Review of Moonrise Kingdom (2012) by Kylewilliam — 08 Jul 2012

Moonrise Kingdom tells a mythological tale of social chaos (symbolized by the storm and Noah's Ark play) that gets resolved in a peaceful way rather than through a violent expulsion or sacrifice (except for the poor dog).

Those methods are the kneejerk solutions to social confusion we expect in most communities/myths/movies. The movie begins with the chaos of adults acting like children while training the children to be adults prematurely.

The orphan boy and Susie personally experience this lack of order and are trying to find peace and be prematurely adult because the island's adults are failing to provide proper care. The two teenagers accept their difference and try to leave the disorder around them for the best kind of natural and normal life and relationship they're capable of.

This makes them outsiders who are blamed for the chaos that the adults have created for themselves and their children. The scouts who attack the young couple, the social service system lady, and Susie's parents use the usual blame, expulsion, and injuring/killing of these odd ones so society can return to its "normal" disorder that the adults take for order.

But the Ed Norton scout leader and Bruce Willis police chief undergo personal change to take responsibility to help the children. These adults in official roles of order choose to resolve the conflict peacefully by recognizing the young couples' desparate, forced attempt to find their own sense of good order for themselves by just withdrawing from the community's disorder.

And by choosing not to go through with their suicide the couple eschew the role of victims. They take the chance to live peacefully in a truly more healthy order where responsible adults care effectively for growing children.

The new, true order is symbolized in the childrens' changed name of the inlet to Moonrise Kingdom following the island's great storm/chaos that's untypically been resolved peacefully. This is a simple innocent movie myth indeed that gifts us with an alternative to more common violent myths.

These myths presume the necessity for a violence that gains a mere temporary peace, just the reconstituting of a still fundamentally chaotic "order." It will require repeated violence to keep chaos at bay, but never resolved.

If my interpretation is sound then Wes Anderson may, like me, have been reading the cultural theorist Rene Girard. Girard has accomplished a startling unmasking of the myths, prohibitions and sacrifices that go along with the violent expulsion at the foundation of all societies.

From whatever source, Wes Anderson has created a counter myth that presents a community's alternative choice to re-form/re-found itself through personal and social changes that lead to a peaceful social reconciliation.

Moonrise Kingdom portrays adults learning wisdom from the mouth of babes.