MOONRISE KINGDOM

Wes Anderson was, for me, a film-maker like Tim Burton.  A man with a distinct and beautiful visual style but whose tendency to rework the same themes, with the same actors, playing essentially the same characters, had begun to pall.  I particularly hated his last live action film, THE DARJEELING LIMITED, for its self-absorption, narcissism, rather exploitative attitude toward its Indian context, and ultimately for just being dull. With this in mind, I went into  MOONRISE KINGDOM with barely any hope that I would find the kind of film - at once whimsical and yet also profound (echoes of Tarsem Singh's THE FALL!) - that I had fallen in love with while watching THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS.

Well, my fears were groundless. MOONRISE KINGDOM is a simply wonderful film.  It is, of course, beautifully designed, rich in background detail, empathetically scored, and well-acted.  It affects a sweet yet knowing innocence - it's full of characters struggling to deal honestly with themselves and their loved ones - it deals with the darkest of emotions but it drips with hope - in friendship, in people doing the right thing - in family.  It's as if everything that began to feel so clichéd about Wes Anderson has finally been re-united with sincere emotion - and that this emotional authenticity has cut through the stagey-ness of the costumes, locations, soundtrack - and transformed a whimsical confection into something altogether more lasting, provocative and memorable.  It's as if Wes Anderson finally gave in and just told the story he always wanted to tell - about first love.

Suzy B (Kara Hayward) falls in love with an eagle-scout called Sam (Jared Gilman) one golden summer in 1965. The carefully hatched plan to leave together triggers a sequence of scrapes, jams, shenanigans, emotional revelations and deeds good and ill.  

Anderson perfectly captures that intensity of feeling when you're a kid and you feel nobody understands you apart from this one perfect person. Suzy's trying to escape her family - her kid brothers, her distant father (Bill Murray) and the mother (Frances McDormand) she suspects of sleeping with local policeman (Bruce Willis). Sam's an orphan and a misfit with a good heart. In one of the most affecting scenes, written in exact mimicry of how we speak at that age, Sam tells Suzy he loves her but she's talking nonsense for hating her parents. Suzy and Sam run away together.  They're at the age and living in the time when you're hold world fits into a suitcase, and you take your're favourite adventure stories rather than clothes. When you can place you're entire life into the hands of another person without second-guessing yourself.  

There's a deep vein of melancholy running through the film. Most of the adults seem desperately lonely, none moreso than Ed Norton's majestically decent scout leader.  The exception is the almost mechanical Social Services, played by Tilda Swinton with steely efficiency. But the kids are in their own world, where all things are possible, and where adults barely skim the surface, except as occasional constraints and only too rarely as facilitators. There's excitement and wonder and threat and crushing disappointment. As the movie builds to a pivotal final scene (superbly scored to Britten's Noye's Fludde) I realised that I deeply cared about these kids.  I wanted desperately to know what they happened to them, and not just to download the soundtrack they were listening to. It's been a long time, but we finally have a Wes Anderson movie that makes us feel as well as admire its surfaces.  

MOONRISE KINGDOM opened Cannes 2012. It is on release in France, Germany, Ireland, Turkey, the UK and he USA. It opens next weekend in Belgium, Iceland, Hungary and the Netherlands. It opens on June 6th in Sweden, on June 8th in Norway, on June 15th in Greece and Spain, on June 21st in Russia, on June 2nd in Portugal and Lithuania, on August 16th in Slovenia and Argentina and on August 30th in New Zealand.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 14 - HOWL

HOWL is a beautifully made film about Allen Ginsberg's iconic Beat poem, published in 1955. Honest, raw, sexually explicit, Ginsberg described the reality of life on the road in the counter-culture - how young urban hipsters were really living and feeling. That rawness and authenticity - the proud joy at enjoying sex, drugs, literature, music and good company - and the anger at the establishment, the bourgeoisie, still translates. I guess a lot of us can remember a time in our teenage life when we first read Howl, and then maybe Kerouac's On The Road or Burrough's Naked Lunch.

Acclaimed documentarians, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK) have produced a film that has the authenticity and immediacy of a documentary, recreating iconic photographs of Ginsberg; using a script that is almost entirely based on interviews and transcripts of the court-case wherein publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti was charged with obscenity for having published the poem. This is, however, no court thriller - especially as we know the outcome! Rather, Epstein and Friendman use the court-case as a door through which to explore contemporary reactions to the poem - from prudish shock and patronising contempt through to bewildered admiration and excitement. And that's the genius of HOWL. It's a movie that dares to give us what is, essentially, literary criticism rather than a prurient examination of The Beats' sex lives or a conventional biopic. In other words, the film-makers want us to understand why Howl was important, artistically and socially. And in doing so - in showing us Ginsberg talking about how he wrote, and why he wrote, we get as much of a picture of the man as any straight-ahead biopic would've given us.

Stylistically, one has to give Epstein and Friedman credit for the sterling recreation of the 1950s - from cramped apartments to the costumes. The attention to detail in recreating photos is superb and DP Edward Lachman LIFE DURING WARTIME, FAR FROM HEAVEN) moves with ease from honey-coloured 1950s court-rooms to grungy beat apartments in black-and-white.

We also get an imaginative animated version of the poem that is inter-cut with court-room discussion of the same lines, and then Ginsberg reading them, or explaining them. All this adds up to a rich discussion and understanding of the text, although I personally could've done without the pictures - the words are enough for me. I wish they'd trusted more in the power of the words to carry our interest. The film is also populated with a fine cast of major names even in very slight roles - principally Jon Hamm as the prosecuting lawyer; David Strathairn for the Defence; Bob Balaban as the judge; and Mary-Louise Parker as a particularly amusing defence witness. These actors are all great, but in such small roles I found them to be more of a distraction, and wished that the film-makers had used character actors instead.

However, for all that, I still loved this film. It was an hour and a half of pure literary indulgence. And what really sets this film a cut above is the performance of James Franco as the young Ginsberg, with his perfect reproduction of that bizarre lilting way in which Ginsberg spoke and the physicality of how he carried himself. It was marvellous to see Ginsberg young and striving, rather than as the old balding man, established, that we often remember. Here he was - here the the Beats were - at the creation. It's exhilarating to watch. But a more interesting question is perhaps how far this film will translate to people who aren't as familiar with the poem. Will they be won over to its importance and artistry?  And will they find Ginsberg's speech patterns bizarre and off-putting rather than charming and particular? Evidence from my Gentleman Secretary suggests the latter.

HOWL played Berlin and Sundance 2010. It was released in Italy in August and in the the US in September. It opens in Denmark on November 25th. It opens in Germany on January 6th, in the UK on February 25th and in Finland on March 25th.