Moonrise Kingdom

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Moonrise Kingdom is a 2012 American coming-of-age film directed by Wes Anderson, written by Anderson and Roman Coppola. It features newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward leading a cast including Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton. It is about a young orphan (Gilman) who escapes from a scouting camp on an island to unite with his pen pal, a girl (Hayward) with aggressive tendencies. Feeling shunned by everyone around them for their disturbed behaviors, the two lovers retreat to an isolated beach they call Moonrise Kingdom, while the scouts, police and family members launch a search party to retrieve them.

Anderson and Coppola drew on personal experiences and memories of childhood fantasies in crafting their screenplay, which also took inspiration from earlier films such as Melody (1971) and The 400 Blows (1959). The filmmakers took eight months to find child actors before selecting Hayward and Gilman, and invented maps for the fictional island setting. Filming took place in Rhode Island in 2011. Moonrise Kingdom was noted for its colorful style and use of symmetry in photography, combined with a soundtrack making use of the music of Benjamin Britten with original compositions by Alexandre Desplat.

The film premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and received critical acclaim. Film scholars observed themes of young love, child sexuality, juvenile mental health and family break-up, with allusions to the Genesis flood narrative. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy. In 2016, the film was included in BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century.

Video Moonrise Kingdom

Plot

In September 1965, on the New England island of New Penzance, 12-year-old orphan Sam Shakusky is attending Camp Ivanhoe, a Khaki Scout summer camp led by Scoutmaster Randy Ward. Suzy Bishop, also 12, lives on the island with her parents, Walt and Laura, both attorneys, and her three younger brothers in a house called Summer's End. Sam and Suzy, both introverted, intelligent and mature for their age, met in the summer of 1964 during a church performance of Noye's Fludde and have been pen pals since then. Their relationship having become romantic over the course of their correspondence, they have made a secret pact to reunite and run away together. They hike, camp, and fish together in the wilderness with the goal of reaching a secluded cove on the island. Meanwhile, the Khaki Scouts have become aware of Sam's absence, finding a letter that he left behind stating that he has resigned his position as a Khaki Scout. Scoutmaster Ward tells the Khaki Scouts to use their skills to create a search party and find Sam.

Eventually, Sam and Suzy are confronted by a group of Khaki Scouts who try to capture them. During the resulting altercation, Suzy injures the Scouts' de facto leader, Redford, and Camp Ivanhoe's dog is killed by a stray arrow fired by one of the Scouts. The Scouts flee and Sam and Suzy hike to the cove, which they name Moonrise Kingdom. They set up camp, and as the romantic tension between them grows, they kiss repeatedly.

Suzy's parents, Scoutmaster Ward, the Scouts from Camp Ivanhoe, and Island Police Captain Duffy Sharp find Sam and Suzy in their tent at the cove. Suzy's parents take her home and when Sharp contacts the foster parents he is told that they no longer wish to house Sam. He stays with Sharp while they await the arrival of "Social Services"--an otherwise nameless woman with plans to place Sam in a "juvenile refuge" and to explore the possibility of treating him with electroshock therapy.

The Camp Ivanhoe Scouts have a change of heart and decide to help the couple. Together, they paddle to a neighboring St. Jack Wood Island to seek out the help of Cousin Ben, an older relative of one of the Scouts. Ben works at Fort Lebanon, a larger Khaki Scout summer camp located on St. Jack Wood Island and run by Commander Pierce, who is Ward's boss. Ben decides to try to take Sam and Suzy to a crabbing boat anchored off the island so that Sam can work as a crewman and avoid Social Services, but before leaving he performs a "wedding" ceremony, which he admits is not legally binding. Sam and Suzy never make it onto the crabbing boat, and instead are pursued by Suzy's parents, Captain Sharp, Social Services, and the scouts of Fort Lebanon under the command of Scoutmaster Ward.

A violent hurricane and flash flood strike and, after many twists and turns, Sharp apprehends Sam and Suzy on the steeple of the church in which they first met. The steeple is destroyed by lightning, but everyone survives. During the storm, Sharp decides to become Sam's legal guardian, thus saving Sam from the orphanage, as well as allowing him to remain on New Penzance Island and maintain contact with Suzy.

At Summer's End, Sam is painting a landscape of Moonrise Kingdom. Suzy and her brothers are called to dinner. Sam slips out of the window to join Sharp in his patrol car, and tells Suzy that he will see her the following day.

Maps Moonrise Kingdom

Production

Development

Wes Anderson had long been interested in depicting a romance between children. He described the starting idea for the story as one of memory of fantasized young love:

I remember this feeling, from when I was that age and from when I was in fifth grade, but nothing really happened. I just experienced the period of dreaming about what might happen, when I was at that age. I feel like the movie could really be something that was envisioned by one of these characters.

When he was 12, Anderson lived in Texas with two brothers and his parents were separating, influencing his depictions of crumbling marriages. He was briefly a Scout, and had acted in a play about Noah's Ark. An incident from his childhood also inspired the scene where Suzy reveals her parents' book Coping with a Troubled Child: he found a similarly titled book belonging to his father and remarked, "I immediately knew who that troubled child was".

After working on the screenplay for one year, Anderson said he completed 15 pages and appealed to his The Darjeeling Limited collaborator Roman Coppola for assistance; they finished in one month. Coppola drew on memories of his mother in giving Mrs. Bishop a bullhorn to communicate inside the house. Anderson described the 1965 setting as randomly chosen, but added it fit the Scouts and "Norman Rockwell-type of Americana".

While preparing the script for Moonrise Kingdom, director Wes Anderson viewed films about young love for inspiration, including Black Jack, Small Change, A Little Romance, and Melody. The 1959 French film The 400 Blows about juvenile delinquency was also an influence.

Following his 2009 Fantastic Mr. Fox underperformed, Anderson said he had to pitch Moonrise Kingdom with a smaller budget that he had used in the past. However, Anderson said his producers Steven Rales and Scott Rudin agreed to back the project.

Casting

The crew scheduled a substantial amount of time for casting Sam and Suzy, with Anderson expressing apprehension about the process: "there's no movie, if we don't find the perfect kids". The auditions carried through eight months in different schools. Jared Gilman was chosen because Anderson found him "immediately funny" due to his glasses and long hair in the audition, and his voice and personality, while Kara Hayward was cast for reading from the screenplay as if speaking naturally in real life.

All of the child actors were novices, with Anderson believing they had never even auditioned before; he put the successful candidates through months-long rehearsals and assigned Hayward book reading, while having Gilman practise scouting skills. Although Anderson could not envision one young auditioner, Lucas Hedges, as Sam, he felt the boy was still talented enough to be given an important role, casting him as Redford.

Bill Murray had become a regular actor in Anderson's filmography. In contrast, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton were new, in what journalist Jacob Weisberg characterized as "the ensemble cast". While Anderson said that he wrote the part of Captain Sharp imagining the deceased James Stewart playing him, Anderson thought that Willis could be the "iconic policeman" once the screenplay was completed. He also hoped for Norton as Scout Master Ward, having had contact with Norton and commenting, "he was somebody who I thought of as a scoutmaster ... He looks like he has been painted by Norman Rockwell".

Pre-production

In the film, 12-year-old Suzy packs six fictitious storybooks that she stole from the public library. Six artists were commissioned to create the jacket covers for the books, and Wes Anderson wrote passages for each of them. Suzy is shown reading aloud from three of the books during the film. Anderson had considered incorporating animation for the reading scenes, but chose to show her reading with the other actors listening spellbound. In April 2012, Anderson decided to animate all six books and use them in a promotional video in which the film's narrator Bob Balaban introduces the segment for each.

Anderson described designing the maps for the fictitious New Penzance Island and St. Jack Wood Island: "It's weird because you'd think that you could make a fake island and map it, and it would be a simple enough matter, but to make it feel like a real thing, it just always takes a lot of attention." Anderson further stated that the film "has maps, and it has books, and it has watercolor paintings and needle-points, and a lot of different things that we had to make. And all these things just take forever, but I feel like even if they don't get that much time [on screen], you kind of feel whether or not they've got the layers of the real thing in them".

Google Earth was used for initial location scouting, according to director Anderson. "We had to figure out where we were shooting this movie--in Canada or Michigan or New England ... ? We started out with "Where is this girl [Suzy's] house, and where is the naked wildlife we want?" So [after Googling], we traveled around a bit, to Cumberland Island in Georgia, to the Thousand Islands on the New York/Ontario border ... we checked out all these locations".

Filming

Principal photography took place in Rhode Island from April to June 2011. The film was shot at various places around Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island including Conanicut Island, Prudence Island, Fort Wetherill, Yawgoog Scout Reservation, Trinity Church, Conanicut Island Light, and Newport's Ballard Park.

A house in the Thousand Islands region in New York was used as the model for the interior of Suzy's house on the set built for the film. The set for the Bishop home was constructed and filmed inside of a former Linens 'n Things store in Middletown, Rhode Island. Conanicut Island Light, a decommissioned Rhode Island lighthouse, was used for the exterior.

Cinematographer Robert Yeoman shot the film on Super 16mm film (with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio), using Aaton Xterà and A-Minima cameras. Anderson said the Aaton cameras were ideal for photographing child actors, at roughly equal hight to them.

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Themes

Professor Peter C. Kunze wrote the story depicts "preteen romance", exploring child sexuality in the vein of The Blue Lagoon. Several critics particularly interpreted the ear-piercing scene as symbolizing the characters losing their virginity.

However, film scholar Kim Wilkins rejected the notion that Moonrise Kingdom is a romance film, noting the severity of Sam and Suzy's behaviour and "profound existential anxiety", indicating the characters were created as products of more widespread concern for juvenile mental health. Wilkins wrote the story dealt with "existential" questions, with the two young protagonists rejected by society and allying to escape to "a limited existence beyond its boundaries".

Collapsing families are featured in the narrative, with the Bishops' marriage failing; Professor Emma Mason suggested their large house serves as a "mausoleum-like shelter". Sam is also disowned by his foster family for behaviors such as arson while sleepwalking. While he had told Suzy "I feel like I'm in a family now", academic Donna Kornhaber argued Sam, as an orphan, has a realistic perspective on the difficulties of building a family.

Professor Laura Shakelford read the story as a commentary on the characters grappling with the relationship between "the material world" in "postmodern cultures" and that of animals. Shakelford highlighted Suzy as the raven in Noye's Fludde followed by a historic rainstorm echoing Noah's flood.

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Style

Academic James MacDowell evaluated the style as displaying "the director's trademark flat, symmetrical, tableau framings of carefully arranged characters within colorful, fastidiously decorated sets" with "patent unnaturalism and self-consciousness". Considering the emphasis on symmetry (as opposed to other photographic composition strategies such as the rule of thirds) and color, authors Stephanie Williams and Christen Vidanovic wrote "Almost every frame in this movie could be a beautiful photograph". Roger Ebert identified the colour scheme as emphasizing green in the grass, khaki in the Scouts camp and uniforms, and some red, creating "the feeling of magical realism".

Scholar Nicolas LLano Linares wrote Anderson's films are "distinctively andersonian to the limit", "filled with ornate elements that create particular worlds that define the tone of the story, the visual and material dimensions of his sets". Linares particularly commented on the use of the animated maps, which make Anderson's universe more credible, and also have metaphorical significance. Macdowell pointed to the characters' books and the production of Noye's Fludde as examples of the "indulgent, excessive, yet attractive neatness" that children in Anderson's films enjoy, also interpreting the animated maps as showing a naïve style.

In the scene where the Khaki Scouts meet with Cousin Ben, writer Michael Frierson observed how the tracking shot is combined with "clipped, military dialogue". The tents in the background in the tracking shot are in symmetry. Frierson also judged the moving camera as "smooth, stabilized". Joshua Gooch observed the dissolve between Sam's artwork and the "Moonrise Kingdom" beach, arguing this tied together art with desire and film.

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Soundtrack

The original score was composed by Alexandre Desplat, with percussion compositions by frequent Anderson collaborator Mark Mothersbaugh. The final credits of the film features a deconstructed rendition of Desplat's original soundtrack in the style of Britten's Young Person's Guide, accompanied by a child's voice to introduce each instrumental section.

The soundtrack also features music by Benjamin Britten, a composer notable for his many works for children's voices. At Cannes, during the post-screening press conference, Anderson said,

The Britten music had a huge effect on the whole movie, I think. The movie's sort of set to it. The play of Noye's Fludde that is performed in it--my older brother and I were actually in a production of that when I was ten or eleven, and that music is something I've always remembered, and made a very strong impression on me. It is the colour of the movie in a way.

With many Britten tracks taken from recordings conducted or supervised by the composer himself, the music includes The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (Introduction/Theme; Fugue), conducted by Leonard Bernstein; Friday Afternoons ("Cuckoo"; "Old Abram Brown"); Simple Symphony ("Playful Pizzicato"); Noye's Fludde (various excerpts, including the processions of animals into and out of the ark, and "The spacious firmament on high"); and A Midsummer Night's Dream ("On the ground, sleep sound").

Also featured are extracts from Saint-Saëns's Le Carnaval des animaux, Franz Schubert's "An die Musik" and tracks by Hank Williams.

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Release

Worldwide rights to the independently produced film were acquired by Focus Features. The film premiered on May 16, 2012 as the opening film at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival--the first film of Wes Anderson to play at Cannes, where it was screened in competition. It was released in French theaters the same day. The American limited release occurred on May 25, and set a record for the best per-theater-average for a non-animated movie by grossing an average of $130,752 in four theaters. A short film, Cousin Ben Troop Screening with Jason Schwartzman, was released on Funny or Die in conjunction with the feature.

Finishing its theatrical run on November 1, 2012, Moonrise Kingdom grossed $45,512,466 domestically and $22,750,700 in international markets for a worldwide total of $68,263,166.

Home media

Moonrise Kingdom was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United Kingdom on October 1, 2012. In the United States, the film was released on October 16, 2012 in two formats: a one-disc DVD, and a two-disc Blu-ray + DVD combo pack with a digital copy. The Criterion Collection released both a DVD and Blu-ray release on September 22, 2015.

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Reception

Critical response

Moonrise Kingdom received critical acclaim; review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 93% based on reviews from 239 critics, with an average score of 8.2/10. The consensus states, "Warm, whimsical, and poignant, the immaculately framed and beautifully acted Moonrise Kingdom presents writer/director Wes Anderson at his idiosyncratic best". Review aggregation website Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 84 (out of 100), based on 43 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Moonrise Kingdom was also listed on many critics' top 10 lists of the year. In 2016, it was voted 95th in the greatest films since 2000 in an international critics' poll, the BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century.

Roger Ebert rated the film three and a half stars, praising the creation of an island world " might as well be ruled by Prospero". A devoted fan of Anderson, Richard Brody hailed Moonrise Kingdom as "a leap ahead, artistically and personally" for the director, for its "expressly transcendent theme" and its spiritual references to Noah's Ark. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gives the film four stars out of five, calling it "another sprightly confection of oddities, attractively eccentric, witty and strangely clothed". The New York Times's Manohla Dargis reviewed Anderson and Coppola's screenplay as a "beautifully coordinated admixture of droll humor, deadpan and slapstick". Peter Travers positively reviewed the performances, calling Norton engaging, Bala­ban "delightful" and Willis agreeable. Travers also credited cinematographer Yeoman for "a poet's eye" and composer Alexandre Desplat for his contributions. As novice actors, Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward also received praise. The Hollywood Reporter's review by Todd McCarthy and described the film as an "eccentric, pubescent love story", "impeccably made". For Empire, Nev Pierce declared it "a delightful film of innocence lost and regained". Christopher Orr of The Atlantic wrote that Moonrise Kingdom was "Anderson's best live-action feature" and that it "captures the texture of childhood summers, the sense of having a limited amount of time in which to do unlimited things". Kristen M. Jones of Film Comment wrote that the film "has a spontaneity and yearning that lend an easy comic rhythm", but it also has a "rapt quality, as if we are viewing the events through Suzy's binoculars or reading the story under the covers by a flashlight".

Dissenting, Leonard Maltin wrote the "self-consciously clever to a fault" approach to depicting the children gave him "an emotional distance" to them. Rex Reed dismissed it as "juvenile gibberish" displaying "lunatic fragments of surrealism". Postmedia News' Katherine Monk gave a mixed review, calling it "kind-hearted and heavily contrived".

Accolades

In anticipation of the 85th Academy Awards, journalist Lindsey Bahr called Moonrise Kingdom a "wild card" in the awards campaign given it received no nominations at the Screen Actors Guild or Directors Guild, but had won the Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Feature. Early in the campaign, it was a contender for a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Anderson and Coppola were ultimately nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and the film was also nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy. It also received five nominations at the 28th Independent Spirit Awards, including for Best Feature, and two nominations at the 17th Satellite Awards, including Best Film.

Controversy

The Huffington Post journalist Mina Zaher critiqued the depiction of the sexual awakening between Sam and Suzy, expressing discomfort in the scene where Sam touches Suzy's breasts, calling it "a step further or perhaps too far". Zaher questioned if the children's sexuality could have been portrayed in a more appropriate way. Reviewing the scene where the characters dance wearing only their underwear, the Catholic News Service stated "The interlude doesn't quite cross over into the full-blown exploitation of children, but it teeters on that edge".

In one scene, the dog Snoopy is killed by an arrow in a scene compared to Lord of the Flies by William Golding. This inspired a New Yorker editorial by Ian Crouch, "Does Wes Anderson Hate Dogs?". Crouch said that in the theatre where he saw the film, "the shot showing the dog impaled and inert elicited a shocked, yelping exhale from many people in the audience", and he observed outrage on Twitter. The Washington Post critic Sonia Rao held up Snoopy's death as a prime example of "A particular kind of darkness [that] lurks" in Anderson's filmography, where "Pets are so often the victims of the writer-director's quirky storytelling", but argued Anderson's 2018 Isle of Dogs served to remedy this.

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Notes

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References

Bibliography

• Frierson, Michael (2018). "Rhythmic and Graphic Editing". Film and Video Editing Theory: How Editing Creates Meaning. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 1315474999. 
• Gooch, Joshua (2014). "Objects/Desire/Oedipus: Wes Anderson as Late Capitalist Auteur". In Peter C. Kunze. The Films of Wes Anderson: Critical Essays on an Indiewood Icon. Springer. ISBN 1137403128. 
• Kornhaber, Donna (2017). "Moonrise Kingdom". Wes Anderson. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252099753. 
• Kunze, Peter C. (2014). "From the Mixed-Up Films of Mr. Wesley W. Anderson: Children's Literature as Intertexts". In Peter C. Kunze. The Films of Wes Anderson: Critical Essays on an Indiewood Icon. Springer. ISBN 1137403128. 
• Linares, Nicolas LLano (2016). "Emotional Territories: An Exploration of Wes Anderson's Cinemaps". In Anna Malinowska; Karolina Lebek. Materiality and Popular Culture: The Popular Life of Things. Routledge. ISBN 1317219120. 
• Macdowell, James (2014). "The Andersonian, the Quirky, and 'Innocence'". In Peter C. Kunze. The Films of Wes Anderson: Critical Essays on an Indiewood Icon. Springer. ISBN 1137403128. 
• Mason, Emma (2016). "Wes Anderson's Messianic Elegies". In Mark Knight. The Routledge Companion to Literature and Religion. Routledge. ISBN 1135051097. 
• Shakelford, Laura (2014). "Systems Thinking in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Moonrise Kingdom". In Peter C. Kunze. The Films of Wes Anderson: Critical Essays on an Indiewood Icon. Springer. ISBN 1137403128. 
• Wilkins, Kim (2014). "Cast of Characters". In Peter C. Kunze. The Films of Wes Anderson: Critical Essays on an Indiewood Icon. Springer. ISBN 1137403128. 
• Williams, Stephanie; Vidanovic, Christen (2013). This Modern Romance: The Artistry, Technique, and Business of Engagement Photography. CRC Press. ISBN 1134100590. 

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External links

• Official website
• Moonrise Kingdom on IMDb
• Moonrise Kingdom at Box Office Mojo
• Moonrise Kingdom at Rotten Tomatoes
• Moonrise Kingdom at Metacritic

Source of the article : Wikipedia