Moonrise Kingdom (2012) is the story of the runaway love between Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) and Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) on New Penzance island in the mid 1960s. He is a Khaki Scout without a real home, and she, a disturbed raven in the church play who would do anything not to have one. Together they are content to simply dance to French pop or listen to Suzy read, but only when they are not facing the challenges posed to them by all the authority that the adult world has to offer: Suzy’s lawyer parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand), an earnest Khaki Scout leader (Edward Norton), a sad police chief (Bruce Willis), and Social Services (Tilda Swinton).
Odds are you had an opinion about Wes Anderson’s latest before it was even close to release. And, indeed, why not? Film does not exist in a vacuum.
Blame it on technology or the fact that film is commercial. Press campaigns and trailers are tasked with condensing a film’s narrative and aesthetic essence into winningly bite-sized morsels. Others’ opinions are collected and bandied about so that they might be a stand-in for our own.
“What’s its IMDB rating?”
“I don’t know, but it’s doing well on Rotten Tomatoes.”
“Well, I think it’ll be good after hearing his NPR interview.”
With a filmmaker like Wes Anderson, the challenge of viewing a film in isolation becomes even harder. And, indeed, it is true enough to conclude that how one feels about Wes Anderson in general will correspond to how one feels about this film.
The seventh feature in his lauded, much dissected and discussed oeuvre, Moonrise Kingdom must not only be a good film in its own right, it must give us a new spin on the precocious adolescence of Bottle Rocket (1996), make up for the perhaps overly stunted emotions in The Darjeeling Limited (2007), and (somehow) have an even more intentionally dressed set than Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). In short, this film must be a film unto itself as well as a part of Anderson’s entire body of work.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Arguably, there is more depth to be gained from understanding the totality of a work, its context and uniqueness. At the same time, the tendency to view films with a loaded set of opinions and expectations can cloud our experience, preventing moments of happy surprise or even warm familiarity.
I realized this when discussing Moonrise Kingdom with my younger brother, the film only his second Anderson experience after Fantastic Mr. Fox. And it was a revelation. For him, Edward Norton’s detached and still pathos-inviting delivery of Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola’s bluntly witty lines was a new way of acting, not a retread of other deadpan Anderson performances. For him the wit of the camera itself whipping and panning through the Bishop’s dollhouse residence was a new way of seeing, not an item to cross off of an Anderson-themed checklist. And, perhaps most significantly, the simply told yet anything but simple tale of children from broken homes, growing up and finding a love that only they fully understand (or so they think) was honest and authentic, not a cloying variation on themes.
The fact is that he saw Moonrise Kingdom for what it is: a well-made film, excellently paced, cleverly written, beautiful to behold and to hear. It is also true that the usual complaints lodged against Anderson are present and my brother’s openness might have prevented him from being bothered by them. There exist moments when the film seems too satisfied with its own cuteness and moments, especially in the performance of young Sam, that ring simply insincere as opposed to intentionally aloof.
There is probably no way for anyone who has seen two or more Anderson films to share the clear-headed experience that my little brother had. There is no way to go back and unsee what we have already seen. No way to choose not to think that which we think about Wes Anderson’s style. If we can try, however, to approach the film with an open mind, unencumbered by the weight of previews, interviews, and reviews (yes, even this one), then it is more likely that we can meet the film on its own fizzy, eye-catching, pleasantly overconfident terms.
Author Biography
Kale Hills is a recent graduate of Denison University where he double-majored in Political Science and Cinema. He hopes to pursue a career within the film industry and in the meantime continues to enjoy reading about, writing about, and, of course, watching films.
