page_title: Moonrise Kingdom
section_title: Themes
hierarchical_section_title: Moonrise Kingdom / Themes
caption_attribution_description: English: "Noah's Flood": special performance in a rehearsal hall at The Santa Fe Opera, 11 August 2013
context_page_description: Moonrise Kingdom is a 2012 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by Wes Anderson, written by Anderson and Roman Coppola. It features an ensemble cast including Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Bob Balaban, Harvey Keitel, and newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward. Largely set on the fictional New England island of New Penzance, it tells the story of an orphan boy who escapes from a scouting camp to unite with his pen pal and love interest, a girl with aggressive tendencies. Feeling alienated from their guardians and shunned by their peers, the lovers abscond to an isolated beach. Meanwhile, the island's police captain organizes a search party of scouts and family members to locate the runaways.
  In crafting their screenplay, Anderson and Coppola drew from personal experiences and memories of childhood fantasies as well as films including Melody and The 400 Blows. Auditions for child actors took eight months, and filming took place in Rhode Island over three months in 2011.
context_section_description: Professor Peter C. Kunze wrote that the story depicts "preteen romance", exploring child sexuality in the vein of The Blue Lagoon. Several critics interpreted the ear-piercing scene as symbolizing the characters losing their virginity. Author Carol Siegel judged the portrayal to be a positive take on "youthful sexual initiation", from a mainly male perspective, but like many other U.S. films she said it missed a female perspective. Academic Timothy Shary placed the story in the cinematic tradition of exploring "young romance" and the resulting strife, with Titanic (1997) and Boys Don't Cry (1999).
  However, film scholar Kim Wilkins rejected the notion that Moonrise Kingdom is a romance film. She argued the severity of Sam and Suzy's behavior, and their "profound existential anxiety", indicate the characters were created as products of a more widespread concern for juvenile mental health. Wilkins wrote that the story dealt with "existential" questions, with the two young protagonists rejected by society and allying to escape to "a limited existence beyond its boundaries". According to a Chicago Tribune analysis, Moonrise Kingdom represented Anderson's most focused study on a theme running through his work, "the feelings of misunderstood, unconventional children".
  J.M. Tyree of Film Quarterly argued the story illustrated both an affinity with and "arch skepticism" of the "comedy of love", where in Shakespearean comedy lovers, after courtship and marriage, would "return to a reconstituted civilized order". Sam and Suzy escape civilization but are always taken "back into twisted knots of communal ties". Critic Geoffrey O'Brien wrote that, while camps are common settings for stories about "innocence" lost, the truer theme was "the awakening of the first radiance of mature intelligence in a world liable to be indifferent or hostile to it".
  The narrative features collapsing families, represented by the Bishops' failing marriage. Professor Emma Mason suggested their large house serves as a "mausoleum-like shelter". Sam is also disowned by his foster family for behaviors like arson while sleepwalking. While he told Suzy "I feel like I'm in a family now", academic Donna Kornhaber argued Sam, as an orphan, has a realistic perspective on the difficulties of building a family. As an adoptive father Sharp may not be ready, Tyree wrote, "but [his] lack of self-centeredness sets him apart from other would-be fathers or mentors in Anderson's world".
  Professor Laura Shakelford observed how Suzy as the raven in Noye's Fludde is followed by a historic rainstorm echoing Noah's flood. Scholar Anton Karl Kozlovic suggested that while the film includes no quotes from the Book of Genesis and no shots of a copy of the Book, Noah's story is used for symbolism. The children dress as animals before floods cause them to seek shelter in the church, Kozlovic observed. Following the Genesis narrative, after the New Penzance flood, there is "abundant regeneration" with great harvests of high-quality produce. Shakelford read the story as a commentary on the characters grappling with the relationship between "the material world" in "postmodern cultures" and that of animals.
caption: Noye's Fludde is referenced in the film.
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