![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F36e73c33-34c5-482e-9673-5c3779844d2f_2048x1114.jpeg)
Fancy spending 19 minutes of your life with a rather strange looking man in a Radiohead t-shirt as he extols the virtues of this masterpiece of a film and all whilst he implores you to enjoy yourself, relax and have a glass of wine (“Day Drinking!”) as well as cautioning you not to masturbate lest it affect your eyesight?
Tough sell eh?
Well the video is here should you wish to join in with the ethos and spirit of my “Read Along” articles or below it, you’ll find my original spoiler free review (circa 2013) of a film I adore to the moonrise kingdom and back.
I adore this film and it took me a little longer than usual to compose myself back into a normal, rational human being before I could leave the cinema the first time I saw this classic film. What? I had something in my eye!
Anyway, here’s the beautifully operatic opening 5 minutes of the film with as much justice as I can possibly muster:
The opening credits commence with a loud clap of thunder and the camera settles on a painted picture of a red coloured house before the camera begins one of many majestic sweeps around the house. Firstly it sweeps to the right and to the top of a flight of stairs where a young boy is ascending the said stairs and walks past a small model of what appears to be the same red coloured house. The moving camera continues to sweep into the next room whereby the same young boy now enters that room and opens a record player and sits cross legged in front of the player and pushes the needle onto the record. It’s initially spoken word but will soon become “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra Op:34” by Benjamin Britten. A sharp camera move to the right follows and we see another young boy standing with his hands on his hips before another young boy peers out from behind the bedroom door.
Another sharp camera move to the right follows again and this time we see a young girl descending the outside stairwell before entering the room carrying a kitten and approaching the table ahead. Placing the kitten gently on the table momentarily, she collects the binoculars that are front and centre of the screen before picking up the kitten again and exiting the screen. She reappears almost instantly in the next frame, entering the bedroom of the boy listening to the music who has been joined by the other two boys. Every frame has been accompanied by the opening credits of the film, naming both the character names and the actors portraying these roles.
As the young girl enters the bedroom she ignores all three boys sitting on the carpet and sits in the window seat or window ledge and opens her book, which an extreme close up confirms is “Shelly and the Secret Universe”. She reads for a brief moment before putting the book down and drawing back the curtains and as she does so the music volume is increased dramatically and she peers through her binoculars and through the recently opened curtains. As the young girl does this, the camera zooms quickly back away from the girl still peering through her binoculars until the entire red house and surrounding coastline is visible and the title slide of “Moonrise Kingdom” is displayed above the house. The slide itself is purposely old school, the purpose of which will become clearer as we proceed. However, the title slide now flashes red in conjunction with a loud clap of thunder overhead.
As the opening credits continue to list the coming characters and actors who will fill those roles the three boys are now framed briefly playing a game on the carpet before the camera sweeps right into an empty room with two separate rooms leading from this empty one. The room on the left is occupied by an adult lady painting her nails and in the adjoining room is an adult male reading a newspaper. The camera continues to sweep to the right, past a bicycle before stopping front and centre on the young girl who is again peering through her binoculars.
We as the audience never see what she is looking at or watching.
We cut to the adult male, now in another spacious room of the house but still reading the newspaper lying on a sofa with a bearskin rug in the foreground before the camera now sweeps left to the bottom of the stairs as one of the boys descends the stairs carrying a model aeroplane and is quickly joined by the other two boys doing likewise. The camera continues to move throughout and sweeps left again, past numerous paintings on the wall and past the adult lady now in the bathroom washing her hair before the camera stops again on the young girl who is still peering through her binoculars. There is a lifeboat in the background named “Summer’s End”.
We cut to the three boys now playing table tennis and the camera now pans upward past the adult female drying her hair on one floor of the house and the adult male on another floor still reading the newspaper as the camera continues to pan in one continual shot upward. As the camera continues panning upward it follows a ladder upward to the top deck of the house and again the young girl is front and centre, peering through her binoculars. We quickly cut to the three boys now eating in another spacious room of the house surrounded by numerous paintings on the wall before the camera pans back through the house, past the adult male drinking wine and reading the newspaper, the adult lady smoking and filing her nails whilst leaning against the door frame of another room until the camera finally settles on the young lady who is still peering through her binoculars.
The dislocation of the family is clearly now set as after the smooth camera pan through the house we see the three boys separately in one room, the Father on his own in the next room, similarly the Mother in the next room and finally the young lady in yet another separate room and still peering through her binoculars.
We cut to the young girl leaving the house and approaching the mailbox, taking out the contents and we cut to the first of many Wes Anderson staples, an extreme close up and of a letter addressed to the young girl in question, namely “Suzy Bishop” and the sender “Sam Shakusky”.
We cut once more to Suzy walking and reading her letter from Sam, the camera following her in a sweeping motion to the right before she sits at a school bus stop to continue reading. As the continuing music reaches a loud crescendo Suzy, in another Wes Anderson hallmark, stares directly and unemotionally at the camera lens before securing the letter in a box marked “Private” and walking off camera to the left. We cut to one of the three young boys sitting cross legged on the carpet as he lifts the needle from the record player and the music ends. We now cut to a narration from actor Bob Balaban in a style only Wes Anderson could pull off, not in the normal style of film narration but straight to camera with Bob front and centre!
After a brief slide depicting the map of “New Penzance Island” we cut to a straight to camera narration from Bob Balaban and through the next eight quick cuts we see and hear Bob describe the island’s history, background and geography and as you’d expect from such a narration it’s pure Wes Anderson and with tongue firmly in cheek it’s also bizarrely surreal.
However
“The year is 1965. We are on the far edge of Black Beacon Sound, famous for the ferocious and well documented storm which will strike from the East on 5th September”.
"The Essential Film Reviews Collection" Vol.1 - link to Amazon
"The Essential Film Reviews Collection Vol.7" - link to Amazon
The love struck young lovers in this wonderfully quirky tale are “Suzy” (Kara Hayward) and “Sam” (Jared Gilman) who both portray their individual roles superbly in their first major cinematic outings. Suzy has already been partially introduced above but it quickly becomes established that she hides behind her binoculars as she believes them to be her “magic power” as she so often finds in the novels she voraciously reads and metaphorically as well as physically, hides behind. Suzy is deeply depressed and estranged from her parents and her siblings as they all rattle around in their sumptuous beach side house, trying desperately to avoid each other and their individual issues and foibles. Unable to make lasting friendships either at home or at school, she retreats further and further behind her binoculars and books as this secretive world seemingly protects her from the awkward, distanced and cold relationship she endures from her parents. Suzy is an outsider in a world she despises until that is, she finds her soul mate in Sam, who too is an outsider but a young boy who acts far older than his tender years. “Emotionally disturbed” and unable to make lasting friendships too, Sam is an orphan who since the death of his parents has lived in a variety of children’s homes and foster homes, bouncing around in a system unable to appreciate his talents as a Khaki Scout or his accomplishments as a young painter. Where Suzy is volatile and temperamental, Sam is stoic, pragmatic and a budding old fashioned young gentleman in the making. Together, they’ve found the love of their young lives but more than that, simply someone who likes them for who they are, someone who will listen and not judge them and someone seeking an escape from their lives and for thrills and an adventure. Sam may have found his muse and Suzy may have found the orphan hero she often reads about in her novels.
The young couple share so many scenes that have been touched and perfected through the surreal lens camera of Wes Anderson, with their letters back and forth displaying the Director at his supreme best as he weaves flashbacks with visceral intensity and superb editing mixed with a hard edge of surrealism. “This is Our Land” is a joyously uplifting scene of young love experiencing unrestrained adventure and joy, and if you fail to smile broadly as they awkwardly try to seduce each other during their comical dance on the beach you’ve clearly missed the point! That scene in particular encapsulates their young love perfectly: it’s honest, innocent, exploratory, the thrill of their young lives and absolutely bloody hysterical!
In support of our intrepid love birds is a stellar cast portraying some truly inventive characters with aplomb, love and admiration for the characters themselves and always with one eye towards the surreal. Bill Murray (again) epitomises this as “Mr Bishop” a deeply depressed lawyer who’s estranged from his wife, his children and from life completely, however his performance is pitch perfect and he delivers some of his best comedic acting coupled with many of the stand out lines from the film. Half dressed with a bottle of wine in one hand and an axe in the other, he strolls past his three boys sitting on the floor with a brilliantly deadpan “I’ll be outback. I’m gonna find a tree to chop down” with assured comic timing and without a shred of emotion, which is more than can be said of his unrestrained anger towards the Scout Master for not controlling his charges before throwing his shoes at him! It’s one of umpteen stand out scenes in this gem of a film and set against the backdrop of a police station pontoon. Frances McDormand portrays “Mrs Bishop”, a dowdy dressed, megaphone using wife of Mr Bishop, a fellow lawyer and Mother of the four children. Both are distanced from each other as well as their children and in today’s vernacular they are literally dead inside.
Perhaps the most impressive performance and a real return to form comes from a personal lifetime favourite actor of mine, step forward Bruce Willis as “Captain Sharp”, the Island’s Police Chief. Relaxed and untroubled however he quickly becomes embroiled in the search for our two young fugitives and slowly through a character arc and a nuanced portrayal transforms into arguably the heartbeat of the film, with his brief dinner scene with Sam in the second half of the film deeply affecting, touching and poignant. Willis’ role contains very little comedy and neither does Tilda Swinton’s brief cameo as “Social Services” however the comedy arrives in spades from many other characters and none more so than Edward Norton’s bizarre portrayal of “Scout Master Ward”. Norton’s role in particular also showcases everything that is so adorable of the film as a whole, from the fantastic screenplay, comedic touches, an engaging narrative, wonderful individualistic acting performances and touches of genius from the Director. From his cigarette dangling entrance to the film, Norton is superb as the ultra serious yet flawed Scout Master yet we follow him through the latrine and tree house inspections, the inside out camera angle as he peers into Sam’s empty tent and his resignation letter, his careful study of the “Scout Master In Chief Newsletter” through to his heartfelt congratulations to Sam for his outstanding beach side camp, Norton, as his fans have come to expect, is wonderful throughout. Two further comedic roles are worthy of note, firstly Harvey Keitel portrays “Commander Pierce” with tongue firmly in cheek but returning Jason Schwartzman is flat out brilliant as the scatty and bizarre “Cousin Ben”.
Dare I say this is a Wes Anderson film for Wes Anderson fans or will I be burned at the stake for stating such heresy? “Moonrise Kingdom” has damn near everything albeit without his trademark slow motion ending and the inclusion of a Rolling Stones track but this tangled bitter sweet tale of young love is peppered with deep characters trying to find love, beauty, redemption or even simply just a friend who will love them for who they really are. The Oscar nominated screenplay was written by Director Anderson and Roman Coppola and is a real treat to behold and how Anderson himself wasn’t nominated for Best Director or indeed his Editor or Director of Photography for this masterpiece only God herself knows. The editing from Andrew Weisblum is the finest yet in a Wes Anderson film and it has to be to tie the twisted narrative together and regular Director of Photography Robert Yeoman again showcases the tight knit chemistry he shares with the Director’s vision. Of the scenes not already referenced, look out for Sam and Suzy’s first meeting in the wheat field (before obligatory straight on extreme close ups on each), the long distance shot of their stroll away from the same field, the numerous forest scenes as they make their escape, the beach scenes and particularly the night time scenes later in the film. These truly mark the continuing genius of Robert Yeoman.
Continuing with the behind the scenes crew, Alexandre Desplat was also criminally overlooked at the 2013 Oscars for his beautiful cinematic score that leaned heavily on the works of Benjamin Britten and accompanies the film so well. The film’s lean running time of only 94 minutes (another Wes Anderson trademark is his concise running times) flashes by in a blur of detailed narrative structure and a flurry of his trademark quirks and touches, of split screen shots, flashbacks, numerous overhead shots, extreme close ups and beautifully sublime rolling camera shots.
This is Wes Anderson at his very, very best and if you haven’t got a tear in your eye as Suzy blows her young love a kiss towards the end of this masterpiece, then you have a heart far harder than mine.
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.