Moonrise Kingdom Review (Concerning Style)

Moonrise Kingdom is an indie/romance/comedy directed by Wes Anderson. It stars Jared Gilman as Sam, a twelve year old bespectacled skinny orphan boy, in love with Kara Hayward’s troubled Suzy, a similarly quirky and 'disturbed' teen.

You know what you're getting with Wes; beautiful set design, dry and amusing dialogue, Jason Schwartzman, tracking shots and slow motion. He’s worked out a formula and fair play to him, because his films are constantly great. Ever since Bottle Rocket Anderson has made a name for himself as a quirky auteur, known for his meticulous set design, central framing of characters and long, intricate tracking shots of doll’s house style interiors.

So Moonrise Kingdom is no break from the formula. Lightly tainted with nostalgic sepia, it's warm, dry and funny. On a small Island off the New England coast, two 'disturbed' 12 year olds find solace in each other, and decide to make a life together when they run away, pursued by scouts, dysfunctional parents, man-boy scout leader Ed Norton, and one of the most sympathetic Bruce Willises (a kind of dumb but humble cop) you're likely to see.

As well as style, Anderson's films concern similar themes; they’re all about family in some way, (The Royal Tenenbaums is the most literal example, while The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou’s family is the crew of a boat) and fathers in particular. Moonrise Kingdom is rife with dads, despite Sam being an orphan. You've got sad, old Bill Murray (is he anything else these days?) as Suzy’s dad, as well as Willis and Norton playing the dad role. Ed Norton's Scoutmaster Ward is the most likely father figure in this. He's constantly smoking, reading his scouting magazine, and seems to take pride in being a positive role model above all else. He is responsibility encapsulate, and he speaks with equal authority and caring. Bruce Willis's Captain Sharp is a less of a father figure, and despite admitting to being dumb in so many words has a certain earnest wisdom about him.

So the kids escape to the island’s wilderness, surviving on Sam’s (Jared Gilman) impressive scout skills. They traverse rivers and rocks, stab a dog to death, and make various picturesque camps around the island. Their conversations are (in typical Anderson style) somewhat unnatural, especially for children, and they talk in a very matter of fact way, with little expression.

 Oh, and it’s the sixties. It has to be set in the sixties for much of the film to work; smoking scout masters, 12 year olds riding motorbikes and a profound misunderstanding of child psychology on the parents’ part feature heavily. But the sixties comes with certain imagery, more specifically colour palette, and a lot of plastic. Much of the film looks like a 60s children’s’ book, the pastel colours, the organised and simple interiors, and the postcard style picture perfect landscapes.

Colour is used to great effect, and at some points in the film characters seem to have their own colour. In one scene where Suzy and Sam first pitch a tent, as the camera switches between close ups between the characters, and you see Suzy’s world as yellow from Sam’s point of view, and Sam’s as blue from hers. The colour also serves to demonstrate one of the themes of the film; the end of childhood and innocence. The film seems to take place in the autumn, analogous with the end of the innocent, bright haze of childhood, and the beginning of responsibility, and the film uses lots of autumnal colours; yellows oranges and browns.

As the film goes on and the storm begins the use of blue is more prominent, and at the films climax where the leads are hanging off a church tower, the style is somewhat reminiscent of a silent era movie, with very little saturation, only shades of dark blue being made out.

The film is prettier than it is anything else, lacking in belly laughs, though constantly amusing. The main joy of the film is watching it, and an album of stills from the movie would produce almost as much pleasure as sitting through it. There are few surprises in this if you're an Anderson fan (apart from, disappointingly, less pop music and slow motion than I expected), but if you enjoy his films, this won’t disappoint.