4 stars (out of four)
Moonrise Kingdom, his
seventh feature overall, is not animated but it feels like it is. The camera
pans from side to side as though Mr. Anderson were shooting on a
two-dimensional backdrop. His shots are filled with embellishing details and
visual gags, and his characters – a colorful and endearing group of caricatures
– bound about these finely detailed sets with a ceaseless energy not often
found in live-action people.
The story concerns two children who, on the cusp of
adolescence and feeling the potent sting of young love, decide to run off
together one summer in 1965. They live on a sparsely populated island in New
England where the residents receive their mail by plane and rely
on a ferry that runs twice daily for transportation to the mainland.
Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) is plagued with a restless angst
she will probably grow out of one day but for the time being her parents (Bill
Murray and Frances McDormand) and her three younger brothers must deal with.
She has been labeled “emotionally disturbed” by some out-of-touch physician, a
diagnosis that is supposed to help her family cope with her issues and properly
treat them, but only compounds her isolation and loneliness.
So she reaches out to Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman), a fellow
outsider, and the two form an intimate friendship. Sam, an orphan who has been
passed around foster families his whole life, is a Khaki Scout at Camp Ivanhoe,
a summer camp for boys on the island run by Scout Master Randy Ward (a
hilarious Edward Norton). Scout Master Ward is a boy at heart with a deeply
held devotion to the Khaki Scout program. When his campers ask what his real
job is, he replies that he is a math teacher. No, wait. He changes his answer.
His real job is being Scout Master. He’s a math teacher on the side.
We learn through flashbacks how Suzy and Sam met the
previous summer and spent the proceeding year as pen pals, keeping one another
company through letters and confiding in each other the difficult emotions they
can only just barely express in words. They agree they are the only ones who
truly understand each other and must run away together.
Naturally, this causes some distress for the adults. Not
just Suzy’s parents and the Scout Master but also Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis),
the lone police officer on the island. He sets out to find the kids with the
help of Scout Master Ward’s Khaki Scouts, a motley crew who don’t see the
point in bringing Sam back anyway because they hated his guts and are all the
happier with him gone.
Moonrise Kingdom is a
sweet and very funny movie. Wes Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola write some
of their best one-liners and they revel in the idiosyncrasies of their
characters. Mr. Anderson has assembled a sprightly cast that is light on their
feet and they slip easily into their roles. They help to take what are
essentially cartoon characters and give them depth. We get a few brief glimpses
into the troubled marriage between Mr. Bishop, a wonderful new variant on Bill
Murray’s sad sack persona, and Mrs. Bishop, a chipper but lonely woman who
finds companionship in the dopey Captain Sharp.
Bob Balaban has an almost ethereal presence in the film as
the island’s resident meteorologist, drifting in and out to narrate portions of
the story. Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman and Harvey Keitel also appear in
some fine bit parts, getting a chance for some comedic riffing alongside the
main cast.
This story does not however belong to the adults, though
their myriad issues and quirks could provide Mr. Anderson with material for a
dozen more films. Moonrise Kingdom is
about the kids and its young stars are wonderful. Suzy and Sam are confronting
miniature-sized versions of the problems their grown-up counterparts face and
Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman convey this with a subtlety that suggests much
life experience.
I hesitate to call the film great and suspect it could fade
away with time. It is a breezy film and I can’t quite say how much of it will
leave an impression on repeat viewings. Still, the first time around, Moonrise
Kingdom wraps you up its dizzy charm and
smoothes over its own imperfections. The more time that passes after watching
it, the more I think of reasons why this might not be one of Wes Anderson’s
best. But his movies have always been more about feeling than thinking and the
tone of Moonrise Kingdom is pitch
perfect.
The movie is so heartbreakingly small it feels as though you
could put it in your pocket. The tone is light and would have you believe that
all of this is trivial. But it’s not. At least it’s not to these characters.
And that’s something Mr. Anderson misses in some of his films. Occasionally he
gets so caught up in the rhythms of his dialogue and the beats of his scenes
that he neglects to give his characters real heart. Moonrise Kingdom somehow avoids this. There are moments here of
startling honesty that resonate deeply, all the more so because they come by
surprise in the midst of this airy comedy.
The soundtrack has its share of typical Wes Anderson tunes –
dusty pop songs that capture emotions in flux – but the film’s real treasure is
Alexandre Desplat’s score. Mr. Desplat keeps things pitched at “delicate
whimsy” for most of the film but he also has a way of making grand the quiet
emotions of children.
From our comfortable adult vantage points, we can see these
kids’ adventure is minor, even inconsequential. From inside the bubble of
childhood (and segregated geographically on their little island), however, it
is as huge as life. They are running away from home, eloping in the name of
true love and leaving behind their childhoods, ready (they believe) to take on
whatever the future holds. The film never condescends to its characters or
reveals their naiveté. That much, Wes Anderson assumes we in the audience will
supply. Moonrise Kingdom is instead a
movie you can escape into; watching it, you can perhaps even recapture a glimpse
of what it felt like to run barefoot through the dirt, convinced the world is
as big as you are.
- Steve Avigliano, 5/28/12
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