Movies that may -- or may not -- be about or for or from Children

Moonrise Kingdom is a child's view of a memory of the 1960s. Not a 21st century child, mind you. A child of the mid-20th century. It is a totally false memory, of course, so I prefer to think Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola wrote Moonrise Kingdom as a fantasy, without the unicorns.

Moonrise Kingdom is a story of young love, broken hearts and lost dreams, which Mr. Anderson directed and produced.  In some ways, it’s very simple.  The girl — 12, knee socks and a short dress, eyeliner, she speaks little and has a pair of left-handed scissors.  The boy —  12,over-sized glasses, coonskin cap, corncob pipe:  Welcome to 1965.  Although adults may not believe it, these two fell in love, and that’s the most important thing in this movie.

 Moonrise Kingdom is sweetly nostalgic for a time that never was.  This story could not be told in the present tense, not in today’s uptight and frightened society.  So Mr. Anderson has brought himself and his characters back in time, and we enjoy them for an hour and a half.  Much more and we might not allow ourselves to suspend disbelief despite the engaging music, the cinematography with soft, natural tones by Robert D. Yeoman, and the interesting performances.  Besides, everyone smokes.

The set-up includes a house that looks like a lake house where a couple families might live in summers.  Apparently not – the Bishop family lives here all year round.  Their house is on one end of a small island off the New England coast, where people write and receive letters, listen to music and read to pass their summer days.  A scout camp is at the opposite end.  Across the cove there’s a bigger bit of civilization with a bigger scout camp, and a prosperous town, including a church where Benjamin Britten’s Noyes Fludde is playing, or has played, and may play again.  Mr. Britten’s music accompanies much of this film, starting with his “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” played on a small portable record player.   Then there’s some Hank Williams, then more Britten.  Music and orchestrations during the film are by Conrad Pope and they’re marvelous. In addition, original music by Alexandre Desplat is clever and fitting.

Suzy and Sam meet in the meadow.

From one end of the island comes orphan and foster child Sam (Jared Gilman), 12 years old and looking for love.  From the Bishop house there’s Suzy (Kara Hayward), misunderstood, fleeing (for “ten days or less” as she tells her little brother when she borrows his portable record player) an unhappy household where the mom calls the kids to meals with a bullhorn, when she’s not fooling around with the Island’s police officer.  These two star-crossed lovers will meet in the meadow, and the adventure begins, building up to an emotional crescendo in time for an infamous hurricane that floods coves and dams and knocks steeples off churches.

Bruce Willis is just marvelous as the sad-sack, good-hearted Captain Sharp who loves Mrs. Bishop, warmly played by Frances McDormand.  She and her husband Walt, oddly (and that’s not a bad word in this movie) played by Bill Murray, are both lawyers, and their idea of pillow talk is following up on each other’s court motions. On the other end of the island, Scout Master Ward is an 8^th grade math teacher during school season, but considers the scouts his more important job.  Edward Norton plays the scout master with a sad fragility, gaining strength when needed — in some ways, that hurricane did people a lot of good.

Murray, Swinton, Willis, Norton, McDormand

Tilda Swinton makes a particularly odd appearance as a blue-clad “Social Services” unit.  There she was in her little cap, skirt suit, in an electric blue.  What was that about?  I didn’t particularly care, but the blue pulled focus. She served a purpose in the plot, but unlike everyone else in the film, she was merely odd, not interesting.

Wandering through the smoke, rain, and wind is Bob Balaban, master of ceremonies, narrator, historian.  I have no idea what’s fiction and what’s non-, since I tend to believe everything Balaban says.

Overall:  Moonrise Kingdom has great music, it’s a leisurely, odd, quirky little film.  It has a calming effect, and even the closing credits are sweet and cleverly done.  It’s a nice Saturday afternoon at the movies.  If your movie budget this summer is limited, Moonrise Kingdom will be just as undemandingly enjoyable and effective on the small screen.

Speaking of a child’s view, I saw the new Pixar film Brave last weekend.  It’s an absolute joy, funny, sweet, and, well, it’s Pixar…. from the music to the lyrical voices, to the gorgeous artwork, Brave just glows.  The loch looked like moving water, the horse’s fear made my heart pound, and the bears had full-blown personalities.  The people had as well!  Emma Thompson was Queen Elinor (well, her voice, but the facial expressions almost looked like her as well), Billy Connolly was a sweetheart of a dad as King Fergus, Julie Walters was very funny as the wood carving witch, and the delightful Kelly MacDonald wins everyone’s heart as the coming-of-age-child, Merida.  Animated or not, the acting was swell, the story was tight, and everyone should see this.  Well, maybe not kids under 5….it has some scary moments.

There was also an opening short called, appropriately, La Luna, which was short and sweet and clever and heart-warming.  Loved it – and look forward to more work from writer/director Enrico Casarosa.

~ Molly Matera, signing off to read a children’s book from the Sixties.

The Tree of Life is not your typical summer movie

The advertisements for Terrence Malick’s new film,“The Tree of Life,” smacked of “Art” with a capital “A,” which is not encouragement for me to see a film.  In the past, I’ve felt there was something amiss if I didn’t enjoy “Art” films, that messages that the filmmaker had put out there in plain sight went right over my head.  So it was with some apprehension that I joined a small audience for a late afternoon showing.  Everyone was quiet — it felt respectful, like the hush of people who were chatting a moment ago, but now they’re in church.  Throughout the film’s 139 minutes, we were all careful about making noise with our popcorn or slurping our soda.  When it was over, I sat watching the credits, but before the door closed on a departing woman I heard her say, “What was that?  I mean it was beautiful, but what was it?”  Not a wayward response, but probably not Mr. Malick’s ideal.

Terrence Malick wrote and directed “The Tree of Life,” which is more beautiful than I can comprehend.  It not only gives us a family, a truthful, flawed, confused, questing family, living in the 1950s and 1960s south; it goes beyond human history into the birth of the universe.  To ask questions, to ask why, apparently requires Mr. Malick to go back to the beginning of time, and show us where the world came from, how life started, how we got here.  Although I may not understand why, I’m rather glad, since what Mr. Malick has given us is an extraordinary combination of images, light and dark, movement and sound, to which he added ordinary yet interesting human beings.  The history of the world, the history of a family.  All presumably to answer whispered questions of faith. 

Laramie Eppler, Jessica Chastain, and Hunter McCracken.  (c) 2011 Fox Searchlight/Merie Wallace

In the opening we meet Jessica Chastain playing Mrs. O’Brien as she receives a telegram at the front door of her upscale suburban house.  We are immediately aware someone has died and something inside Mrs. O’Brien has therefore broken.  She telephones someone, it is Brad Pitt as Mr. O’Brien, and he too breaks down, differently.  In an entirely separate time and place of glittering tall buildings we see Sean Penn.  I had no idea who he was.  I had no idea who started whispering.  Sometimes I thought it was Mrs. O’Brien, who seemed to be the person of faith.  Other times I assumed it was one of the three O’Brien sons.  The whispering goes on throughout the film, starting with wondering: Since the son of the O’Briens has always been in the hands of God, why is that son dead?  The whispering voice tells us that it is his brother who has died at the age of 19.  We gradually realize which of these three boys died young and brought about this contemplation, but nothing is free in this film.

The O’Brien family’s story is touching, powerfully written, performed and photographed.  The evocation of 1950s suburban Texas is lulling as a summer breeze — you can smell the dusty streets, the dew, you marvel at how simple and pretty everything was.  And then the trucks spraying DDT drive through the idyllic neighborhood, and children play in it.  Appearances can be deceiving.  The O’Briens are typical and appear happy, but there is dissension, there are moments of fear, moments of hatred, moments of withdrawal.  On the other hand, there were moments when I felt I had to work too hard to understand what was going on, when we were, where we were, who we were.  Scenes of family life — contentment and discord — are mixed with whispered biblical references, simple scenes of nature contrasted with the grandeur of spiral swirls of stained glass. 

Brad Pitt does gorgeous work as Mr. O’Brien, the dad.  This is a strong and sensitive performance of a disappointed man — from a young man marveling at the birth of his son, aging as he tries to teach his children, tries to excel, tries to meet his own expectations, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing.  His own crises come, bringing harsh impact to his family, yet still he keeps our sympathy.  Hunter McCracken was intense and heartbreakingly real as young Jack in the throes of adolescence.  We felt his pain, we were furious with him, we loved him.  Jessica Chastain is a revelation as Mrs. O’Brien, living this woman’s life from early joys through years of conflict to tragedy.  The two younger sons were played sweetly by Laramie Eppler as the middle son, R.L., always benevolent, patient with his elder brother, as if he understood the displacement his birth caused even while a young child; Tye Sheridan played the youngest son Steve with a gentleness, fragility on some occasions, exuberance in others.  All three boys were totally believable — as was the toddler playing the young Jack discovering, when R.L. is born, a world in which he is no longer its center.  Fiona Shaw drops in a few times as “Grandmother” — whose mother she is was unclear, but I’d guess she was Mr. O’Brien’s mother.  Mr. Malick’s direction of the children in particular was marvelous, the several young boys who played the three O’Brien sons, as well as Jack’s friends in the neighborhood.  The scenes of those difficult years, of Jack’s rebellion, Jack’s uncertainty, Jack’s hating of what he was doing despite the need to do it, these were revelatory scenes of coming of age.  I believe Sean Penn as the grown-up eldest son, Jack, performed a function of tying the film together from beginning to end, but I freely admit I did not understand the ending, the where, the when, the how, who’s dead, who’s alive.  I just didn’t know for certain.  I don’t necessarily need to know to enjoy the film, but I expect that will be a frustration for many. 

The cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki is a triumph — it is compelling, moving, beautiful, and finally edited with respect and rhythm by the five-man editing team credited:  Hank Corwin, Jay Rabinowitz, Daniel Rezende, Billy Weber, and Mark Yoshikawa.  Additionally, the scoring by Alexandre Desplat was sometimes glorious, sometimes sweet, always right on.

Don’t have a coffee before you go, don’t have a drink.  Just go into the darkness and accept whatever comes.  And don’t ask me what happens at the end.  I don’t know what Mr. Malick wanted me to hear, to see, to feel.  No matter — I may have missed many of his points, but I was thoroughly involved in and intrigued by the lives of the O’Briens, as well as the creation of the world, which was terrifying and exhilarating.  Visually transcendent and augmented with deep work done by Brad Pitt and Hunter McCracken and the happy introduction (at least to me) of the radiant Jessica Chastain, this film is well worth your time.  I’m glad I listened to my friends and went to see it despite my forebodings that it might be Art.  Which, by the way, it is.

~ Molly Matera, signing off …. In case you wondered, this is not your typical summer movie….