In the wistfully sweet and visually singular Moonrise Kingdom, two 1965 twelve-year-olds fall into profound platonic love and run away together, with a cadre of sadly weary adult authority figures in comic pursuit. Director Wes Anderson has had some quirky hits (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore) and some quirky misses (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), but he’s always original. This is a hit.
While very funny, the story is deeply sympathetic to the children. As Andrew O’Hehir of Salon.com put it,
Yes, Anderson’s principal subject, and arguably his only subject, is the collision between the emotional lives of adults and children and the paradoxical tragicomedy it can so often produce. But if Anderson’s adults yearn for the comparative simplicity of childhood while his children long for the big, important feelings they believe (wrongly) go with growing up, that in itself is a distinctly adult perspective.
We know that we’re watching something unique from the very first shot, in which the camera swivels to show each room in a home as family members enter their spaces and define their relationships to each other. As The Wife, pointed out, we look into the family home as would a child looking into a dollhouse.
In a year that is especially rich with able child film actors, the kids here (Jared Gilman and Kara Hayman) are excellent. Bruce Willis, Ed Norton, Bill Murray and Frances McDormand are also very good as the sad, burnt-out adults. Tilda Swinton and Harvey Keitel show up briefly in broad comic roles.
Since Moonrise Kingdom is set in 1965, Baby Boomers will appreciate the Mad Men moments – a portable record player, a coonskin cap and adult indifference to a kid simultaneously holding lighter fluid and a flaming torch. The girl’s books have cover art typical of the era’s quality young fiction (a la A Wrinkle in Time).
This is an excellent movie – and one that you haven’t seen before.