Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

I’ve been meaning to re-watch Moonrise Kingdom for ages, but I tend to wince at the prospect of going back and rewatching Wes Anderson movies that aren’t The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is essentially a big bar of chocolate I am given to devour once or twice a year. Something about that era of his movies evokes a kind of shame, I guess? I was processing a lot of stuff about myself and the shape of the world (who wasn’t?) and there’s a danger, I suppose, in revisiting the art you identified with at that time — like, if I don’t weep rewatching The Darjeeling Limited now the way I did when I was 19, what does it say about who I am or about the movie, you know?

Anyhow, at one point during Moonrise Kingdom I joked about how I wondered whether my attraction to Anderson was the fantasy of idle, familial wealth, then Sam Shakusky escaped from Khaki Scout camp and the movie got underway. It’s beautiful, of course — what Wes Anderson film isn’t a feast for artifice? It’s also surprisingly tender, due largely to the performance of Bruce Willis. He’s the centering force of Moonrise Kingdom, his concern for the missing children and his weathered loneliness keeping things from getting too twee or arch.

By 2012, Willis was busy working in as many B-movies as his schedule could handle, theatrical releases and direct-to-video alike — it’s just what he did after Sin City revitalized his career for a second time. Between this and Looper, I think there was some hope that the “real” Willis was reemerging, a textured, accomplished actor who could do more than shoot guns and fire off one-liners, but it wasn’t, and that’s fine. Honestly, that’s what makes the role more compelling: here’s a guy who knows where the money is, who watched all of Anderson’s movies and wanted in on his world. He doesn’t play against type — he’s just accessing parts of his toolkit that he hadn’t needed since the quiet, despairing moments of Pulp Fiction that most people don’t like because there’s nothing in them to quote. He’s exceptional in quiet, despairing moments. I wish he had the opportunity to inhabit more of them. This may be his best.