Moonrise Kingdom

Wes Anderson, maybe more than any other working director, has an immediately recognizable vision of what he wants in a film. Watch any of them and you’ll quickly understand he wants nothing more than to combine his unique interests and favorite visual elements without regard for what’s considered usual. For some, his stuff is quirky, funny and emotionally stirring. Others can’t stand him.

However, if you or someone you know is looking to enter the whimsical land of Wes Anderson films, his recent 2012 release, Moonrise Kingdom, is a great place to begin. The film is set in 1965 on New Penzance, a small, isolated island somewhere off the coast of New England. Two 12-year-old social outcasts — scout Sam and bookworm Suzy — exchange a series of letters and then run away from home, armed with Sam’s camping skills and Suzy’s brother’s (stolen) record player. The army of adults concerned for their safety comprises Sam’s scoutmaster Randy Ward (Edward Norton), police captain Duffy Sharp (Bruce Willis) and Suzy’s parents Walt (Billy Murray) and Laura Bishop (Frances McDormand). Meanwhile, the threat of orphan Sam being subjected to shock therapy by the villainous Social Services (Tilda Swinton) looms alongside a terrible storm that the narrator continues to remind us is coming.

The hallmarks of Wes Anderson’s films are all here – his reoccurring favorite cast members, elaborately constructed sets that call to mind a pop-up book or stage play, cameras panning through a straight-on view of a house cut into rooms like a dollhouse, the 1960s milieu, his love of social outcasts and eccentric dialogue.

Moonrise Kingdom is about being a kid, especially a not-so-popular kid on the cusp of adolescence. When Sam and Suzy say they love each other and proceed to awkwardly fumble through kissing, they’re not playing. It’s intensely serious for them. The film takes the inner lives of preteens seriously, adopting a childlike perspective. Seemingly incredible events — Sam is barely injured when struck by lightning and Randy leaps from a wooden cabin to save his superior officer as intentionally bad special effects explode in the corner — are portrayed as entirely possible.

The young characters are grim, delivering exchanges such as “Your girlfriend stabbed me with lefty scissors!”and “She’s my wife now,” with the utmost seriousness. The kids who bully Sam are rarely joking — in fact, they bring axes, bows, clubs, machetes and other weapons on their quest to bring Sam back to the troop. This can make the film appear self-serious, but childhood is serious for those in it, and any games they play or dreams they have aren’t matters to be dismissed by saying, “You won’t care about that when you’re older.”

Moonrise Kingdom is visually stunning. New Penzance is sparse and beautiful, shrouded in a nearly omnipresent mist, except in the storybook forests that serve as Sam and Suzy’s escape from the approaching world of adulthood. After scaling picturesque rocks and creeks, they find themselves at a pure, nameless inlet they eventually claim as their own “Moonrise Kingdom.” Alone and free, they feel they’ve found the perfect place, until the adults come crashing in to tear them away. The eventual hurricane destroys it mere hours later, like the onward march of adulthood.

The film manages to undercut its sense of childhood joy with a deep melancholy. The two characters are unhappy everywhere except when they’re with each other. A huge storm is threatening to destroy everything. Suzy’s parents are in a loveless marriage, confused as to how their lives got this way, and we have no sense of whether Suzy and Sam will stay together much longer. Given the fickle nature of childhood romances, it doesn’t seem likely.

Moonrise Kingdom is funny, moving, visually beautiful and a stirring tribute to childhood, escape fantasies, young love and the disillusionment of adulthood all wrapped up in a storybook-like 94 minute film. All of Anderson’s films are great, but he may have distilled his essence most completely in Moonrise Kingdom. Relax, remember what it’s like to be a kid again and check out this film.

[ READ MORE: The genius of Wes Anderson ]