Wes
Anderson made his feature directorial debut 18 years ago with Bottle Rocket – a
film he co-wrote with Owen Wilson, who also starred alongside his brother Luke,
in the film. That film was a minor critical success, but a box office failure-
but it garnered him enough attention and praise to continue making his unique
brand of film – on a somewhat larger scale ever since. The Grand Budapest
Hotel, his 8th feature, opened in New York on March 7, and is slowly
expanding around the country – and has garnered him some of the best reviews of
his career, and is doing great business in limited release. As I have had to
wait a little longer than I would have liked to see the film, I decided to go
back and re-watch all 7 of Anderson’s films – some, for the first time in years
– and offer a small, three part retrospective look at his work. This is part I.
In
1994, Wes Anderson made a 13 minute short about a pair of would be small time
crooks – Dignan and Anthony. The short was shot in black and white, for no
money, but it does have a low-key charm to it. The short garnered enough
attention for Anderson and his star/co-writer Owen Wilson to spin it off into a
feature film – which was released two years later.
I’ve
now seen Bottle Rocket at least three times now. Each time I watch the film, I
enjoy it. It isn’t quite as stylistic as Anderson’s subsequent work – but you
can certainly tell it’s an Anderson film – particularly in Anderson’s choice of
music, his mixture of comedic and melancholy elements and some of his favorite
shots – there’s an underwater shot here, as there often is in an Anderson
movie, and his use of slow motion is distinctly his own (and one of the few
director who uses it in a way I don’t find annoying). Owen Wilson gives one of
his best performances as Dignan – a man who sees himself as a future big time
criminal mastermind – he obsesses about the details of his plans (much like
Wilson’s character would obsess over the details of the brothers trip in The
Darjeeling Limited). This was Wilson’s acting debut – but his now well-known
comedic persona is pretty much already fully developed – if tinged with a
little bit more sadness than normal. The same could be said for his brother
Luke, who plays Dignan’s best friend Anthony – just released from the mental
hospital because “he decided he didn’t want to make another decision again” –
who goes along with Dignan and his schemes one more time – only to find
something greater when they’re “on the run” – as he falls in love with a motel
maid from Paraguay – before Dignan hatches one big scheme to get them in good
with the local “big shot” criminal Mr. Henry (James Caan – playing off his
well-earned screen image).
The
first films by great directors most often fall into two categories –the ones
who make a great film right off the bat – like Tarantino with Reservoir Dogs or
the Coens with Blood Simple, and the ones who made a good film that would most
likely be forgotten if they didn’t go on to become great filmmakers – like Paul
Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight or Alexander Payne’s Citizen Ruth. Bottle Rocket
is clearly in the second category. It’s a good film – and it shows that
Anderson has skill both as a writer and a director, and you can see his burgeoning
style behind the camera. It’s also somewhat refreshing for an indie crime film
from the mid-1990s, as it isn’t trying to be a Tarantino knock off like
everyone else was trying to be in 1996 (interestingly in the 1994 short, it
starts with the Wilson brothers discussing Starsky & Hutch – but Anderson
omits this from the feature, perhaps because he felt having criminals discuss
pop culture would be too Tarantino-esque).
Yet
Bottle Rocket is also a largely forgettable film. As I said, this is my third
time watching it, but while I remember the opening – with Anthony “escaping”
the mental hospital and the ending, with Dignan in jail – pretty much the
entire middle portion of the film always slips my mind. In short, Bottle Rocket
is an enjoyable, low key film – but one I think very few would still remember
if Anderson hadn’t gone on to bigger and better things – it’s most interesting
to see where he started, and to see how he developed as a filmmaker.
Just
two years later Anderson delivered on the promise he showed in Bottle Rocket
and made his first legitimately great film – Rushmore. Anderson re-teamed with
co-writer Owen Wilson to make this film about Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) –
a 15 year old who goes to an exclusive private school on a full scholarship –
despite the fact that he’s failing most of his courses. Fischer is almost
impossibly bright – but he spends so much time doing every extra-curricular
activity he can (hilariously seen early in the film as a montage) that he has
no time to study. He meets two adults in succession that change his life. Mrs.
Cross (Olivia Williams) is a new teacher at Rushmore – a recent widow – who
Fischer falls in love with. Cross tries, repeatedly, to let Max down gently –
but he doesn’t take the hint. Then there is Herman Blume (Bill Murray), a
wealthy industrialist, with two idiot sons he despises who go to Rushmore.
Blume gives a talk at the school about how awful rich kids are - Max likes the
speech – and the two becomes friends, perhaps because Max reminds him more of
himself than his own kids do. The friends become rivals when Herman also falls
in love with Mrs. Cross.
Rushmore
is really the film where we start to see what would drive Anderson – both
stylistically and thematically – for the rest of his career (so far). He is
aided a great deal by the performances of the two central characters – played
by Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray, both of whom would go on to appear in
several other Anderson films (Murray has been in every one since – Schwartzman
appears in The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom and The
Grand Budapest Hotel). I think there is more than a little of Anderson in Max
Fischer – a man driven by obsessive detail, who gets his “Max Fischer Players”
to buy into his detailed plays, and deliver huge scale results on little money.
Schwartzman delivers a terrific performance as a teenager who seems more
intelligent than a 15 year old should be, while at the same time being as immature
as you would expect. Amazingly, it was his debut performance, but he already
shows the perfect comedic timing he continues to show, and immediately gets
Anderson’s mixture of melancholy and comedic elements. Like Wilson in Bottle
Rocket, Schwartzman seems to come to his debut fully formed as a comedic
persona. Max, like all of Anderson’s younger protagonists, has parental issues
– which helps to explain why he latches onto to two older people. He lies about
what his father does for a living – telling people he’s a brain surgeon, when
in fact he’s a barber, and his mother died when he was young.
As for
Murray, he begins what is probably the best director-star relationship of his
career here. Anderson’s deadpan, melancholy yet comedic style, is perfect for
Murray – nowhere more so than in Rushmore, which makes great use of Murray’s
sad, lined face which brightens momentarily when it looks like he may have
found love with Mrs. Cross – but sinks deeper when she leaves him. Murray’s
Herman Blume is really little more than a pathetic teenager – he’s a perfect
match for Max because they are both about as mature as the other one – except
Max has the excuse that he’s an actual teenager. Blume is probably the saddest
and most pathetic of all of Murray’s creations for Anderson – and his best
performance – one of the few times where I still get bothered years later than
the Academy overlooked his work (how the hell did they NOT nominate him?).
Yet
Rushmore has perhaps the “happiest” ending of all of Anderson’s films – or at
least the most hopeful (for Max anyway). While all of Anderson’s films end on a
superficially upbeat note, Rushmore is the one least undercut by the melancholy
that has become Anderson’s trademark. You actually get the feeling that Max is
going to do than just soldier on, which is what many Anderson protagonists get
in the end, but that he has actually grown. I hold out more hope for Max than I
do for Dignan or the Tenenbaum children for example.
Speaking
of the Tenenbaums that brings us to what I think is Anderson’s masterpiece at
this point in his career – The Royal Tenenbaums. Rushmore made a big name for
Anderson in critical and film buff circles, and three years later he followed
it up with an even better, more ambitious film. Once again co-written by Owen
Wilson (for the last time, as Wilson moved on to just being an actor after
this), The Royal Tenenbaums is about three children who were child prodigies in
their field, who have grown up to become emotionally stunted adults- thanks in
part to an absent father. Gene Hackman gave the last great performance of his
career as Royal Tenenbaum, the father in question, who left the family when the
children were still young, and has pretty much been absent for at least the
last few years. What brings him back is that his wife, Anjelica Huston, wants
to finally get a divorce, so she can marry Royal’s total opposite – an
accountant played by Danny Glover. Royal tells the family he’s dying to try and
earn some sympathy, and weasel his way back into their lives.
The
three Tenenbaum children are Richie (Luke Wilson) a tennis champion, who after
a very public meltdown has spent time sailing around the world, Chas (Ben
Stiller), a financial wizard, still reeling from the death of his wife the
previous year, who has become overprotective of his two sons, and Margot
(Gwyneth Paltrow), a playwright, who spends hours locked in the bathroom
watching TV and ignoring her much older husband – the psychologist played by
Bill Murray. All three children move back home at the same time Royal comes
back.
The
children are a mess, in part at least because of their unresolved childhood
issues. While Royal’s emotional and eventual physical absence from their lives
has undoubtedly scared them, I was also struck this time through with how
Huston’s Etheline played a role in her children’s unraveling as well. Who,
after all, writes a book called “Family of Geniuses” about her three young children?
If Royal expects nothing from his children – because he barely seems to care –
that perhaps Etheline expects far too much – and the coming together of these
two elements damages the children completely.
There
is more, of course, than just parental issues affecting the Tenenbaum children
however- the death of Chas’s wife has left him an emotional wreck, although he
tries to hide it behind a wall of cynical contempt. A small moment that I had
forgotten left me a wreck this time through – when Chas sets his kids up in
bunk beds, and then instead of leaving decides that he’ll just camp out on the
floor that night, and his younger son comes down and wordlessly lies next to
him – he’s doing it for his father, and not himself, and the gesture was so
touching I nearly cried. I did cry later when Chas finally lets his guard down
and says “We’ve had a rough year, dad”. Richie and Margot have their own issues
– mainly stemming from Richie being in love with Margot (who, he points out, is
his adopted sister) for their whole lives – this is what led to his breakdown,
and what will eventually lead to his suicide attempt. Margot loves him as well
– but is at least somewhat better at handling it, even if she no longer writes,
and just sits around depressed all day.
Also
interesting is the character played by Owen Wilson – a childhood friend of
Richie’s, who unlike the Tenenbaum children has actually become a success in
his adult life writing what sounds like Cormac McCarthy-like Westerns (I didn’t
notice how McCarthy-like until this viewing – perhaps because I hadn’t seen the
film in years - before I read my first
McCarthy novel). Although he is successful, all he really ever wanted to be is
a Tenenbaum – and even though he sees how screwed up they are, he still wants
that. He has his own issues as well – with alcohol and depression – showing
that it’s not just failure making the Tenenbaum’s depression.
Like
Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums is essentially a coming of age movie – it’s just
that its characters do it several decades after they probably should have –
that includes Royal. Hackman plays him as a larger than life character –
someone with a smile always on his face, the kind of guy everyone loves, unless
of course you actually know him, and then he can be thoughtlessly cruel. But
even he will eventually “grow up” as it were – as his “fake” attempt to get
back into favor with his family eventually becomes a real one – even if he’ll
never be able to completely undo the damage he’s done – he at least now can
recognize what he has done, and attempt to back amends (the scene with him and
Margot in an ice cream shop is one of my favorites).
Stylistically,
this is the most “Wes Anderson” of the Wes Anderson films to date – he had a
little more budget here, and he seems to have used it in part to have a larger
cast, and in part to create his meticulously art directed and costume designed
world – the Tenenbaums house being a triumph of art direction to rival the
Bellefonte in The Life Aquatic, the train in The Darjeeling Limited or the
underground tunnel system in Fantastic Mr. Fox. The various clothes worn by
each character in The Royal Tenenbaums offers a glimpse into them before
they’ve even opened their mouths.
The
ending of The Royal Tenenbaums sets up what would become a standard Anderson
ending – the one that offers a little hope for its characters, but not real
happiness. The characters in The Royal Tenenbaums are able to forgive the sins
of their father, and decide to attempt to move on with their lives – yet that
doesn’t guarantee them further success. Margot is able to write a new play, but
it’s not a huge commercial or critical success for example. It’s a somewhat
hopeful ending – we don’t think there will be another suicide attempt in the
future – but that’s not exactly a happy ending.
Tomorrow
we’ll look at two more Anderson films – the ones that made some question just
how good Anderson really was.
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