776 Moonrise Kingdom

[Jeff]

mfunk, I didn't catch the visual reference to Eyes Wide Shut. What is it?

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I'm guessing the animal masks at the end. When Sam and Suzy are hiding in them at the Noye's Fludde performance I thought of EWS too. I think it was mainly the way they were staring directly at the camera in them.

Of course those were mainly Venetian masks in EWS, but I would swear there were similar animal ones in one scene. Reminiscent of the creepy bear mask in The Shining too.

[mfunk9786]

The zoom used, too. And how they disappeared in the next shot.

[Michael]

Yeayea!! I got it. Thanks!

[swo17]

You guys are making me seriously reconsider my embargo on all movie theaters that aren't my house.

[Jeff]

You guys are making me seriously reconsider my embargo on all movie theaters that aren't my house.

Anyone who has had Max Fischer as their avatar as long as you have is obligated to go see this movie. Several times.

[Grand Illusion]

I really enjoyed the film. I particularly loved how the fledgling relationship was treated. All the older relationships Murray/McDormand, McDormand/Willis, and Norton's lonely recording talks are treated with appropriate melancholy. They sober us with their realistic portrayals of drift and regret. Yet they serve an excellent supporting contrast by showing how precious the new love is.

The children's relationship is never treated like a self-serious Romeo and Juliet. Never are we pressured to believe that these two will remain together forever, that they are eternal soulmates, etc. We may later see these two become Murray/McDormand, but this fragile love is worth the entire community bonding together to preserve. Moonrise Kingdom managed this fatalistic/optimistic viewpoint of love as well as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

With these characters' requiring such Herculean efforts to maintain their relationship, I also liked how the story gradually built in scope. What began with two characters meeting in a field leads up to scout boys charging over a hill as if they were armies in a Hollywood epic. And it ends in no less than

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a biblical flood.

Balaban's role, unfortunately, could've been completely excised. I don't like the criticism "underused," but Balaban's geographical exposition seemed unnecessary and took me out of the film world when he made his appearances. He was even shoved into the plot at one point. The other real false note for me was

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the death of Snoopy.

The manner in which it happens is like a joke, and the film doesn't seem to exist in a world where such things are possible (see: the lightning). It's a pretty wild shift in tone, and I see little to justify such a cheap appeal for emotion.

Other than that though, I think Anderson was on point for this piece. His style was well-integrated, and great performances by Hayward, Willis, and Norton drive the whole thing home. It's nice when the actors can bring nuance to such a structured world.

[Jeff]

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the death of Snoopy.

The manner in which it happens is like a joke, and the film doesn't seem to exist in a world where such things are possible (see: the lightning). It's a pretty wild shift in tone, and I see little to justify such a cheap appeal for emotion.

I think it was more there to underline the fact that none of the kids have any concept of consequences of their behavior.

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When you're 12, you can run away, ride motorbikes through the woods, charge each other with weapons, stab people with lefty scissors and nothing bad can really happen to you because you're invincible. Snoopy was just the casualty of that attitude. There didn't end up really being any appeal to emotion around it like you would expect though. "Was he a good dog?" "I don't know. Who's to say? He didn't have to die though." There's no scene of them burying him or mourning his loss. It does a good job of showing the self-sufficient, unattached set of defensive mechanisms Sam has built up around himself -- just like his matter-of-fact acceptance at being hated by his fellow Khaki Scouts, and his almost businesslike relationship with his foster parents.

Even when the kid who gets stabbed hears about Snoopy, he says something like, "that's too bad" and brushes it off as an unavoidable consequence of his pursuit of Sam and Suzy.

[Grand Illusion]

I think it was more there to underline the fact that none of the kids have any concept of consequences of their behavior.

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When you're 12, you can run away, ride motorbikes through the woods, charge each other with weapons, stab people with lefty scissors and nothing bad can really happen to you because you're invincible. Snoopy was just the casualty of that attitude. There didn't end up really being any appeal to emotion around it like you would expect though. "Was he a good dog?" "I don't know. Who's to say? He didn't have to die though." There's no scene of them burying him or mourning his loss. It does a good job of showing the self-sufficient, unattached set of defensive mechanisms Sam has built up around himself -- just like his matter-of-fact acceptance at being hated by his fellow Khaki Scouts, and his almost businesslike relationship with his foster parents.

Even when the kid who gets stabbed hears about Snoopy, he says something like, "that's too bad" and brushes it off as an unavoidable consequence of his pursuit of Sam and Suzy.

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I see what you're saying with about the kids not knowing the consequences of their actions, but I think the resulting carnage shows that anyway. Also, the way the dog dies isn't a realistic consequence of children crossing the line. It's death by bow-and-arrow. It seems too surreal to treat as an actual lesson for the children, yet the animal is still shown lifeless. This type of death would work in Lord of the Flies, not in this protected fantasy where people are struck by lightning and survive by wiping off their glasses.

As for the post-death dialogue, I know myself and others laughed at Sam's line. The level of his detachment is comically overplayed with "Who's to say?" This is a film where someone gets stabbed with lefty scissors (offscreen, no less), and then gets punched in that wound later. I don't feel the treatment of violence or threat of mortality is treated with anything approaching seriousness (ex. dangling from the lighthouse at the end).

I will cop to being more sensitive about this, but I know a lot of people like me. You can kill 100 people on camera, but if you kill a dog, that crosses the line. I feel if you're going to do it, the moment has to be really earned. I don't feel it was.

[Jeff]

I guess I feel that treating what would have to be an emotional, "earned" moment in any other film with the casual, almost comic, dismissal that Anderson uses really fits the tone of the film, emphasizes the consequence-free world (nobody really cares about what happened), and builds Sam's character. I can imagine that if you're particularly sensitive to that sort of thing though, treating it with such emotionless nonchalance could be off-putting.

[Grand Illusion]

I think your explanation of consequences probably coincides with the intention of Anderson and his co-writer. Personally, the moment just feels too lifelike for me for what is otherwise a film that sidesteps these types of final consequences and treats them in such an offbeat manner.

[matrixschmatrix]

I thought that moment specifically alerted one that there were more serious consequences to the things happening that the children-having-an-adventure feel of the movie up to that point would imply- a signal that, young and silly as these characters are, they're as fully capable of causing and taking damage as any of the adults.

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Were the movie to stick entirely to a more cartoonish mode, the implication that the kids would commit suicide together would have been a jarringly false note, and the marriage would have seemed appallingly twee.

I think the movie takes Snoopy's death entirely seriously- but as with Owen Wilson's in Life Aquatic and Luke Wilson's attempted suicide in Royal Tenenbaums, it's something the characters accept and move on past very quickly. Those notes of real pain and tragedy are, for me, what keep Anderson's movies outside the realm of the purely comic- it's not a joke for the characters that all these other things seem like a matter of life and death to them. It is a matter of life and death.

[donniedarko]

I love the obvious green screen effect of this film. You could really see it in the scene where Nortons character of the Scout Master loses his badge and the other two scout masters go in the house and fire comes out. Wes Anderson wasn't even trying to make it look real

[matrixschmatrix]

No, I think that and Balaban's character's metatextual knowledge are both intended to be some kind of Brechtian remind-you-that-this-is-a-story moments (though Anderson always seems to prefer silly and unconvincing special effects.)

[Michael Kerpan]

I felt that this film had a fair amount in common with the work of Aki Kaurismaki (for example his latest, Le Havre), albeit not as a matter of visual style -- more on a conceptual (a similar sense of humor -- albeit differently expressed). Also, both this and Le Havre feature a general coming-together (including some unexpected allies) to solve the dilemma of underdogs. My wife was not entirely convinced.

Be that as it may, it certainly seems that critics were far more willing to cut Anderson slack regarding his "unreal" happy ending -- while lots of critics whined about Le Havre's frivolity.

[matrixschmatrix]

One thing I'd failed to recognize until just now is noteworthy for its absence- for once, it's a Wes Anderson not solely concerned with the ultra-priviledged (though arguably the island is still in many ways a bastion of wealth.) Vitally, it's not just Sam- Bruce Willis's character is obviously not a wealthy person, nor a person with any particular prospects of wealth. I can't remember a major character in an Anderson film that fit that description since, what, Rushmore? Max's dad?

[knives]

The Indians in Darjeeling Limited most certainly should be considered in any discussion of characters in his movies.

[matrixschmatrix]

They're self consciously not major characters, though- they're outside the rigidly defined space that the three leads create for themselves.

[knives]

I wouldn't say it is as easy as that. For example the woman on the train is invited in, at least for a very short time, to their world and comes to reject it. I don't think Anderson wants to think in terms of that high school mind and deliberately builds them to break them down which is what The Darjeeling Limited does so beautifully especially at the end with the funeral.

[matrixschmatrix]

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Anderson's perception is the same as that of the three leads- but it's a movie whose primary arc is about how isolated the three of them have become, in part due to their wealth. Aside from their mother, everyone else is sort of a little adventure, but not really part of the same world. We're looking through their eyes, and never through any of the Indians' eyes (which is part of why India looks so much like a fantasy for so much of the time.)

In Moonrise, both Sam- one of the characters through whose eyes we see- and the Willis character, a key member of the counterpoint adult world, are from something other than a priviledged background, and have no apparent pretentions or ambitions to priviledge. That's really unusual for Anderson, and I think it's part of why this is a refreshingly different movie.

[knives]

You made me realize something that allows me to drop Darjeeling entirely, but the plot of Fantastic Mr. Fox is run on money issues and the characters there while fantastical are not from a privileged background (if anything the POV characters are largely oppressed). I thought that that film was Anderson stepping into an other stage of his career and your statements seem to confirm that.

[Shrew]

Bah, one of the things I love about Anderson and that I feel people never give him enough credit for is that class is always a major underlying issue of his films. Further, he tackles it in a rather subtle way, but also one very suitable to the American class system, in which we all like to pretend we're part of one big middle class even when we're really not, creating a largely unspoken tension when people of obviously different class backgrounds interact. That tension also emerges between people who are ostensibly of the same class, but come from different class backgrounds.

Some of what gets classified as "quirk" in Anderson's characters is often the awkward attempt to mimic or pass as another class. The most obvious example of this is Max in Rushmore, who is working-class, but whose neurotic behavior is partially overcompensation for his past and desire to create a new identity as part of the upper-class elite. Others include Dignan, Ash, and to a lesser extent Sam (though Sam's trouble is that he hasn't yet found what he wants aside from Suzy, and thus doesn't have as strong a fixed image of himself and his class).

The reverse of this are the many characters who have successfully become part of the upper-class, but came from lower origins and now can't help but feel awkward in this new milieu. These would include Blume in Rushmore, Eli and to some extent Royal in Tenenbaums, Zissou, Suzy's dad in Moonrise.

It just irks me when people complain that Anderson only makes films about rich people. Something like Tenenbaums looks like that on the surface, but Eli's complicated relationship with the Tenenbaums is entirely centered around class envy and its fallout. And while Royal's background is never fully clear, I always thought it was implied from his manner of speaking, basic philosophy, mixed family history, and that his mother's portrait depicts her as a nurse that he came from at least a lower-middle class family and worked his way up, eventually into a family of older wealth with Ethel. Anderson's films define class outside of mere socioeconomic parameters, and so I'd argue that with Royal and Eli, he's definitely depicting a point-of-view outside the ultrarich.

Same goes for Life Aquatic, where Steve seems to have a come from a less affluent background from Eleanor and particularly Hennessy. You also have the crew there, which likewise seems a composite of various classes from around the world, and who are partly drawn to Steve because they're all misfits who don't quite fit in (Klaus in particular) to the world of wealthy grant and trust fund rich world of scientific research exemplified by Hennessy. And Ned is a pilot, not at all wealthy.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is a bit odd because it reverses the trend. Fox would probably be upper-class but got stuck in a lower-middle class position because of his decision to have a family. Ash fits the Max role of unhappy underclass who wants to be something more, and Kristofferson is the upper/middle-class foil, which further infuriates Ash's pretending.

The only film where I'd admit there's a lack of class variety represented is Darjeeling, which is 1) because it's so centrally focused on the brothers and 2) it's set abroad and outside of the criss-crossing socially upward and downward mobility of America. Outside the brothers, there are no real major characters to take on a point of view, so I don't know if it's fair to criticize the film for such a limited selection when it's focus is narrow. And I think the film specifically denies us access to the points of view of the Indians to emphasize the isolation of the brothers.

[matrixschmatrix]

Well, I don't disagree with you- if I have a criticism of Anderson's treatment of class, it's that it felt somewhat like he were painting himself into a corner with his depiction of it, that it had gone from the painfully sensitive awareness of it in Rushmore to the relatively heavy handed wealth is a trap theme of Darjeeling. Moonrise is refreshing not merely because it's not all about rich people, but because there are characters who neither wealthy nor concerned with wealth. That doesn't mean that's a bad or uninteresting subject to explore, it means that I thought Anderson was finding different thematic territory here, and I'm happy to see him do it.

It's true that Fantastic Mr Fox is also an exception, but that movie's so self consciously a lark that it's sort of hard to include it in a serious discussion of Anderson's themes- which, again, is not to diminish it (it's incredibly fun and I'm very happy that it exists) but I don't think it's a work that expands his palette in terms of thematic interests. I do think Moonrise is.

[karmajuice]

Fantastic post, Shrew. You hit the nail on the head.

As for Moonrise Kingdom, I have seen it and I enjoyed it, though I don't have much to add to what's already been said. One thing comes to mind, and I may post more later (I feel like I had some things to say, but didn't get around to posting and forgot).

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I like how the meaning behind the title isn't revealed until the very end, and how that cove, their Moonrise Kingdom, is destroyed by the storm. It suggests that even so young, so early in their relationship, something of the purity in that relationship has already been lost and can't be returned to. The film is by no means pessimistic about their relationship, but it acts as a reminder of life's passing.

[mfunk9786]

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I took that, and the line about the crops from Balaban, as a more uplifting gesture to suggest that these important moments and places have gone by the wayside (the church steeple, the cove) but that what made them so special will live on and grow within these kids. Every important relationship is an exercise in absorption of each other, and of your shared memories, until they become a part of your mutual DNA.

[knives]

It's true that Fantastic Mr Fox is also an exception, but that movie's so self consciously a lark that it's sort of hard to include it in a serious discussion of Anderson's themes- which, again, is not to diminish it (it's incredibly fun and I'm very happy that it exists) but I don't think it's a work that expands his palette in terms of thematic interests. I do think Moonrise is.

I have to strongly disagree and would even go so far as to say that Fantastic Mr Fox is the most important film in the evolution of Anderson's career since Rushmore. Before it he was building the most basic foundations of his cinematic house with Fantastic Mr Fox going out of it's way to say that it is time to work on putting in the electric and plumbing. There's a radical change in his thematic concerns present and even a few subtle ones in his presentational style (noticeably the focus on earthy colours versus the previous bright blue bases). Honestly I find thinking of Anderson's films individually impossible as they are so closely tied together and purely auteuristic.