Moonrise Kingdom **** (2012, Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton) – Classic Movie Review 6984

The ever quirky co-writer/ director Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012) takes place on an island off the coast of New England in the summer of 1965, when a 12-year-old boy (Jared Gilman as Sam) and a 12-year-old girl (Kara Hayward as Suzy) fall in love and run away together, causing a local search party to mobilize to find them. It is advertised as a tormenting and surprising eccentric, pubescent love story, and it is.

Anderson rounds up a rare choice collection of the usual suspects in starry support: Bruce Willis as Captain Sharp, Edward Norton as Scout Master Ward, Bill Murray as Mr Bishop, Frances McDormand as Mrs Bishop, Tilda Swinton as Social Services, Harvey Keitel as Commander Pierce and Jason Schwartzman as Cousin Ben, along with Bob Balaban as the Narrator, and Lucas Hedges, Charlie Kilgore, Andreas Sheikh, Chandler Frantz, Rob H Campbell and L J Foley.

Anderson turns oddball into an art form, and he films stylishly in his unique style. It is a great looking film, thanks to the eye-catching cinematography by director of photography Robert D Yeoman and smart production design by Adam Stockhausen. Yeoman shot the movie on Super 16mm film with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, using Aaton Xterà and A-Minima cameras.

The clever screenplay by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola was nominated as Best Original Screenplay for an Oscar, Golden Globe and Bafta. The music by Alexandre Desplat is another strong asset to the movie’s success.

It was shot on Rhode Island from April to June 2011 at various places around Narragansett Bay, including Conanicut Island, Prudence Island, Fort Wetherill,Yawgoog Scout Reservation, Trinity Church, Conanicut Island Light, and Newport’s Ballard Park.

It premiered on 16 May 2012 as the opening film at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, and released the same day in in French cinemas with the American release on May 25. It grossed $45.5 million in the US and $22.75 million in international markets for a worldwide total of $68.25 million. Without being an award winner (though it made many critics’ 2012 top ten lists), it was a hit.

Anderson, who took immense care and attention in designing the maps for the film’s fictitious New Penzance Island and St Jack Wood Island, recalled: ‘Moonrise Kingdom 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 screen time, you kind of feel whether or not they’ve got the layers of the real thing in them.’

He said that for inspiration he viewed films about young love, including Black Jack, Small Change, A Little Romance, and Melody.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6984

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