Moonrise Kingdom, notes, part 1

The themes of Wes Anderson, part 1

—Infidelity
(Royal Tennenbaums=Royal and Margot; Rushmore=Bill Murray’s wife, Bill Murray, the teacher; The Darjeeling Limited=the woman on the train; Moonrise Kingdom=Frances McDormant)

—Cinema or theatricality occurring within the world of the film
• Plays within the movie (Rushmore, Moonrise Kingdom)
• Things that look like props in a musical (Rushmore=besides actual stage props, construction imagery, club imagery [Max Fisher posing as president of various clubs, archery, kite flying, etc.]; RT=tennis imagery, track suits, outfits in general
•Static shots of flyers and announcements of the event that is essentially the next scene

—Depression, non-emotive hyper-sad individuals
(Bill Murray in Rushmore, RT, The Life Aquatic, briefly DL, and MK; Margot in RT; just about everybody at one point or another in MK)

[Side note: I have seen Rushmore maybe 10 times, the Royal Tennenbaums maybe 4, and Bottle Rocket maybe 3. I have never watched, to my memory, The Life Aquatic all the way through, I watched the Darjeeling Limited in the theater, and I watched Fantastic Mr. Fox at my house a few months ago. FMF was supposed to play at the movie theater I worked for, but it got swooped up by the mall at the last minute, which certainly changed the fate of my relationship with the film. I watched Moonrise Kingdom (the independent cinema got it this time) and liked it more than any of his movies since Rushmore, with which I feel Moonrise Kingdom has much in common. In the notes I am here preparing I have developed a kind of thesis:

Max Fischer and the runaways (the boy and girl of Moonrise Kingdom) represent a primordial nostalgia for an ultimately romantic plane where all that is real is love, death and the essential truths of existence. The connection between Max Fischer and the runaways is immediate and eerie when we learn that it is Jason Schwartzman (no longer the teenage actor, but still, essentially, MF) that will guide them to the completion of their journey (I personally was waiting the whole movie for this scene which I heard when Teri Gross interviewed Wes Anderson on Fresh Air), and we see Max Fischer 15 years later running the supplies building at the Khaki Scout HQ. He agrees to marry the couple, but admits that practically it will mean nothing. However, it is the most important decision of their lives. He makes them spit out their gum and go over by the trampoline to talk about it. The shot is way out so we can see a boy on the structure above the trampoline, the trampoline and the runaways in the center.

This next detail is the detail that makes me love the movie as opposed to simply liking it: the boy jumps onto the trampoline and goes straight back up, goes back down, goes back up and does a back flip, goes back down, goes back up, goes back down, and does a front flip, and the runaways inaudibly make the biggest decision of their lives. This scene, to the Wes Anderson detractor, proves a certain refusal to stick to emotion, to scene, to whatever manipulative arc keeps a moviegoer's attention and tells him or her what to think and feel. It’s too cute to be meaningful, you are thinking too actively about how clever or pretty it is to stay in the story. It’s the same kind of logic that a hipster is too busy looking cool to do or say or be anything meaningful. This is certainly another discussion to maintain after some research about what detractors actually say, as opposed to what they say in my mind, or what I have said in less appreciative viewings.]

The themes of Wes Anderson, part 2
—Nautica
(I don’t have the internet and my dictionary says it is not a word, but I feel that it should be, the imagery and ethos of sailing and exploring the sea? Jacques Cousteau book in Rushmore; The Life Aquatic; sailing, canoeing in Moonrise Kingdom; Luke Wilson's boat excursion in RT)

—Moments of unbelievable courage
(unfortunately, the thing that made the DL not just a self-involved-J.D.-Salinger-privileged-family-on-a-train story was the scene where there was an incident on a river and the three brothers rescue from drowning three Indian boys, and it felt rather forced and non-sequitor; lots of Fantastic Mr. Fox acrobatics; a fairly surreal stop-motion rescue scene in MK)

—Anachronism
•Calligraphy, Latin, binoculars, easels, and everything else could be from the 1960s, and purposely in MK, which takes place in 1965; FMF same, except storybook England
•Record players, late ‘60s Kinks, the Who, Rolling Stones soundtrack


[Side note: on Sunday I got out my Hank Williams record because my roommate’s friend made jumbalaya (the night before I saw MK, which heavily features Hank's recordings) and brought it over and I was singing “Son of a gun we’ll have big fun” right as he was thinking the same lines. I just put it on. What does it mean to listen to records in 2012?

Positive reason / negative interpretation:

An appreciation, preservation of the past / an unhealthy nostalgia for a time and
place I never knew 

A fondness for listening to my parents records as a kid / an infantile refusal to grow
up and change 

Sticking up for the timeless when it falls out of fashion / purposely being contrary
for whatever reasons people think “hipsters” dislike everything that everybody else likes 

Slowing down the rushed button-pressing reality that dominates everything around
me / failing to conform to reality

In the Royal Tennenbaums two adult siblings (though one is adopted) are in love. They have a romantic exchange in a red tent while listening to “Ruby Tuesday” by the Rolling Stones on a portable record player. The tent and the record player resemble those on the beach later named “Moonrise Kingdom” to where the runaways escape. Both are lovers devoted to a taboo impossible love—siblings and 10 years olds. The world would never understand. The world could never understand.  Max Fischer, 15 years old, and the teacher. Everybody wants to save the boy from Social Services, because they are convinced he will get shock treatment. How far can a heart go unchecked before society sets some rules? Not sure if this is what this essay should be about]

The themes Wes Anderson, part 3

—Entertained fantasies
•Rushmore, upper class (brain doctor, fencing)
•Bottlerocket, bandits (heist, hiding out)
•RT, whole movie is the depiction of depression after the actualization of fantasy (playwriting, professional tennis circuit, literary success)
•LA, being a part of Cousteau's crew
•DL, bonding with brothers spiritually on a trip to India;
•FMF, being a fox
•MK, escaping civilization (camping, fleeing, freedom from the authority of normalcy).

[I watched Rushmore the night of the initial notes, and fell asleep, did not take notes.  I mentally noted that it is "Max Fischer" with a C.

I projected The Red Balloon a few days later onto the back of my house (balloon=creativity, freedom, dreams, individuality, etc.; peers (status quo representation of mass society) out of jealousy, boredom, frustration, etc. succeed in deflating and destroying it; all of the balloons in the city come to lift subject off the ground and carry him through the sky); toward the end of our second film (Frog and Toad are Friends) the police arrived and we were asked to stop watching the film, just as it was ending. When we brought everything back inside I saw the dozens films I had left out, colorful 3D circles that later would bring me joy when projected before 10pm at a reasonable volume.]