Monday 6 August 2012

Moonrise Kingdom.



Set on New Penzance, a coastal island off New England, in 1965 Wes Anderson’s latest movie is a story of two twelve year olds pen pals who fall in love with each other, but out of love with their self contained world and who can blame them? Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) complete with Davy Crocket hat and thick horned rim specs is a very unhappy Boy Scout, hated by the rest of the Khaki Scout Troop for no apparent reason and not wanted by his foster parents. He leaves a resignation note with Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton) and sets off to meet the love of his life, Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) with the implicit intention of running away together. Suzy’s dysfunctional family consists of her three obnoxious wee brothers and her unhappily married parents Mr and Mrs Bishop (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) who indecently are both lawyers. When its realised the youngster’s are missing a search party, consisting of the Scout Master, his troop of scouts and the islands police force Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), (que Hank Williams; your need to see the film) sets out to discover their whereabouts and social services (Tilda Swinton) is informed.  In the mean time our missing young lovers are setting up camp in a tidal outlet which they rename Moonrise Kingdom (2012). During the hubbub a dog is killed with a bow and arrow, a scout is stabbed in the kidney with a pair of scissors and Suzy gets her ears pierced with fishhooks!

Suzy and Sam
Wes Anderson’s stage is always a completely autonomous world of his own making, as a certain BBC comedy programme used to say ‘now for something completely different’. The grown ups in Andersons movie completely complement the superb feature film debuts from Gilman and Hayward. The director, and co-writer with Roman Coppola, treats trivial things with the utmost seriousness and serious things as if they were completely trivial[1] the humour is deadpan and off the wall but extremely funny. What a perfectly delightful evenings entertainment this film turned out to be. It was  a real shame there was not more people at the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre to enjoy it.

Social Services.


[1] Paraphrased from a critique by Sam Davies. 

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