I thought it had The Search written all over it, but then I come home and I read these blogs and I am filled with self-doubt. Do I only like Wes Anderson movies because I fit the profile of someone who likes Wes Anderson movies? And why can’t I ever remember what they’re about afterwards?
Discuss – not me and my Wes Anderson issues, but the movie, spoilers and all, in the comments.
A nod to Kierkegaard and Walker Percy: existentialist tomfoolery, political satire, literary homage, word mongering, a year-round summer reading club, Dylanesque music bits, apocalyptic marianism, poetry, fiction, meta-porn, a prisoner work-release program.
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First Things
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The Ironic Catholic
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Inside Catholic
Catholic and Enjoying It
Catholic Radio International
Bad Catholic
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Is My Phylactery Showing?
Quotidian Quintilian
The Lion & The Cardinal (Daniel Mitsui)
Babes in Babylon
Fort o' Tude
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En pocas palabras
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Signposts in a Strange Land
Godspy
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Ha, I was just thinking today about Moonrise Kingdom – the weird themes and the possible Catholic touchstones, and the Chesterton shout-out in the mock interview before the main feature (Did they show that at your theatre too?)
Anyway, it had a weird under-smell to it, right? There was something obviously true that they were getting at, like that romantic love has an aspect of child-like friendship, but they also managed to make me look away from the screen because. Umm.
Well. There were tweens in their underwear, getting to third base.
I didn’t want to like it (also because I couldn’t tell if I just fit the demographic, or there was something really there), but I certainly *seemed* entertained for most of the movie.
I’m hoping to discuss this further later, but:
I definitely enjoyed the movie (and admired it, too), but like Greg, I was extremely uncomfortable with the underage canoodling. A discreet description of such a scene in text, in a novel, would be less problematic; any visual representation is more troubling; and a visual representation using actors who actually are the age of the young characters they’re playing is very troubling.
But there was so much to love in the movie that I still want to see it again. It earned its artifice. The characters were recognizably human, the setting beautifully realized, the jokes funny (including the visual jokes — e.g. the Khaki Scout with the weatherproofed war-bonnet). Expat, the Binx Bolling ‘Search’ hadn’t occurred to me, but it is certainly there and deserves discussion; good catch!
Again, I hope to return to this thread later.
For now, here are some thoughts from Sophia, OP and Mr Lickona.
Last thought for the moment: I think the worst thing about the ‘tweens getting to third base’ scene was the involvement of (and possible effect on) young actors. As far as the audience is concerned, I don’t think it was shot in a particularly prurient way. But I really have a hard time imagining a filmmaker conceiving of such a scene (knowing that he’d shoot it with young actors), or of actors or their parents/guardians going along with it. That, I think, is the source of the ‘weird under-smell’ Greg describes.
But there are many, many other aspects of this otherwise superb movie to discuss, and I hope they get discussed, too!
I don’t know how much it matters, but I think it matters to some degree that they didn’t actually get to third base, as I understand third base. She becomes aware of his arousal as they embrace and comments on it. But I don’t think it goes further than that. Certainly not that they show us. It’s interesting that Greg notes the scene as illustrating the way that romantic love has an aspect of child-like friendship; my thought at the time was that it showed how romantic love had an element of child-like clumsiness and play-acting. All that said, how ’bout them other aspects? How much did you love Edward Norton when he came to visit the prisoner in the hold of the boat?
I need to see it again so I can properly quote the line about it being the best campsite he’d ever seen.
Oh, I meant not that particular scene, which I agree, showed the “child-like clumsiness and play-acting” – refreshing in its attempt and an A for effort, but also a C for going way too far. But by my comment, I meant that the innocence of their friendship and romance. It reminded me of this passage from (*ahem*) Style, Sex and Substance:
“My husband and I have always positioned our bed under a window, and one summer night the bats were out, flying very close to our screen. We both jumped up on our knees to look out the window. It felt like we were two children, suspended for a moment by our mutual fascination in something other than ourselves – matrimonial innocence, like two lovers before the fall.”
Maybe, insecure as I am about being the Wes Anderson demographic, I was a bit too harsh on the movie, but I didn’t mean to sound it. I’ll get in trouble if I pretend to be a movie critic, there really was a lot to like, if only that one scene were cut. I haven’t enjoyed a Bruce Willis role as much since The Fifth Element, and Edward Norton was as perfect a fit for the role of scout leader as Hank Williams was for the soundtrack. Any director who integrate him seamlessly throughout a movie deserves an award of some sort (Directing Under the Influence of Greatness?).
Any thoughts on the recurrence of the flood theme?
Any thoughts on the recurrence of the flood theme?
It must be something to do with that ‘matrimonial innocence, like two lovers before the fall’ — The hurricane, like the Flood of Noah, is a crisis that washes away a corrupted order (read: the lives all the main characters are living at the beginning of the story, kids and grown-ups alike) so that life can begin afresh.
And of course, Walker Percy had some thoughts, or invitations to thought, on the subject of hurricanes.
I thought it had The Search written all over it….
From the very beginning!
What punctuates that exquisitely artificial opening sequence, in which the moving camera introduces us to all the rooms and relatives in Suzy’s house? Suzy, entering the frame with her binoculars, looking out for something far away from her everyday world.
Now I need to reread The Last Gentleman so I can decide which book is more Moonrise-y. LG has the whole lenses thig going on, and pen pal correspondence, but The Moviegoer is…mo’ bettah. In that I actually remember it. I find that reading something with an eye towards comparing it to something else makes me focus on what I’m reading, which probably says something about me. Something like “you don’t know how to read for enjoyment, only for grade-grubbing.”
Anyway – but the whole “How to Deal with Your Disturbed Child” thing was very Kate, to me, in that…oh, goodness, whatever the young lady’s name was in the movie…is “disturbed” in that she is keenly aware of her predicament and allows it to affect her, vs. various adults in the movie who don’t tune in until the big storm hits (I mean, metaphor-wise, plus in reality).
Geeze, this knee-jerk self-deprecation is a MAJOR character flaw that you should fix IMMEDIATELY!
[rant]
Reading with an eye toward comparison is a good habit to develop, even if it happens that you first developed it for grade-grubbing purposes. Look at all the cross-references in your Bible, for the love of Jerome. Consider the riches of typology — which many a Christian artist has carried over from the written page to the visual realm, as when Fra Angelico used quotations from the Old Testament as captions for these New Testament scenes. Think about what the various Mysteries of the Rosary indicate when you compare them with each other — what light the Nativity and the Assumption shed on each other, or Our Lord’s crowning with thorns and Our Lady’s coronation as Queen of Heaven and Earth!
And then, do not be ashamed — rather, be proud! — to apply this habit, this skill, to your thoughts on all the other things in life!
[/rant]
Sorry if I just duffied you, Expat…. Please feel free to delete the comment, as our cousin across the Atlantic might say.
***
Incredibly, I’d forgotten about the telescope in The Last Gentleman. Excellent catch.
Suzy and Kate — indeed. Better to be Kate Cutrer dissatisfied than Uncle Jules satisfied.
Another stray thought: The Moviegoer, The Last Gentleman, and Moonrise Kingdom all end with their alienated protagonists integrating themselves into families.
Right, that is what first made me think of them as related – characters deciding to root themselves in families.
I wear my shield of self-snark because nothing annoys me more than someone claiming to be an expert based on only a passing familiarity with the subject. I hate phonies, as whatshisname would say. But it seems that the entire enterprise of making some new connection between Works of Art requires a bit of self-phonying. Also when I comment on my phone I don’t proofread.
Y’all are missing the main point, which is that knee-jerk self-deprecation is MY thing, because I suck. Quit biting my style, Expat.
You’re right. I’ve never been any good at putting myself down. I don’t know why I even try.
Thus did Ms Expat, with a brief clatter of keys, render Mr Lickona superfluous one morning in July.
It was a Friday; the weekend was only beginning….
If there be a line between honest self-deprecation and abominable pride in oneself’s perceived paucity of talent, it’s too blurry for me.
Dr Catherine Benincasa could probably prescribe something….
Gosh, only a few pages in and here Will is running away from summer camp and hanging out in a treehouse. I think The Last Gentleman may indeed be the better fit.