Rituals are important.
Although hidden behind Wes Anderson’s trademark visual aesthetic and the nonchalant dryness
of his characters, this is essentially what his 2012 film Moonrise Kingdom is trying to
convey, echoing in ways the words of the famous historian of religion Mircea Eliade, who stated
that: “As long as you have not grasped that you have to die to grow, you are a troubled
guest on the dark earth”.
To Eliad, Initiation rituals, no matter where in the world, are at their core exactly that,
a symbolical process of death and rebirth, in which we periodically return to a state
of primordial chaos in order to be reborn a new individual more spiritually mature and
connected to one’s community.
Eliade noticed that although these rituals have for centuries played a vital part in
the growth of both the individual and society “In the modern Western world significant
initiation is practically non-existent.”
The consequence of this loss of sacred symbolic meaning to him has since manifested itself
in the form of the existential anxiety of modern man.
In many ways, the small island community of New Penzeance in Moonrise Kingdom is shown
to be an example of this state of being.
Suzy’s parental home speaks of a deeply rooted union of opposites between the feminine
nature and masculine culture, but what we observe is a family in disconnect, with a
divorce looming in the air between a father who’s so absent he’s barely worth mentioning
at all and a cheating mother who might’ve become more destructive than nurturing overtime.
This theme of better times having come to an end is also found in the life of Sam, whose
parents tragically died in an accident, and who has been forced to live with foster parents
who are shown to be more than willing to give up on the troubled boy when the opportunity
arises.
Captain Sharp on his turn has inversed his role as a guardian of order into a spreader
of chaos through his affair with Ms. Bishop.
Scout Master Ward on the other hand is lacking as an authority figure because of his immaturity,
visualized through his over-idolization of Commander Pierce, the community’s chosen
father figure, and his inability to maintain order within his group…
It’s this severe lack of proper parental and authority figures that leads Sam and Suzy,
or the future of the community, to attempt to escape the shackles of a society that’s
trying to bring them back in line through whatever means necessary.
The hiring of Social Services represents the peak of this tyranny.
Devoid of color and an actual human name, Social Services represents the tyrannical
aspect of order that quite literally attempts to exhume the individual in service of conformity
to society…
It’s no wonder then that Anderson opted for an overarching religious plot resembling
the story of Noah’s Ark.
For all intents and purposes, the society of New Penzeance has fallen out of grace with
God, having grown out of touch with the profound meaning behind rituals and initiation and
blind to its failure in its role of parental authority, it faces a storm strong enough
to wipe the community of the face of the earth.
So when Sam and Suzy are planning their mutual escape, they’re not only consciously escaping
a place where there’s no room for the future to grow, but they’re also unconsciously
being moved by what Carl Jung calls the “original mind” or the collective unconscious, that
part of our psyche which retains the ancient shared rituals, archetypes and symbols that
especially play an important role within the forming minds of children.
WES ANDERSON puts it like this…
Sam and Suzy are in a sense compensating for a lack of conscious direction by retracing
the steps of the Chickchaw harvest migration trail.
Social anthropologist James Frazer argued that the rituals of these sorts of fertility
cults marked the beginning of the initiation myth of dying in the winter and being reborn
in the spring.
So in a sense, Sam and Suzy’s retracing of this ancient ritual unconsciously signifies
the transformation of a childish escape away from the outer into a maturing exploration
of the inner…
During their journey Sam and Suzy are introduced to each other’s unique, although completely
opposite characters.
Sam’s personality represents all the qualities of the logical, ordering masculine energy,
or the logos.
He’s a member of the local boy scouts, which in many ways try to mimic the discipline of
the military, he knows how to read and make maps and he shows an interest in the painting
of landscapes…
(anddd a few nudes), all traits that attempt to make order out of the chaos of the outside
world…
Suzy on the other hand represents the psychic relatedness of the Jungian feminine energy
or the Eros.
She’s in touch with the fantastical and the artistically creative aspects of life
as shown through her interest in numerous fantastical children’s books and her attachment
to her magical binoculars.
She identifies strongly with immaterial feeling and intuition as she opts to change the lifeless
name of the tidal inlet and as she attunes herself to the emotions of other living creatures…
Her connection with Mother Nature is also represented through her role as the raven
in Noah’s Ark and by the fact that she decides to bring her cat on the trip.
Their interactions and experiences during this migration open their eyes into their
own deficiencies of character.
Sam is too rigid in nature which gives him a hard time relating to other people’s feelings…
Suzy on the other hand comes to the realization that there is a raging destructive side to
her femininity, in which she’s unable to rationally control her emotions…
However, their willingness to acknowledge these faults moves them to perform a number
of unconscious initiatory rituals.
A playful synchronous jump into the waters of the peaceful tidal inlet becomes a willing
baptism into the chaos from which all life erupts, symbolizing a death of the child Sam
who previously wouldn’t go near water without the safety of a life preserver, into an adolescent
perhaps more comfortable with and related to the feminine nature.
Suzy’s symbolical initiation into adolescence comes in the form of her willingness to be
pierced by Sam’s self-made earrings, which combine a tool of manmade order, the fishhook,
with an organism of nature, a shining green beetle.
Anderson then shows us that these initiations mark the coming of age of two individuals
coming together as one, expressed through an awkwardly comedic yet profoundly natural
dance of energies of a single soul, integrating into a perfect harmony of opposites…
And even though their physical harmony is but short lived, now separated again with
the destructive force of the hurricane drawing ever closer, a seed is planted into the minds
of the people around them.
Whether inspired and awakened to a personal lacking ability of leadership, or made conscious
of one’s oppressive and mindless behavior, one’s willful blindness to the destruction
of family, all of these characters are slowly changed by the profound honesty of Sam and
Suzy’s ritual experience…
Their slow acceptance back into the community helps them to continue on their journey of
individuation, initiating a race against the clock, physically against the pursuing Social
Services, but symbolically against the impending religious flood of the hurricane.
Having integrated the Self with their opposite energies, Sam and Suzy are now moved to bind
their spiritual union in marriage.
And although there’s nothing legally binding about this action, it’s the moral and spiritual
nature within the ritual itself in which the importance is found.
Of course Sam and Suzy are not conscious of this, and neither do they seem be particularly
interested in it, all they know is one thing…
It’s as if the unconscious mind moves them to adhere to the importance of these rituals
as the previously pragmatic Sam fights to retrieve Suzy’s magical binoculars, thereby
acknowledging its symbolical value and also showing his willingness to sacrifice his supreme
independence in service of those he holds dear…
It’s in an act of a willing sacrifice, echoing the words of the surrendering Chief Joseph
in 1877, that causes him to literally be touched by God, killing his old self and infusing
him with the transcended power of a newly reinvigorated spirit.
As if chosen by God himself, Sam starts to truly embody the Biblical Noah, no longer
caring for just his own future, but also for the future of those around him.
But Anderson doesn’t fail to remind us that, for all of their growth, Sam and Suzy are
still kids in need of guidance if the future is not to perish under the all-consuming power
of chaos...
In the finest hour of their community, society itself has be re-initiated in order for a
healing to occur.
They have to symbolically traverse the chaotic waters to save the Father from his own demise,
embodying his being in the process.
They have to find the courage to mend old wounds and to let go of the desires of selfish
behavior.
And finally they have to rediscover the power of their community as a force of justice against
tyranny in order to reach out a hand of trust to the future that’s standing right on the
edge of total collapse.
This final renewal of the bonds between the community and the individual marks the death
of the old order, with the flood wiping most of the island of the face of the earth.
But from the ashes of the old and tired society, rises a new, more mature community, healthier
than ever before in its existence.
In the end Moonrise Kingdom is about the romance of two kids that just didn’t quite fit in,
but at its core it reminds us of the symbolical and spiritual importance of the seemingly
silly and old-fashioned rituals children, adults and societies as a whole engage in.
Because “in imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by
recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane
time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.”
In the confusing state of being in the modern world we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss
the fantasies of children, because we too can learn from the books, the dreams, and
the romances of those still closely connected to the symbols and rituals that collectively
remind us of what it means to grow up, of who we are as a society, of what binds us
together and of where we are supposed
to go…