Thoughts on Moonrise Kingdom

Rating: 8/10 (29 April 2020)

Moonrise Kingdom is a beautiful, highly stylized film in typical Wes Anderson fashion, oozing with personality. Every shot is purposeful and there are tons of creative presentation choices that turn what could have been a boring standard shot into something vastly more impactful. For instance, the close up of an arrow cutting through the air and the flashy frame of the left scissors to convey a whole action scene. What could have been just a simple overhead reveal shot of Captain Sharp dangling from the church roof holding the children is instead shown from a pulled back wide angle using silhouettes. Although present throughout the film the church roof scene also has great composition with four characters crammed together in the window, peering out in anticipation.
Moonrise Kingdom is filled with great characters that are largely acted off kilter and deadpan which I found really intriguing and a joy to watch. The film is about something that I'm sure is very familiar and melancholy to most of us, a young first love. However west Anderson's version is highly fanciful.
Wes finds a way to combine his imaginative, ridiculous visual aesthetic with the real world and the results are wonderful.