Here’s a charming introduction to the film, emphasizing probably too much its Christian dimension.
The (one emotionally and one completely) abandoned children carry civilization (literally and emotionally) with them in their escape to their own part of the island of New Penzane and remain imaginatively civilized as they grow erotic as part of being in love. They are untouched by religion. They do meet in at church and get married in one (in a service performed by a renagade scout leader who does quite a convincing job of artiuculating the need for and the legal/religious irrelevance of the union).
All the authority figures—including the woman named Social Services and the leader of the well trained and armed Khaki Scouts—are misfits in some sense, but also decent people who perform well in crises and get better with the precocious example of fearless love and loyalty of the child couple.
So this fantasy of adults recovering who they are through the example of children in love is a lot like SUPER 8. But it aims a lot higher as comprehensive cultural criticism and a display of beauty.
The movie is Christian insofar as it’s all about personal love and the formation of families. The big storm is both really Biblical and really Shakespearean. And there are places for both miracles and magic, in, for one thing, narrowly averting a Shakespearean tragic double-suicide of children forbidden to know each other as lovers.
It is, despite what we now suppose about scout leaders and aging bachelors and our general obsessions with sexualized children, unrepressed self-expression, pedophilia and so forth, a very heterosexual and very adult movie posing as a fantasy for children.
Part of civilization, we also learn, is the music which sets moods, and there’s no room for rock in this story, although it’s set in 1965. Country tunes, espcially the one about Elijah the Indian, do have a place, although the strong suggestion is that the mysterious place must be off the coast of New England. (But do they have typhoons in New England? The place is as displaced as Atlantis. Maps also figure prominently in the story, but they’re all local maps.)
Bill Murray plays Bill Murray again with great effectiveness, but the role is small. Bruce Willis plays the island’s sole police officer, who finally gets beyond protcol and the book of regulations and the pathetic misery of unrequited love and becomes a very untraditional dad. His is the best peformance in he film.
