Friday, November 1, 2013

Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and Wes Anderson's aethetic

Intentional quirkiness, thy name is Wes Anderson. Thankfully what spares his works from being to saccharine is the creativity of his methodical art direction and his insanely excellent casting choices. Moonrise is a period piece, though the aesthetic remains the same for his other works. It's a very controlled vision, comparable to Kubrick, making him one of the most auteurist auteurs around. But Kubrick played around with multiple genres, while it seems that "character piece conflict" is Anderson's preferable type of story. 

Moonrise Kingdom, like Rushmore, the only other film by him that I have seen, I think is a very good film, with a surprising amount of heart. The intentional artificiality of his situations bring to mind classic hollywood filmmaking, particularly those of where stylized narratives were the norm, not the exception.   One almost expects Fred and Ginger to waltz into one of the many overly neat rooms. With a few alterations, particularly the language, it make for a nice little Preston Sturges number. However, like Sturges, Anderson's films are able to be identifiable on their own terms, rendering him a filmmaker with enough talent to not only create an unique aesthetic, while continuing to be divisive in how it is presented.

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