Moonrise Kingdom OST

The soundtrack to Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom has been created to perfectly fit with the childish themes of the film. From the first track, Britten’s Young Person’s Guide To The Orchestra, complete with a young boy’s narration, you are thrown into the world Anderson has created. Even if you haven’t seen the film a picture of the narrative and Anderson's world is painted for you immediately. With a mix of blues and orchestral music plus original music from Alexandre Desplat (Fantastic Mr. Fox, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), the soundtrack goes all the way from blues to orchestral, classics and original compositions, and results in one of the best soundtracks of the year.

One of the running themes throughout the soundtrack and the film is the tale of Noah’s Ark. Whilst there are similarities within the actual film, the soundtrack is much more blatant in its use of Britten’s opera. In fact there are a lot of pieces by Britten used throughout including Songs From Friday Afternoon, a choral piece sung by young choristers and one piece from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Britten has a playful way of composing, or at least he is very accessible to children so it’s only fitting that his music appears so often. As is expected, given Suzy’s idolisation of Francoise Hardy (in the film Suzy styles herself to appear like Hardy), she appears with a jazzy pop song Le Temps de l’Amour which is paired with the classic American blues of Hank Williams.

Desplat’s original music could be played together as one long track. Comprising of four separate pieces spread throughout the soundtrack, each one follows the same theme using different instruments. The final track in the series is a play on Britten with another young boy narrating his way through the different instruments used within the piece. As he lists them, each instrument plays their theme until finally they are all played together and the young boy thanks us for listening. Given that it’s the last piece on the soundtrack, it’s a perfect ending.

Even if you haven’t seen the film, or aren’t intending to see it (but you should), just listen to the soundtrack. The composition is second to none, of the individual tracks as well as the soundtrack as a whole. It’s as if each track, no matter when it was written, has been written specifically for Moonrise Kingdom. Given the variety of music on it, it’s remarkable that such a perfect pairing for a film has been created. Although, would you really expect anything else from Mr Anderson?

Rating: 9/10