Meet Me in New Penzance

Rating: 9/10 (2 September 2017)

The story begins in September 1965, in a New England Island called New Penzance. Two misfit and precocious adolescents run away from their family (or what stands for it). Sam (Jared Gilman) escapes from his Scout camp à la Dufresne and Suzy (Kara Hayward) sneaks from her house in a location named Summer's End.
Scoutmaster Ward (Edward Norton) and Suzy's parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) inform the Island Police Captain (Bruce Willis) about their concerned disappearance and it doesn't take long for the town's unique law enforcer to tie the two cases via a pile of incriminating letters discovered by Suzy's mother and indicating one year of romantic correspondence. A search party and police investigation is lead to find the two pen pals, and over the course of the movie, Ward's Commander Pierce (Harvey Keitel) and a nameless Social Assistant (Tilda Swinton) embark on the search.
The whole wilderness turns into the backdrop of a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase and a penetrative romance; it has the set-up: a first encounter (told in flashback) at a church during a musical performance of Noye's Fludde, the romance on the lam the next summer, an improvised marriage in a Scout chapel, and a suicide attempt in the very church where they met during the infamous hurricane of September 5. I loved that Anderson used real events and real locations to give the film a touch of authenticity. I love his attention to little details, his capability to accessorize everything, from the record player with incorporated batteries, to the books brought by Suzy. Yet it's all fake and I was fooled.
Anderson could have used any Scout camp, any location, any real book, any hurricane that happened in any year of the 60's, and fictionalized them. No, he recreated the camp, the books and more incredibly, the maps, no matter how painstakingly hard it would be, no matter that it would pass over many viewers. But that's the mark of a genius, he doesn't shape his inspiration according to the world, he creates his own world and his vision shapes our feelings.
Indeed, as you get used to the process of watching movies, you take for granted that the film you're watching will plunge into a reality that might not be THE reality but will be stylized in such a way it will highlight the deepest aspects of your life, environment, troubles and the whole caboodle. But Anderson's movies in general and "Moonrise Kingdom" in particular, elevate the term 'fictionalization' to the level of art by subverting it. Anderson doesn't care about reality, he creates his own, codifying it with the same known trademarks, long traveling, rectangular shots with characters literally sliding over the frame or exchanges of look where for one moment you feel like you're the observed one.
Anderson's reality is stylish, eccentric and fake! But by being so evidently fake, it is enigmatically more appealing than any movie that will care for the opposite feeling. Today's film-makers are so obsessed about reality that's they're literally conditioned by violence and ugliness, they want to create eye-opening experiences but they ignore that there's a sort of defensive mechanism in the viewer's mind that tends to ignore what immediately reminds of reality. After all, the most important room in a house is the toilet but that doesn't mean we enjoy talking about it. Wes Anderson handles many painful subjects in "Moonrise Kingdom" despite all the idiosyncrasies: he handles marital troubles, adolescence crisis, many characters are very unsatisfied with their life, yet with his 'mind software' he manages to translate it into a fabulous adventure and a hypnotic romance. The secret (I guess) is style.
Wes Anderson is perhaps one of the few filmmakers whose stylish approach to a specific theme makes the movie, he never tries to touch the truth the way filmmakers are obsessed with, if he had made "La Vie d'Adèle" he would have cared about the sexual tension rather than the sex (easily rendered by as many ass-shots as the lenses can take). His movies look staged and cinematic in a way that makes you contemplate the inner depths of the characters. All the characters of the film are like presences, looks, they're defined by their actions but the directing allows you to take a brief pause and there's just something in their eyes that either try to deliver a message or find an answer. The film relies on this alternation between movement and contemplation, and sometimes, we're contemplating a movement like the beautiful dance sequence with Françoise Hardy"s "Time of Love" capturing the awkwardness of an age where we can't really put words into things but we're fueled by a deep need for expressing something.
Maybe that's why Suzy is so obsessed with books, incapable to find her own truths; she grabs as many pieces as she can and try to mold a positive mindset. Maybe she's the central piece to Sam's own puzzle of happiness and love. And the genius of the film is that the narrative progressively unfolds similar troubles into the adult characters, each one being driven by the same doubts and hesitations. Adults are looking after kids who're trying to escape from conditions they (adults) resent as well. Near the end, you realize that the postcard look of the film, the picturesque aspect, the old-fashion charm, the maps and even the books, have created a faithful reflection to realities more than any documentary. Anderson understood that people are ready to see reality through the glasses of fantasy, of fictitiousness.
And it's because the film has so much to offer in terms of visual treats, the use of natural elements, storms, lightning bolts and boats are so great that we're ready to handle the sadness of their characters, it's a 'happy' film about unhappy people, one that puts the 'Art' in cathartic.