[caption id="attachment_89623" align="aligncenter" width="600"] They look like Oscar winners to me.[/caption]

Just to be clear: There is no chance that Moonrise Kingdom will win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Three of the other nominees in the category---Amour, Django Unchained, and Zero Dark Thirty---also got tapped for Best Picture, which tells you the Academy really likes them. And even Flight, the fifth nominee, got a nod for Denzel Washington's performance. Moonrise, however, just got the Screenplay nomination, and in a category this strong, it'll never be able to pull an upset.

But if the Oscars were a dictatorship and I were Lord General Marktavius, then I would put hand deliver the statues to screenwriters Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola. Because Moonrise Kingdom's screenplay is both wildly inventive and deeply emotional, creating a world that is nothing and everything like reality.

Let's start with the "un-reality." Along with Anderson's direction, the script imagines a universe where everything is in perfect order. Colors are crisp, language is precise and rat-a-tat fast, and every knicknack and pocket square has been arranged just so.

So when we watch the story of two outcast kids running away to the woods---Sam is a brilliant but dorky scout and Suzy is a brilliant but rebellious teen---we instantly understand that they're in a fictional story. When their entire community, including a mother who talks to her family via megaphone and a government agent who is simply known as Social Services, comes out to find them, we know that they are part of a Story.

But the careful composition of every shot and every speech does more than indicate this world isn't real. The precision gives the movie a bustling energy, as though the film itself were a hyper-efficient businessman smartly flicking a crumb off his collar as he clacks down the hall. That self-confident tidiness makes the movie funny. Because you know what isn't tidy at all? Being a young outcast. Running away. Worrying your entire community. Having a secret affair with the police captain after you put down your megaphone. There's a constant, charming joke running through the film that contrasts the order of the world and the messiness of the characters.

I've heard Moonrise Kingdom called "innocent," and I can understand that. In our blood-saturated culture, a tidy story can seem childlike and naive. But to me, the contrast between Tidy World and Messy Feelings isn't innocent at all. To me, it's what happens when an adult looks back on childhood and remembers how terrifying it was.

Because like I said, the characters themselves are boiling pots of emotion. They get scared and horny and lonely and delighted and devoted. And if you think about their predicaments in a more abstract way, they become powerfully real. In one scene, for instance, one of Sam's fellow scouts convinces the others to stop hating the kid and instead help him on his quest to be with Suzy. And don't we all have moments in our lives where we grow up and stop being cruel? (Well, hopefully.) Or how about Suzy and Sam's decision to run away, since they're convinced they're the only ones who understand each other? Haven't we all had a friend or lover who seemed like the only possible escape from a world of hurt feelings and alienation?

And when I say "we," I mean adults. Because the film is very much written from an adult perspective, shading the kids' experiences with emotional nuance that an actual teenager probably couldn't imagine.

For me, the unreal world wraps around that deeply human storytelling like a protective blanket. It takes those messy emotions and puts them in a manageable frame. It protects its characters, in a way, by letting them play out their lives in a space where the books will always be arranged on the shelf.

That order doesn't stifle their emotions, though. Instead, it makes sense of them, the way any life makes more sense upon reflection. As they drop their tortured characters into a bright, brisk world, Anderson and Coppola seem gentle and loving and deeply understanding. They remember the craziness of youth, perhaps, but when they remember, they have the awareness of adulthood.

For some adults, of course, that awareness comes with bitterness or mourning. But Anderson and Coppola don't seem to feel that way. They look back at childhood with patience and joy and empathy. They honor the anxieties of childhood by letting them shine brightly and boldly in a world that's slightly out of time.

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Mark Blankenship also wants Sally Field to win. He tweets as @IAmBlankenship.