Overrated Films: Moonrise Kingdom

In light of the release of Wes Anderson's new movie The Grand Budapest Hotel I have decided to do a piece about why I personally felt his last film Moonrise Kingdom was not only overrated but also exploitive in a weird indie (cute?) way. I have unrelentingly expressed my criticism and opinion to a friend thru email a couple of years ago when it was in theaters. So by saving myself the time of repeating thoughts I have already written before I will post excerpts from that email written to my friend back in 2012. I will also show my friend's response email as well as my final thoughts. I look back and admittedly realize my criticism of Wes Andersson sounds a bit harsh. Although after reading it thoroughly my opinion still stands. So why would I sugar coat it right?

My First Initial Response:

Moonrise Kingdom - I finally watched it as a date movie since it was playing at the AMC and no other flick interested me. My general analysis is that it was a descent movie and I even consider it somewhat good. It is only good for one particular reason; I felt that visually Wes Anderson has stepped it up big time. This was the most visually sound film he has directed to date I feel. The intro and also the outro which are the same concept (the 360 camera revolving) are practically the best visual concept that Wes Anderson has come up with so far. This film is the closest I feel he has gotten to a level similar to the Scandinavians in cinema. Some shots actually reminded me of Roy Andersson, but not as complex of course. But I think it is clear that Anderson checked out some Andersson flicks and realized that he could step it up big time with his whole stage frame concept. With that out of the way I have some issues with the film, what Wes Anderson has become and the idea in general. 

Wes Anderson on a Larry Clark tip 

I was actually faintly disturbed on how much Wes Anderson sexualized the little girl in the film. In my opinion he sexualized her in the same manner Tarantino sexualized his women in Death Proof. They are the same in a sense that they are both the director's perverted fantasy of a woman. The boyhood fantasy if you would. Tarantino's fantasy is that women act badass like men, are pop subculture nuts (like him) and also are sexy plus they know how to give a guy a lap dance. Anderson's fantasy is a bit  more of an indie hipster boy's fantasy. The girl is darkly mysterious ( dark eye liner also used for Margot Tenenbaum as girl), wears short skirt dresses (like Margot) and is slightly disturbed in a cute rebellious fashion............also like Margot. He also made no secret that he formed Suzy off of a 60s French singer such as Francoise Hardy whom Anderson might idolize as a perfect woman. The character is essentially Margot from The Royal Tenenbaums just with different psychological problems. Only this time he made her a twelve year old girl. There is a Larry Clark tip, if you don't believe it watch Wassup Rockers which is to me, as far as child exploitation goes, much more tame than Moonrise Kingdom. What you will see is that he even uses the same technique of getting so close to the actor's faces (coincidently both girl and boy) that you feel a sense of innocent natural sexuality. The framing is almost identical. But Anderson takes it even further than Larry Clark, and made two twelve year olds french kiss so close to the camera that it is obviously child exploitation. How does Anderson get away with this? He puts in little kittens, kills a scottish terrier and it is automatic art. The Anderson cliche: It's cute, fantastic but yet dark and he sells it as art. I argue that it is a formula and in this case a formula that Anderson used to cover his Freudian slip, his repressed desire to be the little boy in his film. When Terry Gilliam had Jodelle Ferland barely give a peck to a grown man's lips it was deemed controversial and exploitive. Gilliam explained that the story is loosely representative of his child hood, which made all the sense in the world when I saw it. Hollywood still gave him hell for it and the movie was extremely under the radar. Gilliam pulled off a solid film about childhood told through a child's imagination and it was far less exploitive than Anderson's approach. But Gilliam had one thing wrong, he didn't have a formula. The Anderson formula goes something like this: Have creatures involved to make it cute, have a cool soundtrack, make sure people know it's a comedy, have a big cast with some useless characters and every now and then try to surprise them with a moment of seriousness or darkness. It's formula he uses over and over like a packaged product or like a soda pop reaching it's sugary perfection. Anderson used this formula to make a Larry Clark film covered in twinkie crust and filled with whip cream. 

Last Thoughts on Anderson: I don't even consider him a Steinbeck any more like you once put it. Steinbeck was thought provoking, had social commentary and big ideas on life. Anderson hardly does any of that. He would be lucky or overestimated to be compared to a Carver or even an Updike. Who........ let's be honest, he tries to be like them in his darkness in exposing flawed characters and making things ugly. Except he does it in a cute way to get indie girls to like it. He is like an extremely bad substitute (splenda) for Robert Altman. I would consider him the diet soda of Altman, but using really bad sweetener that does more harm than real sugar. It's this fake ass sugar shit that taste too sweet LoL. But let's be fair, it is clear that Anderson has not grown up and will never grow up. All his main characters are either adolescents, men who haven't grown up (Bottle Rocket, Darjeeling Limited, Gene Hackmen as Royal) and finally children. As an american artist he is ultimately a children's book writer, who he obviously fancies to be. He makes it clear that he considers this film an adolescent kids book, just like his clear approach in Fantastic Mr. Fox. He even busts out the magic of reading kids books in Moonrise as well. Even in Royal Tenenbaums he pays quick homage to a kids book I read about siblings living in a museum. Anderson wants to be a really well renowned kids book author, and now he is not hiding his desire with his latest strange almost perverse effort. Who knows, maybe he is feeling a little bit of the competitive heat from Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are. Let the indie cuteness battle begin!  

Friend's Response:

It's funny you mentioned Larry Clark because I also happened to mention Clark when I wrote about the film in an email to a friend of mine. Clark's entire reputation is founded on teenage sex. (I didn't see Wassup Rockers -- but obviously from Kids and Bully and simply from judging the look of his other films, it's clear what he's into.) What I wrote was slightly different tho: Anderson stopped short of Clark, but he did get pretty close. My understanding was that Anderson (according to his own testimony) wanted to make a distinctly french (new wave) film, specifically in the fashion of Truffaut, Louis Malle, and Eric Rohmer, except much cuter. Anderson cites Truffaut's Small Change (Pocket Money) as the film's main influence. But I also naturally thought of films like Claire's Knee and Murmurs of the Heart as obvious examples for dealing with adolescent sexuality -- the "french" way is one that tries to look unblinkingly at adolescent sex, but I think you make the excellent point that Anderson is definitely more exploitative in the sense that he tries to make such early forms of sexuality more tasteful through the seductive use of dogs and kittens, costume color coordination, and Francoise Hardy. I was taken aback, for instance, at how high the girl's skirt was -- tho I'm assuming that it would've been "normal" in the 60s or whatever justification Anderson and his designers made for the costume choice. My theory is that some of the openness was also inspired by Let the Right One In, which, if you remember, actually shows a lot more in a particular scene, and from which Anderson basically copied the "let's dance awkwardly to an old 60s track" moment. (You remember, right, when the boy and the vampire girl dance in front of a record player playing what sounded like a swedish garage nugget?) In any case, I also felt that Moonrise Kingdom shows that Anderson has stepped up his visual game a bit -- tho you make a critically subtle maneuver when you say "Anderson used this formula to make a Larry Clark film covered in twinkie crust and filled with whip cream" -- this is a great observation and it would make for a clever reading of the film. It's hard to see if Anderson can ever make a non-Anderson film -- at this point it just seems impossible. A director can use swivel shots of a play-like house for only so long before it becomes yet another gimmick. 

My Response back:

Final Thought on the mediocrity of Moonrise Kingdom 

Yeah definitely agree with you on the gimmick tattoo Anderson wears haha. Funny enough, _____ saw the movie about a day ago and coincidently told me the exact same thing I said about Anderson sexualizing the girl. And that is without me ever talking to him about it, haha. _____ also brought up a point where it went too far as obvious sexualization in the part where the girl bends over and you see her panties. That was a "killer point" I forgot about. He also said he considers it the weakest Anderson movie that he's ever seen because it ultimately turned out to be the most meaningless, instead of a story it was a Freudian thing with Anderson and his child hood. The last point he brought up was one I didn't think through all the way, how extremely unfunny it was compared to The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore and Bottle Rocket. This is so for one reason, Owen Wilson missing on the writing. Which brings me to believe that without the writing help of Owen Wilson, Anderson's humor is not that funny. And let's face it Coppola isn't exactly a comedy expert either. Which leads me to realize how extremely unfunny this movie was for the most part. I hardly laughed throughout most of it, only a few giggles here and there. The only truly funny character that made me and ______ laugh was the little kid who wants his record player back. He was hilarious. But that's about it. That part where everybody comes together was so unfunny that it was stupefying, you know where all the actors come together. The comedy in that scene was the equivalent to the comedy of a romantic comedy such as Crazy,Stupid Love starring Carell and Gosling which I happened to watch the ending of. It actually has the same exact banal retarded comedy between characters as the Moonrise pier scene. Murray throws a shoe at Ed Norton and people laughed, I however didn't. Lazy as shit writing. Last word on Anderson's Sexualization: Anderson takes it a little further than the French and most movies I've seen. The french shot children as they were and they didn't stylize or sensationalize them as fantastic adults. Murmur in the Heart for example has the same thing that Gilliam did in showing a child take pecks at an adult mouth. Louise Malle did imply sexuality but mainly emphasized on the love of a boy for a mother. When a child actor kisses an adult beautiful woman like that it's stimulations are either comical or touching in the real world. I will have to see Truffaut's Small Change to see where the influence is. An ex-girlfriend once told me that an adult neighbor lady once took her to her house with her niece when they were little girls and made them undress and then kiss each other as she filmed it. If this was found out that lady would have gone to prison as a child sex offender. Anderson did the exact same shit only with the parent's consent for money. The last draw comes in the obvious symbolism of sexual penetration (deflowering) of Suzy in the raw jump cut to Sam piercing Suzy's ear. Suzy moans in pain and then blood is shown dripped from her ear as they are both relieved that it's over, he even asks her if she is okay. Clearly Anderson is getting his rocks off, haha. I know I can't write about this out in public because people will claim it's me having a Freudian trip and it's only my interpretation. But then why did Anderson choose to have her undressed in panties, have him touch her boob and afterward have a raw jump cut of her moaning as blood is drawn? The whole scene would not make sense. Lastly, Let the Right One In is far more innocent. In LTROI the shot was probably fake and it's purpose was to show a scar, not implying sexuality. The scar is explained in the book because Eli is actually a castrated boy. The director said that there were flashback scenes to explain this but the scenes had to be eventually cut. The shot had a purpose. Anderson shoots child soft core to release his sexual stress, covers it up with gimmicks, and calls it a comedic scene. Clark films young adults to play kids (Kids, Bully) or shows kids for who they really are in their natural state as in Wassup Rockers, but always with a statement or underlining message. Anderson dresses them up (actual kids) and makes them be who he wants them to be, far more perverse if you ask me. It's like when a girl chooses between a guy who lies in saying he doesn't care about sex but loves her or the guy who says he straight up wants to have sex with her but doesn't love her (therefore telling the truth). The girls will pick the liar, the liar being Anderson who went shamelessly further than Clark. 

--End of Email--

                                                         "Indie" Child Pornography?  

Last Word (for real)

So There you have it. After almost two years I still feel the same although I change my mind about the visual brilliance of Anderson's swivel chair sequence, since after some light research I realize he already did it better with The Royal Tenenbaums party crash sequence. So his 360 chair sequence actually doesn't feel like a step up but rather a step down. As harsh as my criticism might sound I actually went lightly on Moonrise Kingdom. I didn't even go through how insanely goofy the whole ending climax was. Hopefully The Grand Budapest Hotel will be better.