Movie Review: Moonrise Kingdom
“Summer’s End” inlet is the poetically apt destination for a pair of adolescent teens in the first flush of young love following a year of pen-pal correspondences and being hunted by comically anxious parents, scoutmasters, and lawmen in Wes Anderson’s deeply charming and lovable Moonrise Kingdom. Set in a world of innocence and privilege in 1965 New England, Anderson has crafted a perfect fantasy of uncorrupted youth culture that hit its zenith in the days of Saturday morning cartoons, Boy’s Life magazine, Davy Crockett caps, Tang, and parents yet to achieve the level of safety paranoia we now experience.
In warm tones of brown, orange, yellow, and green, Moonrise Kingdom is a last hurrah for the “American Childhood” – melancholic but celebratory and extremely funny if you are in touch with Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola’s droll sense of humor. We have an exceptional cast in Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, and Edward Norton anchored by the two kids (nebbishy-but-cool Jared Gilman is “Sam,” orphaned but full of self-sufficient confidence like so many other Anderson heroes; and his young love “Suzy” played as a mini-dressed mod dreamgirl by Kara Hayward. Both diagnosed as “emotionally troubled” by hysterical parents/guardians, the two set out to elope in the wilderness.
Suzy and Sam meet and click, seeing in one another a yearning for more life experience. Kohl-eye makeup and a Francoise Hardy French-pop 45” signal Suzy as one of Anderson’s neurotic/hip female ideals (a la Gwyneth Paltrow’s damaged beauty Margot Tenenbaum) and spark a letter-writing romance leading up to Sam going AWOL from his “Khaki Scouts” troupe, of which he is “the least popular boy in the troupe…by a wide margin,” and setting off a man-hunt given hilarious gravitas by Willis’ resort-town cop and Norton’s fastidious scoutmaster. Watching these two play against their usually more intense screen personalities is one of the great joys of Moonrise Kingdom – Willis steals the show with his flooding pants and sensitive appreciation of Sam’s troubles that allows the gruff actor to dial the smirk back to a concerned frown.
One of the knocks on Anderson’s movies is that the adults are too whimsical – ready to play dress-up in matching uniforms and act as selfishly as the young characters (see Murray’s previous roles and Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums) but I think that it is necessary for the grownups to join in the fun and not spoil the mood of a fantasia like Moonrise Kingdom. Tilda Swinton’s marmish social worker threatens reform school for Sam upon return and the whole thing has the broad stakes of a Mark Twain or Charles Dickens tale. Complimenting the timelessness, the soundtrack (always a major focal point of Anderson’s films) features Benjamin Britten’s classic “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” selections, Hank Williams Sr. doing “Kaw-Liga”, and of course a couple of obscure 1960s pop songs for the tender moment when Sam and Suzy share an awkward but sensual dance-then-kiss on the beach (Anderson’s European influences are evident in the way he allows the kids to be intimate without moralizing or tittering – Truffaut and Rohmer would be pleased).
Kara Hayward in “Moonrise Kingdom.” Photo by Focus Features – © 2012 Focus Features.
Maybe things go a bit over-the-top once the fugitive couple arrive at a militaristic rival scout camp headed by Commander Pierce (Harvey Keitel) and the inevitable Jason Schwarzman as a sympathetic scout chaplain willing to perform a marriage ceremony. Silly as it sounds (and the army parody is a touch too much with explosions and the like), the wedding party shot in Anderson’s masterful slow-motion should become a classic image of perfect young love.
While the first half of Moonrise Kingdom is absolute perfection, there are overreaching, farcical moments in the finale involving someone struck by lightning and a big flood that shake the tone of the film aggressively but never breaks it. We are left with the warm images of Suzy and Sam building an enchanted encampment where Anderson assures us that childhood is alive and well in safe exile.
Some see Wes Anderson’s works as a series of meticulously cultivated, overly precious pop culture fetish objects; I believe that he is a quite genuine scrapbook-maker with as keen a cinematic palette as any to come before. Moonrise Kingdom may be his most inviting work yet.
Gregory Fichter
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