Brothers and Sisters

I come from a close family. It has always been this way.

My parents left town for the weekend and my husband and I have been watching their dog. Last night my brother and sister-in-law came over for a BBQ (nothing out of the ordinary for us). At one point in the evening, we were sitting in my parents' livingroom discussing food preparation for a camping trip we're scheduled to take next week, when the conversation changed shape. We started talking about having children (not always the most comfortable subject for me, but somehow easier these days) and my brother said something about how he would find it hilarious if Shannon and I were pregnant at the same time. We talked about my parents' new house, the house they are in the process of building, and how we will spend time together there, and how our children will have the priviledge of knowing our parents, and how they will grow up playing with each other (as close as siblings, my brother said). And then I got hit by a sack of bricks with the recognition that my brother and sister are among the people my husband and I will spend the rest of our lives with, and we will share many evenings like this one, where nothing monumental will happen, but we will eat and drink and sit on the floor, and we will live in different houses and there will be babies and children, but our fragile lives will move forward, together, as quick as the days that have passed since our weddings.

• at 3:48 PM
• Posted by Anne Campbell
• 1 comments

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For Dreamers

I thought I knew all the tricks in Wes Anderson's book. From explosions of classical music to the like-candy-from-when-you-were-a-child colors, from the placement of wacky props in just the right places that simultaneously feel like a private joke and manage to make each frame a miniature masterpiece, from the child geniuses that speak like no child you've ever met, from the inevitable slew of fragile creatures wearing pajama sets and immaculate bathrobes, uniforms, lots of uniforms, weathered fur coats, preppy plaid sweater vests and pointed collars, little stocking caps too small for their heads and custom-made suits from another time and place; Anderson's world is recognizable to all who love him, not to mention the fact that he can't seem to escape the thematic thread of familial abandonment (absent fathers, domineering mothers, infidelity, divorce, death), and his writing is so good that his signature dialogue is dry as a bone and makes you squirm and laugh and sometimes pee your pants a little.

But this new movie, this Moonrise Kingdom, has a surprising way of getting under your skin.

Here we have all of the signature pieces, including, as my husband noted, each and every frame of film somehow completely perfect and more beautiful than ever, and the product emerges as a more mature and evolved Anderson, unabashedly exploring the adventure that is first love. There is an innocence to his young protagonists that is so charming you sort of want to die, an endearing innocence different from the more worldly characters in his previous films, a concise meditation on youth, and there lies a universal truth at the heart of this film that, as a grownup, you just want to sit there and go back to when you were twelve and had a crush on the boy who lived down the road. Moonrise Kingdom is putty for us dreamers. And if you're willing to go there, you won't want to come back. 

• at 8:46 PM
• Posted by Anne Campbell
• 1 comments

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