Wes Anderson better than his best

Rating: 9/10 (13 June 2012)

I've been a fan of the young auteur Wes Anderson for quite a while now and it's been a lot of fun to watch his career change and mature as he makes more and more wonderful films. His latest flick, Moonrise Kingdom, might just be his most aesthetically brilliant directorial outing yet. In fact, it's safe to say it is one of his finest films out of the seven he has made. Moonrise Kingdom is an adventurous love story about a young boy and a girl who have been in touch ever since meeting at their summer camp's production of Noah's Ark. During the summer of 1967 the boy, Sam, runs away from his troop of Khaki scouts to meet up with Suzy, the girl. A quirky yet beautiful relationship sparks immediately, but meanwhile search parties are sent out all over the island on which the film takes place to find the two starry eyed children. It's a film full of the usual Wes Anderson quirkiness, but it also displays a new kind of mature filmmaking that solidifies Anderson's stake as a true auteur and a truly superb director.
Moonrise Kingdom boasts a colorful cast of characters that is full of the Anderson regulars like Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray, but also has some newcomers like Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, and even a hilarious cameo by Harvey Keitel. This multitude of characters come together to create an absolutely magnificent story. The characters are full of life and it's amazing to watch how this diverse cast can come together to carry this film with its very specific style full of matter-of-fact dialogue and very rigid movements. All of the cast does an excellent job at perfecting the style Anderson has created here. It's the kind of brilliance that can't be explained by words, but rather just by seeing the excellence of this film come together.
But perhaps the most incredible thing about Moonrise Kingdom is what Anderson has achieved visually here. Anderson has always had a very specific style to the way he directs. His camera movements are always very straight and very flat. His pans are very specific and he works them in such a way that is under appreciated by the average movie goer. Anderson is an expert at framing a shot and he is in love with making perfect picture frame shots out of his settings. His camera work has always been something special, but in Moonrise Kingdom he utilizes his own style to a whole new exceptional level. I was blown away by the way he shot this film and the way he framed each and every shot so perfectly, without a single flaw in the setup of his scenes.
Everything Anderson does with the camera here is flawless and it is the thing which characterizes the adventurous and free spirit of this film. There's a certain magical quality about this film that comes through its incredibly creative visual style. Moonrise Kingdom is delivered perfectly and I couldn't have asked for a more stylistic film from Anderson. It's the film which encompasses the style he has been developing ever since the release of his first film. Moonrise Kingdom is easily one of Anderson's best films to date.