imagine a movie that thrives off of such direct and ironic language, where everything everyone says is exactly what they are thinking in one condensed, honest form. This is Wes Anderson. This is: Moonrise Kingdom.
The story begins in September 1965 off the New England coast on a fictitious island. New Penzance is sixteen miles long. Forested with old-growth pine and maple. Criss-crossed by shallow tidal creeks. But within three days, a storm shakes the townspeople to their core—two 12-year-olds fall in love. Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward), a Camp Ivanhoe Khaki Scout and a sullen introvert, run away from home. Consequently, a search party led by Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton), and Mr. Bishop (Bill Murray) sets out to find them.
The hilarious irony of Moonrise Kingdom (2012) is that by the end, everything is remarkably indifferent. While some of the character dynamics shift slightly, none of the characters fundamentally change. Sam and Suzy’s objectives are the same as at the beginning and their views on the world don’t change, except now they know running away from home doesn’t work.
Some people who watch the film will argue that the meaning is about childhood and growing up, but the movie is more complex than that. Moonrise Kingdom depicts life through a child’s eyes: messy, convoluted, distracting, cruel and yet wistful, charming, sophisticated, spontaneous. It’s never perfect; there’s never a cut-and-dry lesson to be learned. But the one thing Sam and Suzy notice especially is how automated life can be. Sam’s scout troop performs the same rituals every day while Suzy’s family is stuck in a small-town atmosphere, so they try to escape it. But the world that Wes Anderson creates purposely tries to force the kids to conform, fit into the background. All the houses’ interiors are perfectly symmetrical. All the dialogue is delivered mechanically and devoid of emotion, relying on implicit intentions and extended silences. The only place where these laws are broken is on the beach where Sam and Suzy run off to: Moonrise Kingdom.
Wes Anderson’s style can sometimes alienate his audience. I admit, in the first few minutes of Moonrise Kingdom I considered quitting all together. But once I became immersed in the story, it was oddly captivating. The unorthodox pacing, the random voiceover narration, the continuous breaking of the fourth wall—all of it was so surreal that it became humorous without losing its artistry.