Film Analysis: Moonrise Kingdom

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

‘‘

’’

I want to try not to repeat myself. But then I seem to do it continuously in my films. It's not something I make any effort to do. I just want to make films that are personal, but interesting to an audience. I feel I get criticized for style over substance, and for details that get in the way of the characters. But every decision I make is how to bring those characters forward.

Wes Anderson

Aesthetic

Emotional

© Phil Shirley, used under a Creative Commons licence

• How did you react to the film? What did/didn’t you like, and why?

• Which, if any, of the characters did you feel most able to relate to? Why?

• What emotions did you experience during the course of the film?

Intellectual

Whose point of view does the camera represent?

Are particular visual elements used as symbols, metaphors,

or pointers?

How does the film’s editing contribute to the meaning of

the film?

What choices do the characters make? Why?

How do the main characters change?

What do they discover?

goals

What causes the major turning points?

Why does the film end this way?

What are the major themes?

fantasy / stories

‘‘

’’

When you're 11 or 12 years old, you can get so swept up in a book that you start to believe that the fantasy is reality. I think when you have a giant crush when you're in fifth grade, it becomes your whole world. It's like being underwater; everything is different.

Wes Anderson

growing up/first love

family

responsibility

community

‘‘

’’

By performing the divine symphony, all the instruments of creation discover why they have been assembled together. Initially they stand or sit next to one another as strangers, in mutual contradiction. Suddenly, as the music begins, they realise how they are integrated. Not in unison, but what is far more beautiful – in symphony.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

brokenness

‘‘

’’

The world is so big, so complicated, so replete with marvels and surprises that it takes years for most people to begin to notice that it is, also, irretrievably broken. We call this period of research ‘childhood.’ . . .

‘‘

’’

Along the way, he or she discovers that the world has been broken for as long as anyone can remember, and struggles to reconcile this fact with the ache of cosmic nostalgia that arises, from time to time, in the researcher’s heart: an intimation of vanished glory, of lost wholeness, a memory of the world unbroken. . . .

‘‘

’’

We call the moment at which this ache first arises ‘adolescence.’ The feeling haunts people all their lives.

Everyone, sooner or later, gets a thorough schooling in brokenness.

Michael Chabon in Matt Soller Seitz,

The Wes Anderson Collection

redemption

humanity

reality knowledge

ethics redemption

• What kind of story is it? • Paradise Lost • Breaking Free • Remaking the World • Defeating Oppressors • Overcoming Brokenness • Finding True Love • Coming Home

• What would you identify as the significant themes within the film?

Moral

Spiritual

tonywatkins.co.uk