Teachers and textbooks both teach this: A movie can be divided into two aspects-its "content" and its "form". The content is the story itself; the form is how the story is narrated, including everything in the movie except the story: photography, music, scenery, costumes, props, editing, sound effects, narrative techniques. Therefore, the highest state of a movie is the so-called perfect combination of form and content, that is, the content is expressed in the most appropriate form, and the form perfectly corresponds to the content. In short, if we put it in our Chinese tradition, it is probably a realm where both rigidity and softness, yin and yang complement each other, and heaven, earth and human beings achieve a seamless balance.
In this respect, "The Kingdom of the Moon Rising" is perfect.
The story of "Moon" is ridiculous and crazy from head to toe. The story is set on a fairy tale, fictional island. Two twelve-year-old children fall madly in love with each other, so they decide to run away from home and start their own Odyssey. However, in addition to the beautiful scenery and childish first love in this journey, there are violence, blood, death, sexual scenes and dialogues, weddings, storms, lightning, explosions, chases, and escapes. Although these elements are all diluted by Wes Anderson's style in the film, several scenes are actually quite straightforward. For this seemingly childish film, the American PG-13 classification is by no means alarmist. In fact, since all of Wes Anderson’s previous works except "The Great Fox Papa" have been classified as R-rated, even if the overly sensitive MPAA classifies "The Kingdom of the Moon Rising" as R-rated, I will not surprise.
Is this an unusually exaggerated story? Yes. But is this an unrealistic story? totally not.
First of all, the two protagonists of the story are two extremely withdrawn and unpopular children. Therefore, what they did—especially their crazy love and dependence on each other—can find a reasonable explanation no matter how ridiculous it seems.
Secondly, childhood has two faces, one is seen by children who are experiencing childhood, and the other is seen by adults who are watching their children. For children, everything they did in childhood was for a reason, and part of it was even more sacred; but for adults, all the children’s actions were childish. Ridiculous and stupid.
Crazy and sensible, absurd and sacred, "The Kingdom of the Moon Rising" from the beginning to the end summed up both aspects of childhood at the same time. For the depiction of childhood, nothing is more precise.
Since the content is full of absurdity and madness, all the form has to do is to add solemnity and sacredness.
Regarding Wes Anderson's strong personal style, those who like it can't like it, and critics also criticize it as being too selfish. However, for "The Moon", both factions have to admit that his style could not be more appropriate in this film.
Anderson's signature zoom zoom in and out, slow motion, and completely symmetrical composition, the original effect of these techniques is to emphasize. However, when used in this story, especially the frequent and deliberate use like Anderson, it overemphasizes it, and it becomes deliberately sacred, and thus it becomes comical. ——But isn’t this sacred comical just childhood?
Another signature of Wes Anderson is his weird and simple lens movement: all the shots in his movie have only three moving directions: still, zooming or following in depth, and horizontal in horizontal direction. Pull. The most important thing is that all the shots are so strict in observing these three rules, so they have a sense of comicality from being overly serious.
In fact, these are the consistent styles of Wes Anderson, from his early famous "Youth and Young" to his most recent "The Great Fox Papa". However, in "The Kingdom of the Moon Rising", his style should fit better with the story itself, and his use should be bolder. For example, his previous highly rated "Rushmore" (Rushmore), although there are many such composition and photography, but there are still many scenes using more traditional methods. On the other hand, in "The Moon", the composition is symmetrical all the way to the end, while photography uses a lot of horizontal drawing-this can be seen from the beautiful prologue of the film.
He also added something new: silhouettes. Originally, silhouette shots are nothing new. However, Wes Anderson's silhouette in "The Moon" is quite absolute, not only the characters, but even the entire composition of the picture is completely black. He didn't use this Disney animation-like technique even in "The Great Fox Papa". Needless to say, this technique naturally gives the story a strong sense of fairy tales.
The scene design of the film is weird and almost completely unreal. The whole story takes place on two small islands, and the facilities on the small islands are all simple and exaggerated to the extreme. The most appropriate description of this is probably this: the set of the film almost seems to be taken directly from the paintings of elementary school students. Naturally, this is also part of the fairy tale. But why is the story set in a fictional island in the 1960s, rather than in a more representative urban area? In addition to Wes Anderson's personal taste, there may be more important reasons for this: When we think of our childhood, don't we feel as if we were a lifetime away? Not only the distance in time, but also in space. In childhood, it seems that a closed area always occurs.
When it comes to form, you must never fail to mention the soundtrack. Especially in "The Moon", the form that can best express the feeling of childhood is music. The original soundtrack played by Alexandre Desplat is lively and lively, but its main body is sacred like religious music. This can also be seen from the name of the track. The five songs of Desplat are divided into 7 parts, but they are all branches of the same music; and the total song is called The Heroic Weather-Conditions of the Universe-the heroic weather conditions in the universe.
However, Desplat only included half of the film’s music, and the remaining half was quoted elsewhere. However, even these quoted soundtracks completely complement the story. For example, the music at the beginning of the film is The Young Person's Guide to Orchestra ("Young Person's Guide to Orchestra") by Benjamin Britten. The content is to analyze how an orchestra is composed. The penultimate music at the end of the film is the second part of the opening music, which teaches the composition of orchestral music from beginning to end. This seemingly random choice actually sums up the story itself from another angle-isn't this the so-called learning and growth of children.
In addition, there are many details in "The Moon" that can be carefully studied, so I won't spoil it here. The point is that every detail, every shot, and every note of "The Kingdom of the Rising Moon" is so delicate and completely integrated with the content. However, what is more commendable is that on this basis, "Moon" still maintains a beautiful form: absolutely symmetrical composition, wedding slow motion, suspension bridges, straits and towers silhouettes, "the kingdom of the rising moon", The "Cuckoo Bird" chorus, Desplat's quirky soundtrack, the whole film is so beautiful.
Someone once criticized Wes Anderson's film as "fascinating but shallow." Regardless of his past works, "The Kingdom of the Rising Moon" is definitely not the case; this is a film that seems simple but profound. In other words, it extends in two directions and does not hinder each other. For those who don’t want to over-interpret, this is a quirky but exquisite, lovely and charming film; for those who wish to continue to dig, this is a perfect childhood ode.
First love and problem children are just part of it. The film chants all the stupid, sacred, and lovely things that we have committed in childhood. A completely fairy-tale island, a completely exaggerated story, a group of such unreal characters, one after another such gorgeous pictures, one song after another such moving music, "The Kingdom of the Moon Rising" is so illusory.
Yet it is so real. It is childhood.
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