I just talked about rampant precociousness, but the youthful trope has returned so my work continues.
This week’s movie presents two twelve-year-olds (Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward) on an island off New England—we couldn’t name a state?—who fall in love, make a pact, and run away as a big storm approaches. Various adults played by Bruce Willis, Ed Norton, Bill Murray and Francis McDormand seek them out in this comedy-drama-romance-hypenfest.
What do fleeing kids know about life?
Zero.
We proved that last week.
So what are we left with? Running away as a storm approaches.
Not good, but workable.
Set in the summer of 1965, director Wes Anderson’s film is designed to invoke memories of childhood and certainly succeeded with me. I recall being twelve and running away after school from a bully named Stu. If he caught me, Stu would punch my arms into a grape-like purple.
I learned many valuable life lessons bolting from Stu in summer storms and crisp autumn afternoons.
For instance, I discovered how to draw shallow breaths while hidden behind a trash can so as not to betray my position. I learned to exaggerate pain, shrieking like a baboon caught in tar so as to reduce beating times.
Most importantly, I learned to perfectly mimic Stu’s signature and signed it to typewritten letters threatening to punch the principal in both arms.
Sister Mary Bernadette was not amused. Stu was suspended. Since there were no anger management classes in those days, he was confined to a children’s mad house for observation. I moved on to high school where I chased small freshman to the bus stop while being pursued by large juniors in that Great Circle of Darwinian Life that is youth.
Back to our movie.
The script by Anderson and Roman Coppola has the children running into a forest. So why couldn’t they meet an old Indian?
Is there no actor in this generation capable of filling the moccasins of Chief Dan George?
And please don’t make the old Indian some backwoods Yoda, overflowing with ancient wisdom and sage advice.
Be bold!
Suppose the old Indian was bitter over losing on Password, and hated genial host Allen Ludden whom he felt personally cost him the game. How would young people react to a broken adult, nursing grudges, munching pemmican, and swearing in Algonquian?
Throw in the storm and now you’ve got a film.
Credible work by Wen Hsuan Tseng as ADR assistant.
One star for using an island.
Is there an unwritten film rule that no peninsulas or headlands may be employed as land mass settings?
Someone with a legal background should examine this.
