Moonrise Kingdom

Director Wes Anderson had long been interested in depicting a romance between children.[2] He described the starting idea for the story as a memory of fantasized young love:

I remember this feeling, from when I was that age and from when I was in fifth grade, but nothing really happened. I just experienced the period of dreaming about what might happen, when I was at that age. I feel like the movie could really be something that was envisioned by one of these characters.[3]

When he was 12, Anderson lived in Texas with two brothers. His parents were separating, and influenced his later depictions of crumbling marriages.[2] He was briefly a Scout,[4] and had acted Noye's Fludde, an opera for children about Noah's Ark.[5] A childhood incident inspired the scene where Suzy reveals her parents' book Coping with the Very Troubled Child. He found a similarly titled book belonging to his father and remarked, "I immediately knew who that troubled child was."[6]

After working on the screenplay for a year, Anderson said he had completed 15 pages and appealed to his The Darjeeling Limited collaborator Roman Coppola for help; they finished in one month.[5] Coppola drew on memories of his mother Eleanor in giving Mrs. Bishop a bullhorn to communicate inside the house.[6] Anderson described the 1965 setting as randomly chosen, but added it fit the subject of the Scouts and the feel of a "Norman Rockwell-type of Americana".[7] While preparing the script Anderson also viewed films about young love for inspiration, including Black Jack, Small Change, A Little Romance and Melody.[8] François Truffaut's 1959 French film The 400 Blows about juvenile delinquency was also an influence.[2]

After his 2009 film Fantastic Mr. Fox underperformed, Anderson said he had to pitch Moonrise Kingdom with a smaller budget than he would have otherwise requested. The budget was US$16 million,[9] and his producers Steven Rales and Scott Rudin agreed to back the project.[10]

The crew scheduled a substantial amount of time for casting the Sam and Suzy characters. Anderson expressed apprehension about the process saying, "there's no movie, if we don't find the perfect kids".[3] The auditions took eight months at different schools.[2] Anderson chose Jared Gilman finding him "immediately funny" thanks to his glasses and long hair, and for his voice and personality at the audition. Kara Hayward was cast because she read from the screenplay and spoke naturally as if it was real life.[7] Hayward had seen Anderson's 2001 The Royal Tenenbaums and interpreted Suzy as having a secretive nature, similar to that of Margot played by Gwyneth Paltrow.[11] All the child actors were novices. Anderson believed they had never even auditioned before. He put the successful candidates through months-long rehearsals. He assigned Hayward book reading, and had Gilman practice scouting skills. Although Anderson could not envision one young auditioner, Lucas Hedges, as Sam, he felt the boy was talented enough to be given an important role and cast him as Redford.[6]

Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman were regular actors in Anderson's filmography.[12][13] Schwartzman said he accepted the role of Cousin Ben without asking for a larger part, because in his experience Anderson always planned thoroughly what was best for his films, including casting characters.[13] Unlike Murray and Schwartzman, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton had not worked with Anderson. Journalist Jacob Weisberg characterized them as "the ensemble cast".[14] While Anderson said that he wrote the part of Captain Sharp imagining the deceased James Stewart playing him, he thought Willis could be the "iconic policeman" once the screenplay was completed.[10] Willis said he had seen all of Anderson's films and was interested in collaborating with the director.[15] Anderson also hoped Norton would play Scout Master Ward, commenting, "he was somebody who I thought of as a scoutmaster ... He looks like he has been painted by Norman Rockwell."[4] In June 2011, it was reported Harvey Keitel joined the cast after most of the other principal actors.[16]

Maps were among the props designed for the production.

In the film, 12-year-old Suzy packs six fictitious storybooks she stole from the public library. Six artists were commissioned to create the jacket covers for the books, and Wes Anderson wrote passages for each of them. Suzy is shown reading aloud from three of the books during the film. Anderson had considered incorporating animation for the reading scenes but chose to show her reading with the other actors listening spellbound. In April 2012, Anderson decided to animate all six books and use them in a promotional video where the film's narrator Bob Balaban introduces each segment.[17]

Anderson described designing the maps for the fictitious New Penzance Island and St. Jack Wood Island saying: "It's weird because you'd think that you could make a fake island and map it, and it would be a simple enough matter, but to make it feel like a real thing, it just always takes a lot of attention."[18] In addition to the books and maps, Anderson said the crew spent a substantial amount of time creating the watercolor paintings, needle-points and other original props. He wanted to ensure that even if a prop is only briefly seen in the film "you kind of feel whether or not they've got the layers of the real thing in them".[18]

The costumes for Suzy and Sam are based on photographs from the 1960s and Boy Scouts.

Anderson used Google Earth for initial location scouting, searching for places where they could find Suzy's house and "naked wildlife", considering Canada, Michigan and New England. The filmmakers running the Google search also looked at Cumberland Island in Georgia, and the Thousand Islands.[19] Camp Yawgoog, an actual Scout camp in Rhode Island, served as the inspiration for the Khaki Scout sets, and many items were borrowed from the camp for props.[20]

Kasia Walicka-Maimone was the costume designer. Anderson presented her with concepts of how the characters should look. She drew on photographs from the 1960s and the uniforms of Boy Scouts when designing Suzy and Sam's costumes. (Their characters inspired many Halloween costumes in 2012.)[21] While the filmmakers planned to model the animal costumes on those in real Noye's Fludde productions, they decided instead to fashion them as if they were made for U.S. schools, consulting photographs from Anderson's former school.[20]

Conanicut Island Light was the model for Suzy's house.

Principal photography took place in Rhode Island from April to June 2011.[22] The film was shot at various locations around Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, including: Conanicut Island, Prudence Island, Fort Wetherill, Yawgoog Scout Reservation, Trinity Church, and Newport's Ballard Park.[23][24] A house in the Thousand Islands region in New York was used as the model for the interior of Suzy's house on the film's set. The set for the Bishop home was constructed and filmed inside a former Linens 'n Things store in Middletown, Rhode Island.[25][23] Conanicut Island Light, a decommissioned Rhode Island lighthouse, was used for the exterior.[19] Cinematographer Robert Yeoman shot the film on Super 16mm with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, as opposed to Anderson's usual 35mm anamorphic format, using Aaton Xterà and A-Minima cameras.[26] Anderson said the Aaton cameras were ideal for photographing child actors, as they were roughly the same height as the camera set up.[5]

According to Anderson, the kissing scene between Sam and Suzy was not rehearsed so it could be "spontaneous"; it was Gilman's first kiss.[27] Hayward was given the cat seen in the film as a pet after the production was concluded.[11]

In its opening weekend, Moonrise Kingdom earned $523,006 in four theaters, setting a record for the greatest gross per theater average for a live action film of $167,371.[61][62] After five weeks, it made $11.6 million.[9] By September, it grossed $43.7 million, doubling that of Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox.[63]

Finishing its theatrical run on November 1, 2012, Moonrise Kingdom had grossed $45,512,466 domestically and $22,750,700 in international markets for a worldwide total of $68,263,166.[64] It was Anderson's highest-grossing film in North America.[65]

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 94% based on reviews from 262 critics, with an average score of 8.24/10. The consensus states, "Warm, whimsical, and poignant, the immaculately framed and beautifully acted Moonrise Kingdom presents writer/director Wes Anderson at his idiosyncratic best."[66] Review aggregation website Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 84 out of 100, based on 43 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[67] Moonrise Kingdom was also listed on many critics' top 10 lists of the year.[68] In 2016, it was voted 95th in an international critics' poll, the BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century.[69]

Roger Ebert rated the film three-and-a-half stars, praising the creation of an island world that "might as well be ruled by Prospero".[45] A devoted fan of Anderson, Richard Brody hailed Moonrise Kingdom as "a leap ahead, artistically and personally" for the director, for its "expressly transcendent theme" and its spiritual references to Noah's Ark.[70] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film four stars out of five, calling it "another sprightly confection of oddities, attractively eccentric, witty and strangely clothed".[71] The New York Times's Manohla Dargis reviewed Anderson and Coppola's screenplay as a "beautifully coordinated admixture of droll humor, deadpan and slapstick".[72] Peter Travers positively reviewed the actors' performances, calling Norton engaging, Balaban "delightful" and Willis agreeable. Travers also credited cinematographer Yeoman for "a poet's eye" and composer Alexandre Desplat for his contributions.[73] As novice actors, Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward also received praise.[74] The Daily Telegraph's review stated it was "exhilarating" to see different elements combined, such as the music of Britten and Hank Williams. It called the end result "an extraordinarily affected piece of filmmaking".[44] The Hollywood Reporter's review by Todd McCarthy described the film as an "eccentric, pubescent love story", "impeccably made".[75] For Empire, Nev Pierce declared it "a delightful film of innocence lost and regained".[76] Christopher Orr of The Atlantic wrote that Moonrise Kingdom was "Anderson's best live-action feature" and that it "captures the texture of childhood summers, the sense of having a limited amount of time in which to do unlimited things".[77] Kristen M. Jones of Film Comment wrote that the film "has a spontaneity and yearning that lend an easy comic rhythm", but it also has a "rapt quality, as if we are viewing the events through Suzy's binoculars or reading the story under the covers by a flashlight".[78]

Dissenting, Leonard Maltin wrote the "self-consciously clever to a fault" approach to depicting the children gave him "an emotional distance" to them.[79] Rex Reed dismissed it as "juvenile gibberish" displaying "lunatic fragments of surrealism".[80] Postmedia News' Katherine Monk gave a mixed review, calling it "kind-hearted and heavily contrived".[81]

In later years, IndieWire placed Scout Master Ward in Anderson's top 10 most memorable characters in 2015, at ninth place, calling him "completely charming"; the same list also identified Suzy as "one of Anderson's best-drawn female characters".[82] Chuck Bowen of Slant Magazine judged Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel as exemplifying Anderson's new leaner style (compared to what Bowen called "bloated speechifying" of past films) and credited editor Andrew Weisblum for "precise, unsentimental editing".[83] In 2018, Variety named Moonrise Kingdom as Anderson's seventh best of nine films, saying Sam and Suzy did not feel real.[84]

Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola were jointly nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

At Cannes, the film was in competition for the Palme d'Or,[85] although the only award it won there was the unofficial "Palme de Whiskers" in recognition of the cat, "Tabitha".[86] In anticipation of the 85th Academy Awards, journalist Lindsey Bahr called Moonrise Kingdom a "wild card" in the awards campaign given it received no nominations at the Screen Actors Guild or Directors Guild, but had won the Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Feature.[87] Early in the campaign, it was a contender for a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture.[88] Anderson and Coppola were ultimately nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.[89]

The film was also nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.[90] It received five nominations at the 28th Independent Spirit Awards, including for Best Feature,[91] and two nominations at the 17th Satellite Awards, including Best Film.[92]

The Huffington Post journalist Mina Zaher criticized the depiction of the sexual awakening between Sam and Suzy, expressing discomfort with the scene where Sam touches Suzy's breasts, calling it "a step further or perhaps too far". Zaher questioned if the children's sexuality could have been portrayed in a more appropriate way.[93] Reviewing the scene where the characters dance wearing only their underwear, the Catholic News Service stated "The interlude doesn't quite cross over into the full-blown exploitation of children, but it teeters on that edge".[94] Professor Carol Siegel summed up the portrayal as "delicate and to a large extent inoffensive".[95]

In one scene, the dog Snoopy is killed by an arrow in a scene compared to Lord of the Flies by William Golding.[96] This inspired a New Yorker editorial by Ian Crouch, "Does Wes Anderson Hate Dogs?". Crouch said that in the theater where he saw the film, "the shot showing the dog impaled and inert elicited a shocked, yelping exhale from many people in the audience", and he observed outrage on Twitter.[97] The Washington Post critic Sonia Rao held up Snoopy's death as a prime example of "[A] particular kind of darkness [that] lurks" in Anderson's filmography, where "[p]ets are so often the victims of the writer-director's quirky storytelling", but argued Anderson's 2018 Isle of Dogs served to remedy this.[98]