Moon­rise Kingdom

If you’ve ever won­dered why Boy Scouts wear neck scarves, then Wes Ander­son final­ly has your answer. It’s to dry the tears of the depressed 12-year-old you’ve whisked out into the wood­lands of rur­al Maine, cir­ca 1965. This is after you have just acci­den­tal­ly snig­gered as she admit­ted her sor­row at being seen as a prob­lem child by her parents.

Moon­rise King­dom plants us direct­ly in the high cap­i­tal of Wes World right from its gor­geous open­ing shot in which his cam­era waltzes through a sparse­ly fur­nished house while mon­i­tor­ing two laz­ing par­ents and a trio of nip­pers lis­ten­ing intent­ly to a record of Ben­jamin Britten’s ​‘Young Person’s Guide to the Orches­tra’. It’s a scene in which eccen­tric­i­ty, curios­i­ty and a lin­ger­ing dis­ap­point­ment are cap­tured suc­cinct­ly and with wry sophistication.

Anderson’s pur­port­ed MO with Moon­rise King­dom was to cap­ture the ecsta­sy and awk­ward­ness of first love, and he shoots for that goal with­out skimp­ing on any of the direc­to­r­i­al traits that made him the man he is today. Fol­low­ing a bizarre meet cute in a church hall pro­duc­tion of Noah’s Flood, Sam (Jared Gilman), a tac­i­turn, bespec­ta­cled orphan and Kha­ki Scout, starts shar­ing con­fes­sion­al love let­ters with Suzy (Kara Hay­ward), the trou­bled eldest daugh­ter of Walt Bish­op (Bill Mur­ray) and his bull­horn-wield­ing wife, Lau­ra (Frances McDor­mand), who is in turn hav­ing an affair with local police­man, Cap­tain Sharp (Bruce Willis).

All the char­ac­ters feel like they’re either old­er or younger ver­sions of Anderson’s past cre­ations: Mur­ray retools that straight-from-the-golf-course-bar turn he per­fect­ed in Rush­more; the kids all feel like Tenen­baum juniors; while a film-steal­ing Bob Bal­a­ban pops up as a Steve Zisou-like chorus.

Pri­mar­i­ly, this is a film to be savoured for it’s hyper-ornate visu­al schemes: each one more splen­did and breath­tak­ing than the pre­vi­ous. Anderson’s almost fascis­tic con­trol of detail with­in the frame would have you believe that he’s bark­ing orders at leaves, stones, fog and water from behind the camera.

Jacques Tati comes to mind at sev­er­al points, not least due to the feel­ing that you’ll need to watch the film over and over to be able to unlock the jokes occur­ring in the back­ground of each scene – these include a Native Amer­i­can wear­ing a plas­tic rain guard over his feath­ered head­dress, Edward Norton’s scout­mas­ter, Randy, flick­ing through the pages of Indi­an Corn mag­a­zine, and mul­ti­ple ref­er­ences to an orange drink called Tang.

Occa­sion­al­ly, you feel that the young lovers don’t quite get what Ander­son is striv­ing for, and it sounds like they’re fum­bling through lines which they don’t feel. There’s even a por­tion of the film, about two-thirds in, where Ander­son appears to lose con­trol of the reins and most of the cast are reduced – in homage to Ben­ny Hill? – to run­ning around in a field.

Yet with Moon­rise King­dom, Ander­son has made a film about youth that feels like it was ripped from the over­ac­tive imag­i­na­tion of a 12-year-old. It’s like a Prairie Home Com­pan­ion ver­sion of Romeo and Juli­et as made by a raff­ish aesthete.

But the biggest coup here is that Ander­son has final­ly man­aged to anchor his trade­mark whim­sy with a sin­cere and heady roman­ti­cism, and by the end, you may even be reach­ing for your immac­u­late­ly embroi­dered hand­ker­chief (or neck scarf) to wipe away the tears.