After the press screening of Moonrise Kingdom, my colleague Kevin Lee posited that director Wes Anderson may have been thinking about Frank Borzage’s noirish romance Moonrise (1948) when he made his latest film. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was: Anderson’s orchestrated style has more in common with studio filmmaking of the 40s and 50s than it does with most recent studio films. (In an astute review for MSN Movies, Glenn Kenny compares Anderson’s approach to that of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.) Indeed, there are big similarities between these similarly named movies. Both are love stories about social outcasts, and both contain lengthy passages set in the woods; but more importantly, they advance the optimistic message that we become better human beings through loving others.
