Moonrise Kingdom: Summer Camp, Wes Anderson-Style
Every Wes Anderson film creates a world of its own. Movies like Rushmore and The Darjeeling Limited take familiar people and situations and drop them into the unknown. This is Anderson’s genius; he transforms familiarity into hyperreality (or unreality in some cases). Arguably, the best genre filmmakers are able to build unpredictability out of familiarity. Anderson’s latest, Moonrise Kingdom, draws from numerous genres such as the summer camp comedy, family melodrama, and the adventure film in order to create a unique experience.
The film takes place in 1965 on a New England island called Black Beacon Sound. This narrow, 16-mile-long strip has some general residents as well as Camp Ivanhoe — home to the Khaki Scouts led by Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton). One of the scouts, Sam (Jared Gilman), takes it upon himself to sneak away during the night. Another young islander, Suzy (Kara Hayward), also ran away from her parent’s home around the same time. The island police (Bruce Willis as Captain Sharp), whose headquarters is a small shack at the end of a dock on the ocean, are promptly alerted and a search begins.
Saw movie last night. Theater was packed. Everyone liked the movie. The acting was perfect from the adults to the kids. Of course when you have actors like Norton, Willis, Keitel, Murray, and McDormand (from Fargo fame) you expect the best. The kids were sensational. Highly recommend it both for adults and kids. The only distraction in the movie is a dog dies in a scene from an arrow. It wasn’t essential to the story but it may upset young dog lovers as it did my daughter. However, this movie is still a gem. Go see it.
Um, I saw the trailer and the movie looks very strange. Doesn’t seem funny, but rather dry. I’m also getting a little tired of “children coming of age” movies. This reminds me of movies like “Stand by Me,” “The Parent Trap,” and “The Baby Sitters Club.” I guess they all in some way covered the same ground. I certaily could be wrong, but it doesn’t seem to be my cup of tea, really. I think I’ll pass.
Completely understand, Libertyship. My life was blessed with not having a TV or seeing more than a few select movies over FORTY years! They were astonishingly productive years just therefore.
Now in retirement I watch TV, and a half century of, for me, new movies. I have learned that good stories and real actors have filled the silver screen in hyperbolically decreasing numbers since the 60s. Well, art imitates life, so this phenomenon simply is art imitating a depreciating culture.
Don’t blame the art. Blame the teachers who failed to pass on the culture.
As for the art of film making, Marshall McLuhan got it right: the content of new media is that of the old, and the old tries to renovate by copying the new as best it can. Hollywood took New York television techniques of time-stuffing glimpse-images to maximize advertising transmission. But in doing so they left withering the verbal transmission of dialogue. The pre-modern brain evolved to react to images, but modern man developed reflection and reason from language, not images. Declamations in the theater have become BAM-BOOM-BANG-AAAAARGH! liberally laced with giant plooms of orange flame and black smoke — even if a car just hits the curb. The logic of algorithmic stringing of words, operator/operand/value, predicate/substantive/modifier, that leads to reflection, reason and speculation is absent.
Thus the technique of story fragmentation per “Matrix” and “Once Upon a Time”. No perceivable message, so no discernible moral. Like Henry James’ “Turn of the Screw”, one has to stitch together one’s reactions, and make up one’s own story. Thus themes of vampires, zombies, endless shoot-em ups, never-ending action, graphic sex, no character development, fragile anchors to known facts and events, if any.
If you know real history you know that such “reaction” versus “thinking” led to the horrific last chapters of civilizations such as Babylon, Sodom, Gomorrah, Sybaris. But this time the slide comes with the time telescoping and force projection of today’s technology.
Conclusion? The theater has become the school, and the school has become the re-edcuation camp.
Our culture is passed on through art which imitates nothing. Generations already have lost their time lines — when was the Civil War, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, WWI, the defeat of the Mensheviks? What were their consequences? Nobody knows. But they know where to get free stuff and how to blow everything up if they don’t.
B-, at best. Only one surprise in the film. The rest was a generic rehash. Bottle Rocket was warm, funny,surprising, and you liked all the characters. In this one nahhh!
If you are an Anderson fan you’ll love it.
First Wes Anderson movie I’ve seen. And the last.
A perfect example of why “hilarious” = forced, lame humor.
I am certainly not an expert, but the film just did not do it for me. And I agree about the dog scene.
I would’ve loved this movie, but the dog getting senselessly killed ruined it for me. It didn’t add one thing to the movie.