“I LOVE YOU, BUT YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT”

Almost teetering on the verge of tweeness, I am still always won over by Wes Anderson’s films, indeed, his movies are among my favorites of the last 15 years. No American filmmaker, not even Woody Allen, has a more recognizable aesthetic, & Moonrise Kingdom may be the most, well, Andersonian movie yet. His style recalls storybook illustrations, puppet shows, school-project dioramas, & community theatre productions.

Moonrise Kingdom is the best film I have seen in a very long time. It is a film of transporting beauty & visual brilliance, perfectly cast, a paean to precocious puppy love, a parable set in a parallel world, somewhere on the New England coast during the summer of 1965, & concerned with the all-consuming passion between a pair of oddball, seriously serious 12-year-olds.

Moonrise Kingdom is a restorative film: unabashedly uplifting, breathing fresh air into our dusty old hearts & reminding me what it is like to love with the absolute conviction & utter abandon of the young.

After experiencing this film, I want to remember what it was like to play fast & loose with my heart, even when it seemed foolish, because there was so much of what I desired buried underneath words like ‘dangerous’ & ‘absurd’.

Moonrise Kingdom left me thinking about what brought The Husband & I together instead of how we are going to pay our bills. I want to feel like I’ve found my place in the world & that it’s exactly where I am, & every line on every map that does not outline this place will be erased. I want to save myself before I need saving. I want to flip through faded old photographs plucked from moments earlier in my life & feel the sun on my face & the salt from the sea air settle on my skin. I want to find my own Post Apocalyptic Bohemia to be a Moonrise Kingdom, a place where they will never find us, because maybe, just maybe, there’s still some lightning in me in my old age.