My slides on media from days 3 and 4 of Bible & Culture 2015 (www.bibleandculture.org). These sessions used Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom as an extended examples of film engagement.

1. Film Analysis:
Moonrise Kingdom

2. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

3. ‘‘
I want to try not to repeat myself. But
then I seem to do it continuously in
my films. It's not something I make
any effort to do. I just want to make
films that are personal, but interesting
to an audience. I feel I get criticized
for style over substance, and for
details that get in the way of the
characters. But every decision I make
is how to bring those characters
forward.
Wes Anderson

4. Aesthetic

5. Emotional
© Phil Shirley, used under a Creative Commons licence

6. • How did you react to the film? What
did/didn’t you like, and why?
• Which, if any, of the characters did
you feel most able to relate to?
Why?
• What emotions did you experience
during the course of the film?

7. Intellectual

8. Whose point of view does the
camera represent?

9. Are particular visual elements
used as symbols, metaphors,
or pointers?

10. How does the film’s editing
contribute to the meaning of
the film?

11. What choices do the
characters make? Why?

12. How do the main characters
change?

13. What do they discover?

14. goals

15. What causes the major turning
points?

16. Why does the film end this
way?

17. What are the major themes?

18. fantasy / stories

19. ‘‘When you're 11 or 12 years old, you
can get so swept up in a book that
you start to believe that the fantasy
is reality. I think when you have a
giant crush when you're in fifth
grade, it becomes your whole
world. It's like being underwater;
everything is different.
Wes Anderson

20. growing up/first love

21. family

22. responsibility

24. community

25. ‘‘By performing the divine symphony,
all the instruments of creation
discover why they have been
assembled together. Initially they
stand or sit next to one another as
strangers, in mutual contradiction.
Suddenly, as the music begins, they
realise how they are integrated. Not
in unison, but what is far more
beautiful – in symphony.
Hans Urs von Balthasar

26. brokenness

27. ‘‘The world is so big, so
complicated, so replete with
marvels and surprises that it takes
years for most people to begin to
notice that it is, also, irretrievably
broken. We call this period of
research ‘childhood.’ . . .

28. ‘‘Along the way, he or she discovers
that the world has been broken for
as long as anyone can remember,
and struggles to reconcile this fact
with the ache of cosmic nostalgia
that arises, from time to time, in the
researcher’s heart: an intimation of
vanished glory, of lost wholeness, a
memory of the world unbroken. . . .

29. ‘‘We call the moment at which this
ache first arises ‘adolescence.’ The
feeling haunts people all their lives.
Everyone, sooner or later, gets a
thorough schooling in brokenness.
Michael Chabon
in Matt Soller Seitz,
The Wes Anderson Collection

30. redemption

31. humanity
reality knowledge
ethics redemption

32. • What kind of story is it?
• Paradise Lost
• Breaking Free
• Remaking the World
• Defeating Oppressors
• Overcoming Brokenness
• Finding True Love
• Coming Home
• What would you identify as the
significant themes within the film?

33. Moral

34. Spiritual

35. tonywatkins.co.uk