moonrise kingdom

the wonders (natural and otherwise) of the island of new penzance

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 2 Comments

The big news is that I was tagged in the Next Big Thing (Blog Hop) by Maggie over at Maggie Madly Writing. I'm still working on my answers to the questions (I plan to post them mid-week), so meanwhile here's another thought about Moonrise Kingdom. Again, mild spoilers.

I've been thinking about the question of exactly what Sam and Suzy are running away from. At the beginning of the movie, the narrator tells us about the natural wonders of the island of New Penzance. There's old growth pine and maple, shallow tidal creeks, and no paved roads, but what the island also has is a lot of hierarchies.

  • The Khaki Scouts are all hierarchies, both between the scouts and the scout masters and also within each of those groups. The various scouts we see wear different colored uniforms and wear different patches and badges, obvious establishing their relative ranks.
  • Suzy's family, in addition to everything else, also has hierarchies. Despite the fact that they have a huge dining room table, and there are only six people in the whole family, only the "adults" (Suzy and her parents) eat in the dining room, and the three young boys eat at a smaller table in another room. This is never commented on, but it's a very clear image.
  • And the animals have ranks, as we discover when Suzy yells at the wrong person in the opera being performed in the local church. Before that she was a raven, the top bird, but then she's demoted to being just a blue jay.
  • And even Social Services wears a uniform, looking as if her department might be a subsidiary of the Salvation Army.

But in the idyllic surroundings of Mile 3.25 Tidal Inlet, Sam and Suzy can just be themselves.

This is a wonderful example of a theme running through a story without ever being stated explicitly. It gives the audience credit for thinking, and I like that.

But the really interesting thing is how people react when the two run away and break out of the hierarchies. Everybody's first reaction is to repair the breach, to restore the natural order, to put things back where they "belong."

But then, to different degrees, some faster than others, starting with the young Khaki Scouts, they mostly begin to realize (and act on) the fact that this was wrong, that trying to bring things back to "normal" for Suzy and Sam was not the right thing to do.

This is often how things happen in real life. People resist change at first, but then they can start to wonder why it seems so wrong.


Oh, and I have to mention how accurately the movie captures some things about twelve-year-old boys, for example their excitement about the possibility of violence ("I'm not going to be the one who forgot to bring a weapon."), their herd instinct ("Why should I like you? Nobody else does."), their ability to believe almost any "fact" if it arrives with the appropriate evidence ("I heard..."), and their casual dismissal ("She's too scruffy for me.") of girls who they wouldn't have stood a chance with anyway.


Later: I noted an article on Slate called, "Oof, the Golden Globe Best Actress Nominations Are a Snooze," which contained this comment: "And I love Meryl Streep, but it's hard to see why her turn in a mediocre light marriage comedy is more worthy than Kara Hayward's remarkable performance as a troubled young teenager in Wes Anderson's emotionally precise and hugely original Moonrise Kingdom."

I like a girl hero

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 5 Comments

I've been thinking (and thinking, and thinking...)  about Moonrise Kingdom, (there will be some mild spoilers), and it made me think of Emerald Barnes' post, "Why your Female Protagonist Doesn't Have to Kick-Butt to be Liked."

Suzy Bishop, other than a couple of outbursts of off-screen violence (as one of her classmates put it, occasionally she goes berserk), is not a kick-butt character. Stories are her thing.

When she runs away from home she brings a suitcase full of books and no clothes besides what she has on.

She reminds me of Isabelle in the movie Hugo, another girl who would probably pack books before anything else. And, like Isabelle, she may well grow up to be a writer. That's at least as cool as kicking butt.

Suzy allows Sam to take the lead as they cross the island because of his Khaki Scout training (though there are a couple of moments when she gives him wonderfully uneasy sidelong glances), and then she reads to him during the evening.

Suzy has very specific ideas about what kinds of books she likes: "I like stories with magic powers in them, either in kingdoms on Earth or on foreign planets. Usually I prefer a girl hero, but not always."

And the girl heroes in her books certainly do kick butt ("On the plains of Tabitha, Francine rested. There would be another time for war."). But Suzy doesn't and that's fine. All of her reading has led her astray in some ways, but that's fine, too.

Suzy: I always wished I was an orphan. Most of my favorite characters are. I think your lives are more special.
Sam: I love you, but you don't know what you're talking about.

(The tendency to romanticize orphans in stories comes up in Prometheus also, where David – who only knows about being human from movies – asks Elizabeth, "Doesn't everyone want their parents dead?" "I didn't," is her response.)

And it's Suzy's steady, serious gaze that draws us into the movie. The repeated image in the first few minutes of the film, before we know anything about the characters or the plot, is Suzy Bishop, looking directly at the camera. And she wants to tell us her story, as surely as she reads to Sam every night.

I was pleased to read this comment on the Internet Movie Database, because it shows that this movie has some fans even more obsessive than I am:

When Suzy is reading "Disappearance of the Sixth Grade" at the Mile 3.25 Tidal Inlet campground and continues onto "Part Two" after Sam says to read on, it is just about the exact midway point of the film: the spoken words occur at 46:59, with 46:56 left in the movie. This moment also marks the transition of the film's plot, of course, so Suzy's "reading" also informs the audience of the shift in the movie's tone and direction.

I've watched the film again, and this is right. Suzy is addressing the audience, announcing the beginning of the second half of the movie. Telling us her story.

moonrise kingdom

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 2 Comments

As I talked about last time, mostly when I'm watching a movie, particularly for the first time, I'm inside the movie, not analyzing its strengths and weaknesses as a work of art.

This is usually true of reading as well. However, there are some writers (Henry James and Thomas Pynchon come to mind) where I read along, enjoying the story, but then sometimes I pop out for a while just to enjoy the sentences.

I had this experience when watching Moonrise Kingdom. My enjoyment of the story was very pleasantly mixed with my enjoyment of how well it was being told.

The only other Wes Anderson movie I've ever seen (as far as I can remember) was The Royal Tenenbaums, which I didn't care for. It was well done, but all the characters were aimless and mopey, and for no particular reason. Why would I want to spend time with these people?

The great difference in Moonrise Kingdom is that the adults are pretty similar to the ones in Tenenbaums, but the movie isn't about them and it doesn't take their point of view.

Instead it's about two twelve-year-olds who decide to run away together. From their point of view, we see that the adults are well meaning but hapless (Bruce Willis, Edward Norton), awful and miserable (Frances McDormond, Bill Murray), menacing (Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel), and generally weird (Jason Schwartzman, who seems to be the Milo Minderbinder of the Khaki Scouts of North America).

I mention the actors because, hey, that's some great actors, huh? Plus, there's Bob Balaban as the narrator. But the stars of the movie are Jared Gilman as Sam Shakusky and Kara Hayward as Suzy Bishop, the two young lovers.*

Sam is a Khaki Scout, and he's a good scout, but he doesn't like the scout troop, mostly because they don't like him. Sam is, as his scout master reports in one of his daily logs (which he carefully records on a small tape recorder in his tent), "the least popular scout in the troop. By a significant margin." Suzy doesn't like her family, because, well, no sane person would.

So, they run away together. Their assets include Sam's Khaki Scout training, and their determination (and Suzy's books and record player and her kitten, all of which she brings, along with her lefty scissors and her ever-present binoculars).

Arrayed against them are her parents (both of whom are lawyers), the local police force (which consists of Bruce Willis), Social Services (played by Tilda Swinton), and the massed might of the Khaki Scouts of North America. And an approaching hurricane.

And they also have to deal with the difficulty of figuring out how adult romance might work (the movie is set in 1965, when twelve-year-olds knew a lot less than they do now).

The actors are great, and the dialogue is wonderful. Shots are framed as carefully as they are in a Coen brothers film, and to similarly good effect.

And there's also the pleasure of the details. As one critic pointed out, at the beginning of the movie the credits are right at the edge of the screen, as if telling us to watch the sides as well as the center. I've watched the film several times, and here are a couple of wonderful details I never would have caught the first time through:

After Sam escapes from the Khaki Scout camp, a list is given of the equipment he took with him, including two bedrolls (which are visible later attached to his backpack). Sam, obviously a 12-year-old gentleman, did not want to assume that he and his paramour would be sharing a bed. And at the end, when Suzy is back home, we see her yellow suitcase still sitting out in the hall. She's back, but apparently she's ready to leave again at a moment's notice, if it should become necessary.

I could go on and on, but I'll just say that the last time I watched a movie with the same giddy enjoyment was Kick-Ass. Which is, I hasten to add, unlike this picture in pretty much every way.

One thing that particularly attracts me to this picture, I suppose, is that I'm working on a story that takes place on an island off the coast of Massachusetts (the location of Moonrise Kingdom is never given, but it's clearly New England), and there is a bad storm...

_________________
* It strikes me that it's pretty daring to make a movie with very young main characters. It all rests on the actors, and what if you choose wrong? For example, if you cast Bruce Willis in your movie (and he's great in this one, by the way), you know what you're getting. There's a track record you can look at. But Kara Hayward, who plays Suzy, had never been in a movie before. She was cast in an open audition, and I guess they just knew she was the one.

In Let the Right One In, the filmmakers auditioned for a year before the found the young actors who played Eli and Oscar. I wonder if they ever thought, "Hey, maybe we missed one back six months ago." On the other hand, Chloë Moretz was one of the first actresses Matthew Vaughn looked at for the part of Hit-Girl in Kick-Ass, and he stopped auditoning at that point. He knew she was the one. Which she was, obviously, but I admire the ability to make that kind of decision with that much confidence and with so much riding on it.


In other newes, Bethany's project is funded!


Also, here's a really good blog post. From Maggie Madly Writing: "The B-Word" (including the comments).


Oh, and I have to mention that this image pleases me. It's the cover of this month's issue the comic book Captain Marvel. That's Captain Marvel facing the camera. Her name is Carol Danvers, and she started her heroic career back in the 1970s when she was Ms. Marvel, a sidekick to the Captain Marvel of that time. He died, and she took various other names, and then recently she decided to assume the mantle and be Captain Marvel.

The dark-skinned fists approaching her belong to Monica Rambeau, who was also Captain Marvel for a while, years ago. I saw this, and I thought this would yet another pointless superhero-vs-superhero battle (plus, you know, girl fight!).

Nothing like that. They're working together (admittedly with a lot of clever banter about the use of the name). So, no pointless battle, no gratuitous girl fight. Cool.

Also, there are a lot of superheroes around these days, but it is something new to have that banner, "Earth's Mightiest Hero," referring to a woman. There are a lot of female superheroes, but the big powerhouses have almost always been male (Superman, Thor, the Hulk, etc.).