Wes Andererson, warts and all

Rating: 7/10 (16 June 2012)

**Tiny Spoiler** Early in the film a scoutmaster (Edward Norton) at a boy scout summer camp notices that one of his charges is not at breakfast. He inspects the camper's tent, which is empty, and notices a map on the wall. Pulling the map down, he reveals a large round hole cut in the side of the tent which was used as an escape route. That the camper could have easily unzipped the tent and walked out misses the point: this was an ESCAPE from a prison of sorts. The visual metaphor is more important than reality.
That pretty much sums up the sensibility of a Wes Anderson film: s gentle absurd aesthetic that is a possible meeting of Holden Caufield, Richard Brauntigan and Stanley Kubrick.
Some directors try to break out of the 2-dimensional boundaries of film, Wes Anderson plays there. His wide lenses and flat tracking shots are like turning the pages of a lushly illustrated children's book. Like Kubrick, his actors are characters more than real human beings.
I like Wes Anderson's movies, but his highly stylized structures can sometimes constrict, rather than expand, his expressiveness. Moonrise Kingdom is a beautiful, gentle fable that could have been better than it was. I just wish the director would trust his characters to breathe on their own.