Moonrise Kingdom: A Charming Tale of Forbidden Romance

Moonrise Kingdom is the kind of story that's been told many, many times over. Two lovers forbidden from seeing each other running off and eloping has been a popular trope for centuries, and so I wasn't exactly expecting to see anything revolutionary in Wes Anderson's 2012 coming-of-age drama. However, I also fully recognized the fact that this was Wes Anderson I was dealing with here, so I knew that the possibility was never off the table entirely. The latter half of my intuition turned out to be the prevailing side in this case because this movie is genuinely a really fresh take on a familiar story, and I thoroughly enjoyed pretty much every minute of it, at least as much as my cynical critic's heart that has been exposed to a far greater volume of cinema in the last couple of years than it should allowed me to. OK, I'm mostly joking, because from both a critical and artistic point of view, Moonrise Kingdom does several things very, very well. It's an undeniably competently-written piece as well as one of the most aesthetically distinctive pieces of cinema I've seen this year. I'd unknowingly seen this 2012 film's influence in several other movies that were released later on, most notably Taika Waititi's Jojo Rabbit, and I would like to think of this as a testament to the film's intriguing artistic vision, which is really something to behold. OK, but enough intro paragraph filler. Let's dive into this review.

Moonrise Kingdom, a coming-of-age drama set in the year 1965, follows a young and very-disliked member of a scouting troop named Sam Shakusky as he runs away into the wilderness of New Penzance Island with Suzy Bishop, a young stage actress who has likewise found herself rather ostracized from society. The scouts of Sam's troop and the island police force set out to find the two as the threat of a coming hurricane looms over the island.

So, back to that trademark Wes Anderson aesthetic. I haven't watched many Anderson films (although hopefully, that will change soon enough), and so the visual element of Moonrise Kingdom was a welcome departure from just about anything else I'd ever seen before, executed in charming yet exacting fashion. The cinematography of the film puts a very heavy emphasis on framing, color, and symmetry, hardly ever panning in any way, always cutting between different shots when it needs to focus on some other aspect of a scene. I don't feel knowledgeable enough to sum up this technique other than as inherently humorous in a very dry way, as well as beautiful as far as the mere quality of the image goes. The visual style and tactics this film employs take a familiar enough story and still manage to make it feel fresh, and best of all, the film sticks to its tone throughout, never compromising its vision in any way. Some of the storytelling techniques of this film borrow from the film's dry aesthetic as well, adding a really unusual narrative flair to the film, the wit and intelligence of which made me chuckle at points. As far as the plot goes, the narrative flow of Moonrise Kingdom is well-done and straightforward, if imperfect, due to a couple of very noticeable hiccups in the story that do a bit of narrative damage. But on the converse, my favorite thing about it has to do with the albeit imperfect plot, and that would be the fact that there's a deadline for the climax of this film, because of the hurricane that's going to hit the island in a few days. The film escapes ever feels stagnant because it always takes time to remind us that something big that will inevitably affect our characters is just around the corner.

As far as the characterization and acting at play in Moonrise Kingdom go, both are quite strong. Stylistically understated and subtle, both allow for a lot of those visual jokes involving the characters to land with a lovely, dry impact. All of the characters in the film have distinct visual aesthetics and unique attitudes, despite the subtle performances, and all seem to fit into the film well, never feeling unnecessary or forced into the story in any way. As far as character development goes, the film's efforts to change its characters actually get concentrated in a really unusual and unexpected area, developing characters that I expected to remain stagnant throughout the entire story, and the film zigging in its third act when I expected it to zag was a pleasant surprise that actually didn't upend the story that Moonrise Kingdom was trying to tell, rather building on what had come before in interesting and competently subversive ways. In addition, the film's sense of setup and payoff is straightforward and simple, yet so satisfying. The film eventually fulfills its inevitable threat of a hurricane and ends its story with a fulfilling and creatively done bang that plays in really fun and strangely funny ways with the different setpieces it had built up throughout the runtime. All in all, I guess what I'm trying to say is that the attention to even the small details on display here is remarkable, and makes Moonrise Kingdom feel very well-thought-out.

All things considered, though the film does have some narrative imperfections that are more noticeable than I would care for them to be, Moonrise Kingdom is such an unbelievably charming, details-oriented, amusingly-acted, and deadpan funny film that a lot of these things just ended up not mattering to me as much as they probably should have. Wes Anderson is firing on all creative cylinders here, giving us a prime example of artistic vision at its absolute finest. This film is a confluence of high-art filmmaking techniques and universally felt tales of young, foolish love, and I loved it so much. We need more movies like it, and what I mean when I say this is that we need more movies that are unapologetically caught up in creative vision, entirely unconcerned with what the rest of Hollywood is doing. Now, if some of the surprising controversies over the film might push you away from watching it (see the Wikipedia page on the film for more context if you're unaware of this), I personally think that a lot of the initial outrage towards some of the things in the film was blown completely out of proportion, and it's nothing that a little bit of looking back at how your brain worked when you were going through puberty won't fix, given the film's delicate and relatively restrained handling of the subject matter at question here. But I'm not here to give my opinion or weigh in too much on disagreements over the moral merits of an artistic work, at least not primarily. I'm here to gauge what I deem to be the overall quality of it, and as for my verdict? Moonrise Kingdom is an amusing, well-written piece with loads of charm that won't be departing from my consciousness anytime soon.

Moonrise Kingdom - 8/10

Song of Solomon 8:6-7