What Moonrise Kingdom Left Me With

Right after watching Moonrise Kingdom, my reaction was unexpectedly simple.

“Even this shot is symmetrical?”

Wes Anderson’s near-perfect symmetry, the warm pastel colors, the storybook atmosphere, the restrained emotional acting, and a few scenes that were quietly brutal. Add in the incredibly detailed Boy Scout and camping world, and there was plenty to enjoy just from watching.

But the film itself did not give me a strong emotional jolt. So, unfortunately, compared with the films we have watched together, I gave it a relatively low score.

At our NewJersey Movie Night, we naturally started talking about our own childhoods. Watching Sam and Suzy recognize each other and choose each other also led us to talk about the attitudes we bring into our relationships with other people.

Then I came home and kept turning over both the film and the conversation we had. One thought led to another.

Jinmo said he had wanted to work in film, but changed careers after getting married, and that his heart still aches a little whenever he watches dramas about film directors. Moonsup had a similar feeling. Seoyeon said that after giving up her dream of becoming a film director, she somehow stopped watching the movies she used to watch so often as a child. Alex and Eunseo actually made their way into film, working as a foley artist and an editor. Hyejung enjoys entering deeply into a film’s emotions and giving herself time to feel them fully. Hyunji works at a movie theater out of her love for films, and holds close the warm memories of watching movies with her father.

When I think about it, most of the people in our movie night are people who, at some point, wanted to make films their work, or people who still live with that love for film somewhere inside them.

Normally, I might have heard those stories and simply thought, “I see.” But that day, for some reason, they stayed with me for a long time. Then this thought suddenly came to me.

“What if we made a gathering where we could take our old dreams back out?”

Someone could direct. Someone could handle distribution. Someone could produce. Someone could do sound. Someone could write. Inside this group, we could dream once more. Especially since we live in New York and New Jersey, places where opportunities are everywhere.

Maybe we are not just a group of people who like movies. Maybe we could also become a place where people take out the dreams they had forgotten. Of course, I do not mean we have to start something right away. It was only a small private imagining, one piece of inspiration that came from watching a movie and listening to people’s stories.

And one more thing.

Seeing the kids in the film camp, build a tree house, and take part in Boy Scout activities reminded me of my own childhood in Kenya. Camping out with friends, going on safari camping trips with school, running around in nature.

Thinking about it now, I probably still love camping and feel free in nature because of those experiences.

Then I suddenly found myself imagining my future self.

If I one day achieve my dream and start an education business, I do not want to create a place that only teaches academics. I want to create a space where children can have fun activities and special experiences, where they can bump into life directly, live alongside others, and grow. A harmless, warm environment where no one feels left out.

When I think about it, Sam and Suzy were exactly the kind of children who desperately needed that sort of environment. Wounded by adults and by the world, the two kids sometimes act violently, run away together, and build their own small universe. To adults, they may have looked like troublemakers. But maybe they were simply children who needed someone who understood them, and a safe place where they could grow.

That made me think even more about what good education might be. Not controlling or correcting children as they pass through a transitional season, but walking beside them so they can move through it safely. Letting them run around in nature, have different kinds of experiences, feel empathy with others, and build a world of their own.

The thoughts kept branching out. Ideas about the things I want to make started coming to me one after another. It had been a while since I fell asleep with that kind of excited imagination.

Through the film, I ended up rediscovering values that matter to me. And I suddenly wondered if maybe this is part of what films do.

A film does not have to be a perfectly crafted story. It does not have to deliver some grand, meaningful message.

If one film makes me look back on my own life, remember a dream I had forgotten, and think about what kind of person I want to become and what I want to build, then that alone is enough to make it a powerful film.

So I want to evaluate it again.

Maybe the score I give the film itself will not change much. But the meaning this film left with me has become much bigger than it was at first.

Maybe this film is a little like Suzy’s binoculars. A small kind of magic that lets me see the things I usually miss a little more clearly, and a little more specially.