Moonrise Kingdom is one of the best!

Rating: 10/10 (14 February 2013)

Just watched Moonrise Kingdom twice; it's richly stylized and there is a lot to digest both visually and in the layers of meaning Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola have written into the dialogue. I'll likely watch it again because I was even further intrigued by the first two screenings and have really enjoyed the care with which the director recreated the year 1965, even though the depiction of the era was a lot more regimented in the film's tone than it was in real life. But what I really wanted to say (and I don't think it's a spoiler in any way) is that Moonrise Kingdom is about a man. A 12 year old man named Sam. He is the only male in the film who seems to be all there, and who knows what he really wants to be happy. Bruce Willis' character, while in authority as the local sheriff, is at loose ends with himself, his love life, and his dreams of something better in his future. Bill Murray is a lawyer who has become so absent and so fond of the grape that his wife (Fran MsDormand) ceases to love him. Ed Norton, who begins the film as a whip-cracking Scoutmaster, reveals the cracks in his own apparent self-assured-ness as he realizes that the scouts, and Sam in particular, are not just automatons but real children whose deeper needs he is unequipped to handle. And so on. Sam is the only real man, whose maturity and encyclopedic talents have bloomed unnoticed by most of the adults in charge, as well as Sam's fellow scouts, because he has been labeled "emotionally disturbed". But by film's end, it is clear that he is indeed the anchor for many of the other characters' unmoored lives. And I was left with the distinct impression that he and his young lady love would be together for the rest of their lives...and have adventures. I wish the movie had been much longer. If it were a book, it would be the kind you put down with a reluctant sigh.