Moonrise Kingdom: A Movie Review about Futility, French-Kissing, the Films of Wes Anderson, and the Search for Love and Self-Worth (not necessarily in that order)

The films of Wes Anderson have never been quite conventional or ordinary in any possible sense, and for that we should be very grateful.  After all, who else is supposed to provide us with a limitless supply of quirky characters, gorgeously lush visuals, and deceptively simple plots that wrench our heartstrings and force us to ask difficult questions – in the midst of summer blockbuster madness, no less?  

            Over the years, he's made a point of defying typical filmmaking convention, though he has created for himself a very distinctive style.  And, incredibly diverse though his stories may be, it is possible to discern very clear commonalities between them.

His films are usually marked by three defining traits: a very commonplace and ordinary conflict that sets the stage (usually related to domestic difficulty); a grand, elaborate solution to this mundane conflict, hardly proportionate to its significance; and a rather melancholy, if never fully acknowledged awareness of the ultimate futility of this solution, no matter how grand it may seem.

The conflicts may be commonplace and ordinary enough, but Anderson’s characters were born to be problem-solvers – and they never, ever think small.  In his first film Bottle Rocket, a naïve young man, desperate to escape the prospect that his mundane universe may be all he has and will ever have, won’t simply fill out a few job applications; he’ll pull his brother into an elaborate Robin Hood scheme set to cover them for the next ten years.  In The Darjeeling Limited, a recently widowed woman who has never experienced nor given any reasonable sort of love or affection won’t simply seclude herself in an apartment with her grief – she’ll abscond to become a nun in the Himalayas.  Her sons will hardly content themselves with that; they’ll fly to India, board a train and brave each other’s company in order to get her back.  In Fantastic Mr. Fox, a father going through a midlife crisis won’t simply threaten his family’s financial welfare in order to soothe his roiling emotions; he’ll deliberately endanger his own life, and put himself in a situation where his harebrained schemes/mad genius will be his only defense.    

            In his latest effort, Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson presents two twelve-year-old misfits from dysfunctional environments, who have simply decided that they’ve had enough.  Their solution?  Pack their most cherished belongings (however practical they may be), and run away into the wilderness.  They’ll journey through the woods, relying on the wilderness-scout training of the one and the farseeing binoculars of the other, braving all sorts of odds and adventures, until they reach a place where no one will find them, and build a home there.  

The choice to make this a story about children was a very shrewd one, because it forces the grand scheme of Anderson’s latest protagonists into that very clear, rather melancholy perspective only hinted at in his other films. The grand schemes in all his previous movies may have seemed enormous and important and significant to their originators, but it’s always woefully apparent that in reality, they are actually quite futile and childish.  It’s a knowledge never fully acknowledged in any of Anderson’s movies, but quite clear and present just the same.

 We knew that Dignan’s life-plan in Bottle Rocket would never really work in real life, even if he had meticulously planned every conceivable detail for the next ten years; but that knowledge was an inherent, prescient awareness, supplied by the audience itself.  Anderson doesn’t stress the point in that movie, nor does he need to.  There’s no need to be told that Dignan is an innocent young man who will never really become anything grand; we already know from the minute he shows us the chart drawn up in colored pencil.

            In Moonrise Kingdom, however, that knowledge is placed front and center.  Anderson makes sure his audience is not only aware of the grand futility of his young heroes’ dreams, but that we are immersed in it.  As awesome and elaborate as this scheme may seem to its protagonists, no one would ever lose focus as to how grand it is in actuality.  The trek across the wilderness seems long and adventurous to the children; but it’s a journey made in a few short hours, across the span of a small New England isle.  The young heroes’ destination seems a veritable paradise where no one would ever find them, but it’s a lone tent pitched out in the open, where literally anyone could stumble across them.  Indeed, perhaps the most pathetic, heartrending shot in the movie involves the reality of their new home, little Sam’s tent; in a moment of peril, the two young heroes stare out the open flap of the tent upon something that even Sam’s wilderness training can’t save them from.  There’s nothing they can do; only zip the flap back up, and cling to each other in their little, insignificant enclosure, awaiting the inevitable. 

            Even the protagonists themselves, Sam and Suzie, exemplify this struggling, desperate futility to a tee.  He’s a solemn young genius, orphaned and lonely, desperate to be acknowledged by a world that is baffled by him; she’s a solemn young dreamer, bookish and eccentric, desperate to be taken seriously by a family that is bemused by her.  Brilliant painting and clockwork thinking won’t help the one, any more than punching one’s reflection in the mirror in frustration will help the other.  They’ve exhausted every outlet they can think of, and they’re the only people who really understand each other.  Small wonder they run away together.  

Of course, there comes a point when we realize that it’s not just happiness that they’re looking for; it’s significance, the knowledge that they are important and worth something.  That they run away together is actually a rational decision; since they can’t sate their emotional needs in their current environments, they logically turn to a person who will do it and go elsewhere.  That their plans ultimately, inevitably go awry isn’t just because the scheme itself is futile and childish; it’s because they are children, living in a world where bigger folk call the shots, and where sometimes the ones who should be the most loving give the most hurt. 

Do Sam and Suzie know that they’re deluding themselves, that their adventure could never really last?  Most probably.  They’re both intelligent children who’ve managed to outwit the adults (even if only for a short time); they must know that in the end, everything they’re doing to prove themselves, and give their actions any measure of meaningfulness and significance is only a temporary solution – and a rather poor one at that.  Even their first attempts at French-kissing come across as awkward and pathetic – if not for the fact that they’re only twelve (!), then certainly because it’s yet another failed attempt at striving for that higher level of something more profound that only the grown-ups can attain.  Another temporary solution, to a problem approached in the wrong manner.

Of course, the greatest hurdle to Sam and Suzie’s expectations is the fact that even the adults themselves are not exempt from issues of worth, and the need to feel significant and have their existence justified.  It’s a fact that Suzie is certainly aware of; she’s watched her parents’ marriage dissolve into a loveless relationship of apathy and self-parody, and discovered that her fed-up mother (Frances McDormand) is having an affair with the grizzled, sad-sack island police chief (Bruce Willis).  Sam also senses it, in the form of his hapless wilderness-scout troop leader (Edward Norton).  All of them are grown-ups, and all of them naturally awarded that esteem given those of superior age – and, in the end, all of them suffer from the same need to be taken seriously as Sam and Suzie.  In some ways, it’s the greatest example of hypocrisy and grand futility that the children will ever see.

But they would never admit it, because Anderson’s characters never speak with any great profoundness.  They speak matter-of-factly, in an almost stilted fashion, saying only what needs to be said – nothing less, nothing more.  Two characters discussing their backgrounds will dutifully supply the bare facts; it’s left to their eyes to communicate the hurt behind those facts.  Conversely, two family members engaged in a long-overdue heart-to-heart will give succinct ejaculations of emotion.  Only their facial expressions convey the intricacies behind those words.

Yet for all that, the world in Anderson’s film is just like our own: a difficult place, filled with difficult people seeking to justify their existence, and searching for the love and acknowledgement that they desperately crave, all in the wrong places.  It’s quite apparent that Sam and Suzie can’t solve their issues by running away, any more than Willis’s police chief can find his happiness with another man’s wife, or Norton’s troop-leader his esteem by being willfully oblivious to the world.

Not everyone realizes the answers.  Some of those who do simply acknowledge it as just another futility, another superfluous solution to a deep-rooted issue that, in their minds, can never be solved.  But perhaps the most surprising aspect of the characters who do find some resolution is not how they do it, but the fact that resolution is found in some manner of self-giving.  Not all the characters find such resolution; indeed, of all the characters, only a few find something remotely resembling happiness at the end.  But the film’s conclusion makes it very clear that though the characters’ efforts may have been futile, their purpose was anything but.  If one character can find redemption by doing something previously considered inconceivable, another finds just as much by realizing that true happiness entails doing for and genuinely loving another.  And even if, in the end, Sam and Suzie find no resolution in their immediate environments, they’ve at least grown in their understanding of the world, their own self-worth, and found a way to simply make things work with what they have.  As one critic put it, the solution to all the woes of Anderson’s characters can very probably be found in the film’s climatic image.  It’s shocking, striking, and borderline cartoonish in its unreality, but there it is: the ultimate portrayal of cherishing life and reaching out for one another. 

It’s unsurprising that not all of Anderson’s characters find closure, or even that, in some ways, nothing has really changed from the start of the movie.  Perhaps, for the movie’s purposes, that’s a good thing.  This isn’t the sort of story where everyone lives happily-ever-after, where every single character addresses their flaws and becomes a better person over the course of two hours.  Life is rarely that simple, and humanity, in its fallen nature, does have a tendency toward the downside.  But that doesn’t preclude the notion that hope exists for the people who do care, who do choose to reach out to one another and give of themselves.   The world is full of people who constantly disappoint and are disappointed by each other and themselves; it’s an unfortunate staple of humanity.  But we can choose to acknowledge the people who do understand, and take solace in the fact that we are worth something.