Moonrise Kingdom (score)

The film marked Alexandre Desplat's second collaboration with Wes Anderson after the stop-motion animated film Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009).[2] Mark Mothersbaugh, who composed for Anderson's early films had worked on one of themes.[3][4] Mothersbaugh contributed to the percussion instruments for the film score.[5]

Desplat said that "Music is never inherently funny! For me, comic scores always have to have some melancholy in the background. But for Moonrise Kingdom, I was trying more to embrace the world of fantasy of those two adolescents, and capture their sense of adventure and purity."[6] He wrote a seven-minute suite entitled "The Heroic Weather Conditions of the Universe"; describing the title Anderson had said that "it is possible we went too far with the title—we thought it might make it sound more epic".[6] He recalled in a 2015 interview to Vulture, on the motivation of the music, as while building the instrumentation of the suite, orchestra and choir, the score "gave the sensation where we were following the path of the two children. We follow them but they have their own space [...] They connect with their childhood to the music, but they’re now heading towards their freedom. There was this sensation of freedom that was the goal, giving an excitation. Like when you’re 11 or 12 and you go to camp with friends in the summer, there’s the expectation that there will be adventure and fun and that you’ll meet new friends and maybe make a new love. That was exactly what we were trying to achieve with the music, and I think we achieved it quite well."[7]

Desplat recorded the film score by January 2012. Since most of the film score has been recorded, the orchestra was disassembled, as he did not supervise the orchestra. Anderson had said "We can't oversee a whole orchestra. If Alexandre [Desplat] was there he would lead an orchestra all at once, but for us we could just do it one part at a time in order to try to get it right".[8] The seven-minute score was split into five pieces, to "fit different moods of the picture" and was surprised at the film's premiere in Cannes, on how the score was edited and assembled with Britten's music, and felt moved with the use of the "Cuckoo Chorus" in climax.[9]

Faded Glamour wrote "Desplat’s compositions are magical, whimsical pieces that are exciting and joyous and dramatic, sometimes all at once. They complete Anderson’s world beautifully."[10] Jonathan Broxton wrote "the music for Moonrise Kingdom is certainly creative in its makeup, and mirrors the off-kilter nature of the film itself, I found myself completely unable to engage with Desplat’s music on an emotional level; it’s music that’s just “there” – pretty, light, lively, but never really going much beyond the bare bones in terms of what it provides the listener. In many ways, it’s a perfect reflection of Anderson’s directorial and screenwriting sensibility: it stays detached from the audience, instead being content to present a few light-hearted vignettes that either connect with the audience, or don’t. There’s no middle ground."[11] Mint's Sanjukta Sharma called the music as "scintillating",[12] while The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy and Collider's Adam Chitwood called the score and "excellent" and "wonderfully bright".[13][14] Calling it as one of the "best film scores of 2012", IndieWire stated "Desplat's score fits perfectly, despite featuring in brief".[15] IndieWire,[16] and Collider[17] also called it as one of the "decade's best film score".

Moonrise Kingdom was not eligible to be nominated for Best Original Score at the 85th Academy Awards,[18] due to the Desplat's use of Benjamin Britten's music in the score.[18]