Moonrise Kingdom

Wes Anderson opens in the summer of 1965 with a Khaki Scout deserting his camp and a girl leaving her lighthouse home, after a year of letters. Bob Balaban’s Narrator is not only heard but seen in the frame, reading out New Penzance’s geography and the storm’s schedule in the first minutes. The ending is announced before anything happens, so the film spends itself on how badly the adults handle it. The production notes give the Bishop house exterior as Conanicut Light, a retired lighthouse in Jamestown, while the interior was assembled from pieces of four real houses on a stage built inside an emptied retail unit in Middletown, Rhode Island. The reason was mechanical: Anderson wanted the opening to travel room to room without a cut, impossible in a real house. Captain Sharp’s 1952 trailer was cut apart and rebuilt so the camera could turn a full circle inside. Robert Yeoman shot on Super 16 with a single stock throughout, on a rig light enough to carry into the woods and shoot with. Trinity Church in Newport was dressed twice, for the pageant a year earlier and for the storm. A good fit if you want a narrator who interrupts with dates and wind speeds. Not for you if adults losing to two twelve-year-olds reads as a cheat.