Moonrise Kingdom – Hollow Story with Exquisite Delivery (Spoiler’s Alert)

    
     Moonrise Kingdom is a cute, quirky, and surreal film dated in the 1960’s in New Penzance, an island in New England. The movie is extremely subtle and well-composed with eye-pleasing built-up scenery. However the content of the movie was mawkish and fantasized like the dream of an over-matured teen who enjoys painting. Nevertheless, the film appealed to me while having set-in-stone predictable plot, including the ending, and phony scenes full of twee conversations and dewy eyes – simply because of the flawless delivery.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012) Retrieved from IMDb

     The movie wins with a small but all-star lineup with Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton and two talented child actors. The smaller the crew, the less mistakes are allowed to happen, and the better each character and scene would have to be utilized. The film starts off the room of the girl Suzy’s as the camera moves parallel and perpendicular like a crane shooting into every room of peculiar setting. An introduction of different instruments in a symphony expands the bizarre surroundings, foreboding the personality of the two main character. Suspense is well built up by Suzy looking into the distance through her binoculars.

     We moves to see the camp of Scoutmaster Randy Ward (Played by Edward Norton. The film is highlighted by his naturally frustrated face). His camp of a dozen boy scouts made messes all around the place and what entails is that he found a scout missing – our main character Sam, often times addressed with his last name Shakusky. As you probably guessed, our boy Sam runs off to meet with Suzy, his mutual crush. Both troubled children, they see eye to eye the first moment they met at a church performance and fell in love through letter correspondence and decided to run away.

     Island Police Captain Duffy Sharp is alerted and goes on the most beautiful sightseeing trip to find the missing young couple. The breathtaking view of creeks, ocean, forest, grassland, cabins and houses. At the end we see the missing two on each side of screen, halfway submerged in the tall-growing open grass land under a beige-color sky. The warm hue of the background immediately reminds people of love. And here comes love. Their affection for each other develops as Sam was taking care of Suzy. Close-ups of the faces when the two talk inundated the screen. Although it is posy and almost too tense and awkward, it found the balance of being mildly funny and less obnoxious.

     The adults are on their moves too. Suzy’s father (Bill Murray) has long noticed the affair between his wife and Captain Sharp. His tousy hair, unfixed attire and desperate expression says it all. They are both counselors and now lives separate lives under the same roof according to the rigid laws of life without love. When they were together looking for Suzy with Sharp, one scene was almost heartbreaking. As Suzy’s father stands in the back, eyes still covered in bluish swelling resulted from an accident while find Suzy, Suzy’s mother and Captain Sharp are facing each other having a conversation. The frustration in Bill Murray’s eyes is so obvious that I can almost see the man shrug and let out a helpless sign.

     Focus moves back to the younger generation. Their romantic tension grows as the two share intimacy in their underwear while their clothes dries. They kissed and tried to experience more intimacy, but stopped as neither of them was fully able. The laugh I let out when watching Sam spit after kissing Suzy explaining there is sand in his mouth was genuine. It was the most embarrassing moment in the film and the laugh carried it out quite naturally.

     Everything starts getting predictable at this point. Boy scouts who used to hate Sam decided to help him runaway, Captain Sharp takes Sam as his own to prevent Juvenile Refuge from destroying the boy with electric shock therapy, and even Suzy’s parents spilled their hearts out to each other. One scene worth noticing is that before Sam and Suzy fled from the island. The boy scouts wave and stare in front of the background of a tranquility like honoring a real fellow soldier – led me to wonder what if the boys are replaced by actors like George Clooney.

     This movie’s meaning/message was delivered in a sideways way. Throughout the entire movie, I was confused on exactly what the moral was going to be. At the end I think it was that everyone can love and be loved. Times were different in the 1960s and people and relationships in general were more genuine. It shows indirectly, but thoroughly, that love is something that can be found through people of all ages and genders, and no I am not talking about romantic love, but love of friendship and family. The movie makes the audience laugh with utterly ridiculous pair up of characters, funny costumes, and exaggeration of details. At the same time, the artistic and idiosyncratic delivery of Wes Anderson also made us feel the effable emotions despite the predictable and hollow story line.

 Official Trailer of Moonrise Kingdom (2012)