FILM REVIEW: MOONRISE KINGDOM

A scene from Moonrise Kingdom.

Nostalgia, it is worse than ever

By Don Simpson

Benjamin Britten’s 1947 recording “The Young Person‘s Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34 (Themes A-F)” introduces us to the two distinct family units of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom. First up is the Bishop family. Walt (Bill Murray) and Sandy Bishop (Frances McDormand) reside in an idyllic East Coast frame house -- yes, there is even a lighthouse -- with their children. One of their kids is Suzy (Kara Hayward), a precocious 12-year-old who is perpetually outfitted in a minidress, knee socks and Sunday-school shoes. The other family is much less traditional, they are a Khaki Scouts unit led by Scoutmaster Ward (Edward Norton) stationed at Camp Ivanhoe. The scout we are most concerned with is Sam (Jared Gilman), a 12-year-old orphan.

As Britten’s song suggests, individual instruments come together to form an orchestra. Anderson’s albeit heavy-handed audio-visual metaphor expresses how his characters -- who are initially introduced each in their own private space -- will eventually need to develop into a cohesive community to succeed. The problem is, two of the instruments of this tale (Suzy and Sam) consider themselves to be outcasts of their respective communities. Like prima donna musicians, they decide to go solo for a while. Well, okay, more like a duet; because it turns out that Suzy and Sam are pen pals and have been planning to run away together.

At a fateful moment of the narrative, Sam asks Suzy what kind of bird she is. Well, Suzy is the kind of bird who totes around a portable battery-powered record player in order to listen to her seven-inch of Françoise Hardy's "Le Temps De L’amour." She has a penchant for young adult fantasy novels, especially ones with a strong female lead and she prefers to have a bird’s-eye view of the world via her ever-present binoculars.

Sam’s personality traits and skills from being a Khaki Scout prove to be much more practical than Suzy’s in terms of wilderness survival, especially his knowledge of cartography. Nonetheless, there is never any doubt that Suzy and Sam’s excursion is only temporary. They are trapped on the small New England island of New Penzance -- and according to the film’s all-knowing narrator (Bob Balaban) a nasty hurricane is heading their way. The modest utopia that Suzy and Sam create at "Mile 3.25 Tidal Inlet" will soon be washed away into oblivion. Also, it seems as though the entire population of New Penzance is on the hunt for the 12-year-old runaways. The eventual coalescence of search parties is like a tidal wave that they are unable to out maneuver.

Lovers of Anderson’s uniquely kitschy aesthetic will more than likely adore the oh-so-precious cuteness of Moonrise Kingdom. What is not to love? Well, okay, Anderson’s films may not always have strong narratives -- he also has a knack for creating one-dimensional characters -- but there is no doubt that he possesses a keen ability to create wonderfully imaginative worlds. His films are hyperstylized and hyper-nostalgic (Moonrise Kingdom is set in early September 1965) fairy tales, like children or young adult stories that are crafted in such a way to appeal to adults. The parable-like tales are filled with minutely-outfitted, doll-like people who reside in dollhouse-like structures. Their actions are choreographed to soundtracks that appeal to the likes of hipster-music geeks.

While I respect Moonrise Kingdom’s commentary on the importance of acceptance and camaraderie in developing a society, I have grown quite weary of Anderson’s tendency to rely upon a rigid three-act structure which always seems to conclude with a huge climactic event that brings all of the players together. Anderson’s unabashed love for mapping, scheming and chasing -- though quirky and entertaining -- is also beginning to frustrate me. I keep hoping that he will add more complexity and depth to his films, but I am beginning to realize that will probably never happen. While I do not hesitate to admit that Anderson is great at what he does, he is clearly operating within his comfort zone. It is very difficult to ignore that practically everything and everyone in Moonrise Kingdom is recycled from one of Anderson’s previous films.

THEATER REVIEW: ALBERT HERRING

A scene from Albert Herring.

Sex sings

By Ed Rampell

Benjamin Britten’s comedy of manners, Albert Herring, premiered in 1947 at Glyndebourne, a grand country manor in the veddy British countryside near East Sussex. But this good fun opera about sexual repression unfortunately remains all-too-contemporary, what with Republican presidential candidates debating contraception and Rick Satan-orum running for witch-burner-in-chief and all.

When the prim and not so proper village of Loxford runs out of vestal virgins for its annual, traditional May Day Festival (no red flags, please -- this is Edwardian England, after all), they turn to the virginal and eponymous Albert Herring (tenor Alek Shrader). Like his nation’s future prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, Albert is the child of a green grocer (mezzo-soprano Jane Bunnell). Much as with today’s GOP buffoons, Loxford’s power players place a premium on chastity, as well as on greed.

The resident one percenter, Lady Billows (Scottish singer Janis Kelly alternates in the role with soprano Christine Brewer), is tended to by Florence Pike (mezzo-soprano Ronnita Nicole Miller), a domestic servant with airs, at her ladyship’s posh estate, beautifully evoked by scenic designer Kevin Knight. Lady Billows offers a handsome sum as reward for Albert’s virtue, while she presides over a retinue of comical sycophants. The festival committee includes those not so stellar pillars of the community: The Vicar Mr. Gedge (baritone Jonathan Michie); the Mayor Mr. Upfold (tenor Robert McPherson); the Superintendent of Police Budd (bass Richard Bernstein); and the teacher Miss Wordsworth, a sort of old maid, well-played by soprano Stacey Tappan.

Not all of the Loxforders pretend to be such goody two shoes. A trio of undomesticated youngsters add to levity. The drolly named Sid and Nancy may not be punk rockers like the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious and his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, but as the youthful lovers baritone Liam Bonner and mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack add a devil-may-care ingredient to the simmering stew of social propriety. Ultimately, boys will be boys, and predictably, as Albert is quite publicly lauded for his moral uprightness, with a little help from the mischievous Sid and Lady Billows’ bounty, all hell breaks loose. Much to the constable’s consternation amidst several, uh, red herrings, he is no longer a Prince Albert in a can. Although Albert’s coming of age is couched in hetero camouflage, Britten was reportedly gay, and his lampooning of sexual repression may have been his encoded ripostes to homophobia.

Mr. Knight’ sets, with rather large models of various homes in the background, aesthetically evoke the English countryside, while his period costumes conjure up a highly class stratified and rarefied era. Whereas Lady Billows’ home is suggestive of manorial splendor (not unlike, one suspects, Glyndebourne), the Herrings’ claustrophobic grocery shop is realistically rendered. The scenic transitions, enhanced by Rick Fisher’s lights, are gems as the Shanghaied cast, apparently impressed into service as stagehands, seamlessly, fluidly move from one time and place to another. But the fact that part of the background is simply bare and black -- at least viewed from my angle -- distracted me from Samuel Coleridge’s willing suspension of disbelief.

James Conlon’s baton reigns over a 13-piece orchestra with a sprightly score and much recitative singing, although there is no breakout aria or solo number per se that shakes the rafters. Paul Curran adeptly directs his ensemble cast with a flair for the bawdy and vaudevillean. Herring’s libretto, by Eric Crozier, is based on the French writer Guy de Maupassant’s short story Le Rosier de Madame Husson. Although sung in English supertitles are projected in English throughout the performance. Rule Britannia!

Innocence -- or rather innocence lost -- is a recurring theme in Britten’s work; his operatic take on Herman Melville’s angelic but doomed sailor Billy Budd (the mariner has the same last name as Herring’s policeman) premiered in 1951. Undercurrents of angsty sexuality roiled Britten’s version of Henry James’ symbolically titled The Turn of the Screw, which debuted in 1954 and was staged by L.A. Opera last season. (The centennial of Britten’s birth is next year.) While Britten put the sex into East Sussex, the hanky-panky in Albert Herring is largely played for laughs, although beneath the surface Britten’s opera jabs the tyrannical puritanical busybody brigades of then and now. One wonders what opéras bouffes the current Republican presidential race will someday inspire?  


Albert Herring runs through 17  at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 213/972-8001; www.laopera.com.