Puppy love gone feral

As he’s done in films like The Royal .Tenenbaums and the more recent Darjeeling Limited, expect Wes Anderson to appeal to people who get off on the yellowed pages of a Penguin classic or the mustiness that escapes from an old record crate. There is enough mod and prep in the film to make hipster hearts skip a beat. But more than an homage to the decade that’s been so culturally fetishized what with Don Draper and all the fedoras you see in Topman, is Anderson’s very earnest desire to take you back to something a little more justifiably precious: childhood. 

The movie is set during the summer of ’65. In a small seaside town in New England, 12-year-olds Sam and Suzy are the resident weird kids who meet and fall in love at a pivotal point in their tween restlessness. Sam’s the four-eyed outcast of his Khaki Scout camp. Suzy’s more into her female-centric fantasy books and French female pop rock records than she is in making friends. When Sam spots Suzy among a flock of girls in bird costumes for a Sunday school play, he immediately knows she is not of the same feather as the others and because of how boldly he addresses her when he trespasses into her dressing room, vice-versa.

Moonrise Kingdom is a film set in a seaside town in New England during 1965.

The two decide to run away into the surrounding wilderness, where the walls of a borderline broken home or foster home won’t constrict their identities. Sam is an orphan about to be seized by Social Services and Suzy’s benumbed herself to the sad sacks that are her parents, played by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand. We only need to remember the sedate and innate sadness of characters like Margot Tenenbaum or Adrien Brody in Darjeeling to know that adults in Wes Anderson films soak in tubs of their own issues and/or melancholia, usually parental; it makes for wry humor that’s characteristic of an Anderson movie. In Moonrise Kingdom, legends of comic deadpan Murray and McDormand depict ennui so delightfullyfor one, complacence with his marriage; the other, utter dissatisfaction with it. They later become part of a search party that includes Ed Norton (a scout master) and Bruce Willis (the town cop), who look pained enough to begin with.

The young lovers, however, could give a crap about what Academy Award-nodded, alt crowd-approved (Willis for the irony, naturally) ensemble cast is searching for them. Whatever pretense is associated with Anderson’s characters works perfectly for the precocious pair of Sam and Suzy. Leading to a scene where the two explore the first two bases of lovemaking, they dance in their skivvies to Françoise Hardy’s surf-tinged and sensual ’62-released song Le Temps de L’amour. The lyrics, translated, say it all, really: It’s the time for love/ the time for friends/ and for adventure. When the time comes and goes/ we don’t think anything/ despite our injuries. Childhood couldn’t be described any better. 

The cast of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom include actors Edward Norton, Bill Murray and actress Tilda Swinton—as well as decidedly youthful leads. Photo by Niko Tavernise for W magazine

It’s the point where two withdrawn kids surrender fully to their sense of abandon, which goes hand in hand with the sense of possibility so abundant during that time of your life (the purity of such a time reasserted by the use of children’s choir songs in various parts of the movie). After all, what kid wouldn’t believe he could survive out in the wild for the long haul or that the first feelings they have for someone aren’t substantial  enough to be defended with a pair of scissors, which becomes Suzy’s weapon of choice when a pack of khaki scouts catches up to this mini Bonnie and Clyde.

Anderson certainly puts the twee in tween but his bent to a past where kids got lost in play as much as their own thoughts should resonate today, especially where young’uns these days are unlucky enough to have iPads do the iMagining for them. In Moonrise Kingdom, expect to get lost in the toasted golden hue of the director’s nostalgia and likely rediscover what you might have lost in that overrated thing called growing up.