Ryan McNeil
I imagine if you were to ask around, you’d discover that at some point in everybody’s life, they built their own Moonrise Kingdom. During those moments of unbridled optimism that are far too fleeting, many of us found a quiet spot in our schools, our neighbourhoods, or our cities that we felt allowed us to express ourselves fully. They were likely temporary, which is fitting given the emotions they were made to express, but they were ours dammit…and when we were there, we couldn’t be touched.
Sam and Suzy are young and in love.
Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) is a Khaki Scout away at camp. He is a member of Troop 55, led by Scout Master Randy Ward (Edward Norton), and while he is a good scout, he is the least liked member of the troop by far. This doesn’t matter much to Sam, as his entire summer has been spent planning his get-a-way from the camp on the island of New Penzance, and his rendez-vous with Suzy.
Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) is the oldest of the four Bishop children. the daughter of unhappily married lawyers Laura and Walt (Frances MacDormand and Bill Murray), she is smitten with the moxy and passion young Sam has shown since the moment he first laid eyes on her. She fans the flames of his escape plan and takes off from her home on the island to meet him for a stolen moment of love and togetherness.
Of course, the grown-up’s aren’t exactly thrilled about this, especially since neither Sam nor Suzy were forthcoming with their plans. Scout Master Ward rounds up members of the troop to track them down. At the same time, Walt and Laura are worried sick about their missing daughter and are anxious to get her back. To do so, they reach out to Police Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis) to do what Ward seems incapable of. However, even his efforts feel somewhat futile.
With a storm threatening the island, and sam’s home life thrown for a loop thanks to this act of truancy, this stolen moment of young love has caused quite the disruption on New Penzance. However, one look at Sam and Suzy tells us all that they aren’t about to be stopped just because they have caused a disruption.
At the epicentre of all the kookiness and nostalgia of MOONRISE KINGDOM is a wonderful retelling of a particular moment in our collective adolescence: The moment when anything seems possible. It’s a moment that comes regardless of the fact that you have no money, are socially awkward, and wildly inexperienced. When this moment comes – and it usually comes when one falls in love – it feels as though the rest of the world has fallen away. No plan is too crazy, no move is too daring. I repeat: anything is possible.
That’s certainly where we find Sam and Suzy. They are defiant of every authoritative adult, striking out on their own, ready to go as far as the forest path will take them if it means they can walk it hand-in-hand. This is an especially wonderful moment for Sam. He has captured the heart of a pretty girl who is (let’s be honest) above his station, and has done so during a moment where he is being ostracized by his fellow Khaki Scouts. How can one blame him for believing that the impossible is possible? He’s just bucked the odds and caught the eye of a dreamgirl. For Sam, this fills him with confidence, which in turn makes him even more attractive to Suzy. It’s a self-fueling machine of adventure that can only work before the jaded world-view of adulthood starts to corrode it with cynicism.
In the cannon of Wes Andreson, MOONRISE KINGDOM feels like a purer form of RUSHMORE. We are again immersing ourselves in a tale of adolescent love, but this version comes with less adults at its core. It feels familiar, as all of Andesron’s films have so far, but at the same time it comes with a new ambition. The usual whimsical soundtrack is gone, and in its place a different type of whimsical soundtrack. The only actors from his usual wishlist present are Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman, and both characters are well down the depth chart for this story. For me, the film feels something less than perfect – it lacked the emotional payoff that Anderson’s best film’s have had. It’s still glorious of course; it just stops at the cliff’s edge for some reason, when it seems like it wanted to jump off.
Regardless of its pulled punch, MOONRISE KINGDOM comes packaged with so much whimsy, that it’s impossible not to fall in love with it. From the expressive faces of the juvenile leads, to the effervescence of the film’s overall look, it’s clear that Anderson wanted to take us back to a time before we were capable of feeling defeated. He wanted us to remember those endless summers dotted by first kisses and first loves. To this end, he achieves his mission. He reminds us for 90 minutes about a time before mind-games and self-doubt…when all one had to do to win the day was reach down and hold the other person’s hand.
That is what allows the film to succeed; the way in which it brings together some well-lettered, A-list actors, and uses them in a way that they too seem to understand the importance of that moment between holding the hand and kissing the lips. Nobody in the film is winking, nobody breaks into a meta smirk. Like the stones around a campfire, they all circle around the juvenile actors at the centre of the film and act as supporting players in their tale of young love.
They all had their own Sams…they all had their own Suzys…and they know that everyone in the audience did too. They all want to tend to that flame of optimism, if only to bask in its warmth just one more time.
Despite the sadness that pervades so much of it, don’t you kind of wish you lived on that island?
And here I was starting to think that nobody was gonna comment on this post! (Guess that’s what I get for writing about a film that has such a limited opening)
I would desperately love to live on that island; it’s my life’s dream for the police that protect me to spend their time fishing and for my mail to come in by sea-plane.
I actually can’t wait to see this film again.
I really enjoyed the film. It makes one wonder how different adolescence could have been before this technical age.
The film also served as an opportunity to write for another site:
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/peoples_republi.php
An advanced mea culpa for the link
I can overlook the odd link now and then – it’s not like you include them everytime (and I have had a reader that did that).
I do have to grin a bit though with your note about adolescence before the digital age since I’m pretty sure I qualify (my family home didn’t get internet until I was 19, I didn’t get my first cell phone until I was 22).
While I never struck off on my own quite as feverishly as Sam did, amusing one’s self before the digital age did require a bit more of an adventurous spirit (for instance, do kids even climb trees anymore), which came with an added sense of danger (trying to get back down out of said tree).
No one seems to play outside anymore. I remember going out whenever I wasn’t reading. I can’t tell if that’s just a momentary lapse, or something that kids will never return to.
If it’s the latter, that very much bums me out. I’m happy that kids can learn so much and be exposed to things and people I never was thanks to the information age…but there’s something to the imagination, adventure, and exercise that comes with actually playing that can’t be replaced.
Perhaps because I never experienced “young love” I’ve always found it a captivating subject matter – especially in the form of anime shows which it is ever present in. This definitely goes a long way for my anticipation of this film. That and the fact that Wes Anderson is definitely growing on me. At first I was quite put off by his style but over the years I’ve grown to appreciate its aloof quirkiness.
Helms speaks!
You never experienced “young love”? To be clear here, I qualify “young love” as anything up until the end of high school…after that reality and cynicism start setting in.
I was actually quite late to the party with Wes as well, I actually think that THE DARJEELING LIMITED was the first film I capital-L-loved on first watch. Everything else needed to grow on me.
Make sure you come back in a few weeks when you’ve caught up with it and lemme know what you thought.
Alas, even with such a generous definition of “young love” my answer is still no. As was the answer presented to me on the rare occasion that I had mustered the courage to ask girl out. Forever the friend status seemed to plague my young romantic endeavors.
As for the film, once it makes its way here and I see it perhaps I’ll blog about it.
Well gee…this just bums me out now…
I didn’t know my pronouncement of a potential blog post would distress you so. My writing isn’t that bad…..
As to the other matter, well such is life. Have I not often noted myself as being a grumpy old man on the porch before my time?
For some reason Rushmore didn’t resonate with me, but this one did. Such a delight of a film! Lovely score, lovely art direction, lovely child actors, lovely everything! The camping-adventure theme reminded me for some reason of Calvin a Hobbes. Everything is an adventure and everything is possible in their magical world.
Slight Aside: Happy to see reads and comments on this post picking up as the film’s roll-out expands.
I hadn’t thought about Calvin & Hobbes at the time, but now that you mention it, I see it clear as day. Very much that sort of “seize the day!” sensibility. I want to spend a summer on the island of New Penzance.
Sometime down the line, do revisit RUSHMORE – it grows on you.
Beautiful, heartfelt review. I’m dying to see MK!
Thank you sir. I actually feel like I undersold this one, and would like to write more when I have a pen and paper at my disposal to take a few notes.
But hey – if it worked for ya…
I just saw this today and was bowled over by how much I love it. Might even replace Darjeeling as my favorite Wes movie. (He works best when he removes his characters from his dollhouse setups and lets the real world have some effect on their emotional and cultural shelter.)
But it’s funny, the one thing I loved the most ties into something I wanted to say about your prequel discussion for the podcast but didn’t want to write because it’d be too long. One of the things I hated about the Star Wars prequels, and prequels in general, was that, by virtue of always improving camera and effects technology, the “past” looked more futuristic and slick than the future that emerged from it. I was actually going to say how much I would love a prequel to visually match the temporal regression. I.e. a film about something 20 years ago that used cameras or technology roughly equivalent to what was typical at that time. And lo and behold, I sit down to watch this film, set in the ’60s, and it was A) on film PERIOD (my screening had glorious pops and scratches!) and B) on grainy 16mm. Sure, New Penzance might look like a model village included with a high-end train set, but it’s filmed in such a way as to age it, make it lived in and something remembered, not something new and incongruous with its setting.
But that’s only a personal thing of joy. The rest of the film has so much for everyone. I hope the depth of relationships and responsibility displayed doesn’t get overlooked in the surface joy of its young love. That scene between McDormand and Murray in the twin beds is one of the most poignant and sad (if still very funny) scenes I’ve seen in a while, and certainly one of Wes’ best moments.
So not to create work for you, but if you wanted, the post for the podcast episode is up, you could drop a note about the look of prequels in there. And by the way, I totally agree with you and wish I had thought of that myself.
My friend Kurt likes to say that there aren’t any unlikable Anderson films, just Anderson films you haven’t watched enough. Something tells me that as I come back to this film a few more times, those gaps that hold it back from the DARJEELING level for me will get filled in.
I always love the worlds that Wes Anderson crates. Whenever I leave the theatre colours seem slightly more saturated, all the cross-walk signals turn green for me, and even the bitter can be sweet. This movie was no different. I appreciated the new additions to his alumni too.
Ed Norton and Bruce Willis do understated rolls very well and, at least for Bruce, they don’t seem to ever get enough opportunities to do so.
I scored a free ticket to see it, will definitely catch it again before it leaves the cinema.
The image that will stick with me forever is that treehouse teetering at the top of that tall, skinny tree. I want to climb that tree and spend a whole night there. I actually love that the look of this film had the aesthetic of a faded photograph from the 1960’s. I loved it so much that it left me wishing that the ever-handsome Mad Men would adopt that sort of palette.
Damn – seeing this for free? Talk about a great score!
Pretty jealous that you got the pleasure of seeing this already. I look forward to hopefully being able to check this out this weekend, as it is finally playing sort of near to us.
Your review has me even more pumped up than I was before to get my Wes fix.
I’m going to peg “Somewhere Near Us” as Boston?
I really want to watch it again since I have the suspicion that I might get even more from it the second time around. This was mostly personal reaction – I almost want to write a follow-up post discussing mechanics.