“ODDBALLS AND YOUNG LOVE”

By Raymond Benson

Wes Anderson’s marvelous 2012 comedy, Moonrise Kingdom, was previously released on Blu-ray and DVD, but The Criterion Collection has seen fit to issue an edition that blows the old one away. With an abundance of fun, entertaining supplements and packaged ephemera—Criterion’s disc is in keeping with the other fine releases the company has done for the filmmaker.

Moonrise Kingdom is the first Wes Anderson movie I truly fell in love with. While I liked and appreciated his earlier pictures, Moonrise is a flawless masterpiece of style and wit—as is Anderson’s following film, The Grand Budapest Hotel. For my money, these are two slam-bang pieces of comic brilliance.

The setting is a small fictional New England island, during one summer in the Sixties. A Boy Scout troop camps out there. Some families live on the island, others visit for the season. Twelve-year-old Suzy (wonderfully played with a mature sense of irony by Kara Hayward) falls for one of the scouts, Sam (Jared Gilman, in another highly accomplished performance). They’re both intelligent, curious, and have wicked senses of humor. They make plans to run away together, and when they do, the adults (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand are Suzy’s parents, Edward Norton is the scoutmaster, and Bruce Willis is the chief of police on the island) go nuts. The whole island gets involved in searching for the precocious lovebirds, including the entire scout troop. Add in an approaching hurricane and you’ve got a wacky romantic farce with suspense.

If you’re familiar with Anderson’s work, you’ll know to expect a good degree of quirkiness—every frame of this delightful picture oozes with eccentricity. Oddballs abound. The overall tone is light and whimsical, and yet the handling of the subject of young love is powerfully poignant and painfully real. How many of you remember what it was like?—that first, young love, the infatuation with another person at such a tender, yet blossoming, age. Anderson captures it all with a good deal of laughs and a lot of heart.

The director and his team also managed to build an entire universe around this little island—the detail is remarkable, all the way from hand-knitted decorations to the invented library books Suzy has stolen to read over the summer. The sense of community the picture conveys is palpable—and it’s no wonder, since the entire cast and crew (and, of course, others from Anderson’s stock company pop up—Bob Balaban, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, and Harvey Keitel) lived together for a couple of months while making the movie. As emphasized repeatedly in the supplemental documentaries, the cast and crew became a family.

Visually, the restored 2K digital transfer, supervised by Anderson, is the kind of picture one would use to demonstrate the joys of Blu-ray to a novice. It is a colorful, vibrant picture with an imaginative look and feel, thanks to the Production Design, Art Direction, and Set Decoration by, respectively, Adam Stockhausen, Gerald Sullivan, and Kris Moran. The new audio commentary features Anderson, Bill Murray, Edward Norton (who literally phones it in), Jason Schwartzman, Roman Coppola, and others—and it’s all entertaining stuff.

The supplements include special shorts that were used to promote the film, some of which were previously released, such as the Bob Balaban-narrated overview of the six library books Suzy is reading throughout the film, and Bill Murray’s guided tour of the set. There’s a new behind-the-scenes documentary, selected-scene storyboard “animatics,” audition footage of the child actors, and interviews with many of the cast and crew. Edward Norton presents a selection of short videos he shot with an iPhone, and there is a bit on miniatures and props used in the film.

Additionally, the packaging includes a few souvenir goodies—a “postcard” of the cast and a map of fictional New Penzance Island. The enclosed booklet contains pictures of merit badges, the library book covers and some illustrations, and an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien.

Looking back at 2012, it’s a shame that the picture’s only Oscar nomination was for its Original Screenplay (by Anderson and Roman Coppola). It was my favorite picture of the year, and Criterion did it proud.

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