By Mike Wilmington Wilmington@moviecitynews.com
Wilmington on DVDs: Moonrise Kingdom
CO-PICK OF THE WEEK: NEW
MOONRISE KINGDOM (Two Disc Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Combo Pack) (Three and a Half Stars)
U.S.: Wes Anderson, 2012 (Universal)
Once upon a lovely little time that we’ll never get back again and that most of us never knew, there was a boy “khaki scout” named Sam (played in the movie Moonrise Kingdom by Jared Gilman) and a choir girl named Suzy (played by Kara Hayward). And his scout troop and her choir were in separate camps or places on an island called Penzance. Sam and Suzy were young, no more than children really. But they behaved like adults — just as the adults around them behaved like children: Ed Norton as the scoutmaster, Bill Murray and Frances McDormand as the bemused Bishops, Bruce Willis as the careful local Sheriff, Captain Sharp, Harvey Keitel as Commander Billingsley, and Tilda Swinton as a mean woman improbably addressed as Social Services. There is also a Narrator played by Bob Balaban and he‘s the one who gets to say “Once Upon a Time“ or the equivalent.
Sam and Suzy were in love and they ran away, and made their own little world of tents and books out in the wilderness — as much wilderness as you can have on an island called Penzance that‘s imagined and photographed by director-writer Wes Anderson and cinematographer Robert Yeoman, bathed in light and memory as if it were a huge, whimsical, beautiful toy.
But you can’t run away when you’re a middle-class child, at least not for long or too far. Fairly soon, the whole island is up in arms, searching for Sam and Suzy. Outside Penzance, the waters are getting stormier and wilder. A hurricane is brewing, and the music we hear — that Sam and Suzy heard when they fell in love — is Benjamin Britten’s “Naye‘s Fludd” (or “Noah‘s Flood.”) Is God angry? Or is it just time for a flood, or a fludd? “Moonrise Kingdom“ is what the runaway children call their little world, their happy little refuge. The movie is ours, for a while, if we want it to be.
Wes Anderson makes pictures that are like big beautiful whimsical toys, few more than this. He and his co-writer, Roman Coppola (son of Francis) swim out into a dream and a storm, and they wave to us. The children behave like….grownups. The grownups behave like children. (I said that.) The music flows over us — not just Britten‘s music, but Mozart, Schubert, Saint-Saens, Hank Williams. Hank, who also died young, like Mozart and Schubert. (“Jamabalaya Kleine Nachtmusik?”)
This is a movie that, it must be admitted, will probably mystify the average viewer. But what’s wrong with being mystified? What’s blessed about being an average viewer? This is also one of the best Amereican films of the year, even if it’s a little odd. (What’s wrong with being odd?) Anderson’s toy is its own little world, and vice versa. As we watch it, we’re children again, briefly. Look for the horizon. Walk through the forest. Feel the sun. Hear the thunder. Wait for the flood…
