Movie Review: Isle of Dogs

Isle of Dogs **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Wes Anderson.

Written by: Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola and Kunichi Nomura and Jason Schwartzman.

Starring: Bryan Cranston (Chief), Koyu Rankin (Atari), Edward Norton (Rex), Bob Balaban (King), Bill Murray (Boss), Jeff Goldblum (Duke), Kunichi Nomura (Mayor Kobayashi), Akira Takayama (Major-Domo), Greta Gerwig (Tracy Walker), Frances McDormand (Interpreter Nelson), Akira Ito (Professor Watanabe), Scarlett Johansson (Nutmeg), Harvey Keitel (Gondo), F. Murray Abraham (Jupiter), Yoko Ono (Assistant-Scientist Yoko-ono), Tilda Swinton (The Oracle Dog), Ken Watanabe (Head Surgeon), Mari Natsuki (Auntie), Fisher Stevens (Scrap), Liev Schreiber (Spots), Courtney B. Vance (Narrator), Jake Ryan (Junior Interpreter Ernie), Kara Hayward (Peppermint).

 

Isle of Dogs is one of Wes Anderson’s strangest, funniest and most heartfelt films – which is odd, because it’s also one of his darkest. For the most part, Anderson’s films have been about the family unit – its dysfunctions, and how they shape and warp people as they grow up – perhaps sometimes arresting them in a juvenile state. He saw the larger outside world most clearly in his last masterpiece – The Grand Budapest Hotel – where one man (played brilliantly by Ralph Fiennes) tried to keep the ugliness of the world outside his beloved hotel away, until it ultimately overwhelms everything. To follow that up, he has made the stop motion Isle of Dogs – set in a darker, dystopian Japan of “20 Years in the Future”, but populated the film mostly with delightful dogs. The outside world has now become fully part of Anderson’s films – and they are richer for that.

 

The story is about the city of Megasaki, run by the corrupt Mayor Kobayashi, who hates dogs with a passion, and has devised a way to get rid of them. The dog flu has reached epidemic proportions, and threatens to cross the species barrier. Despite warnings from the Science party, which thinks it can be cured, Kobayashi orders all dogs to be banished to Trash Island. It here, six months after the banishment has taken place, that most of Isle of Dogs takes place. Chief (Bryan Cranston) is a former stray, who looks at the banishment as confirmation of the distrust for humans he always had. “I bite” he warns early in the film – and he means it. He has taken up with a pack of former pets – Rex (Edward Norton), King (Bob Balaban), Boss (Bill Murray) and Duke (Jeff Goldblum) to fight for the scraps on the island. The mayor’s nephew, Atari, steals a small plane and flies to the island – where he crashes – in the hope of finding his beloved dog Spots. Chief doesn’t want to help the “The Little Pilot” as they call him – but he is outvoted – so the set off to the far reaches of the island to find Spots.

 

The stop motion animation on display in Isle of Dogs is among the best I have ever seen in a movie – even better than the terrific Fantastic Mr. Fox (2008) that Anderson previously made. The art direction here is more detailed, the characters even more expressive. Anderson and his animators don’t try to hide their own involvement in the animation process – it all feels handmade, but in the best way. There is not a moment of Isle of Dogs which doesn’t look terrific. This is true of pretty much every Anderson film – and at times (I’m thinking particularly of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), that attention to details smothers the life out of the film – making it all an exercise in style and little else. But for the most part, the style helps Anderson – and helps the emotions of the film come through. That’s the case here. The film is essentially a story of free will and freedom – and whether we compromise that free will for security and kindness. Chief certainly thinks so at the beginning of the film – but by the end, he opinion has changed.

 

The film’s Japanese setting and style has been the subject of much debate and criticism since people starting seeing the film – and while I understand the arguments of those who see it as cultural appropriation – a white filmmaker from American dabbling in a culture he doesn’t understand or respect for his own purposes, I don’t really see it that way (I will admit that as a white man myself, I come at it from a point-of-view probably similar to Anderson’s). I loved the use of Japanese style in the film – the many callbacks to Akira Kurosawa throughout the film (I certainly saw parts of Seven Samurai throughout the film, but also films like High and Low or perhaps The Bad Sleep Well). Alexandre Desplat’s taiko drum heavy score is among his best work. The decision to not subtitle most of the Japanese dialogue – or have the human Japanese cast speak in English – is a good one. It adds a layer of misunderstanding between the dogs and the humans in the film (it would be strange if both spoke in English, but couldn’t understand each other) – but also respects the Japanese language – and the cast who speaks it. Most of the dialogue isn’t strictly necessary for narrative purposes – there is a translator on hand for the big speeches (the delightful Frances McDormand). Anderson fully embraces Japan and its culture here – not in a way that is complete, or an insider’s view, but something similar to what Ryan Coogler did with African culture in Black Panther.

 

In short, I think Isle of Dogs is another masterwork from Anderson – among the best things he has ever made. It is a delightful comedy, but with a darker edge to it, even as it ends in a good place. Anderson has become one of the most consistently great filmmakers work today – and Isle of Dogs is one of his best achievements.

Movie Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel
Directed by: Wes Anderson.
Written by: Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness inspired by the works of Stefan Zweig.
Starring: Ralph Fiennes (M. Gustave), Tony Revolori (Zero), F. Murray Abraham (Mr. Moustafa), Mathieu Amalric (Serge X.), Adrien Brody (Dmitri), Willem Dafoe (Jopling), Jeff Goldblum (Deputy Kovacs), Harvey Keitel (Ludwig), Jude Law (Young Writer), Bill Murray (M. Ivan), Edward Norton  (Henckels), Saoirse Ronan (Agatha), Jason Schwartzman (M. Jean), Léa Seydoux (Clotilde), Tilda Swinton (Madame D.), Tom Wilkinson (Author), Owen Wilson (M. Chuck).

It’s easy to get lost in the pleasures of the surface of Wes Anderson’s films. They are so meticulously crafted and filled with wonderful, visual detail that you can watch most of his films again and again, and still notice wholly new things each and every time. His latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is no exception. It takes place in 4 different time periods – in the (present day?) where a young girl looks up at the statute of a famous writer, and then cracks up his book The Grand Budapest Hotel (a typical device of Anderson’s – many of his movies begin with their titles on books) – and then flashes back to 1985 where the writer (Tom Wilkinson) discusses how he came to write the book to a TV crew – which flashes us back to 1968, where the younger version of the writer (Jude Law) is staying at the title hotel, and meets its owner Mr. Moustfa (F. Murray Abraham), who tells him how he can to own the hotel – which flashes us back to 1932, when he was a mere lobby boy working  for the great concierge M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes). Anderson uses a different aspect ratio for the scenes in 1932, 1968 and the scenes form 1985 and the present day – with a boxer frame dominating in the 1932 scenes, given way to widescreen later on. The hotel in 1932 is glorious colorful and vibrant – while the same hotel in 1968 is dull and drab – amazingly, the set for the 1968 hotel is built over top of the set of the 1932 hotel, and was removed to shoot the earlier scenes. If this film doesn’t win an Art Direction Oscar, I give up. The costumes, Robert Yeoman’s cinematographer and Alexandre Desplat’s score are all worthy of effusive praise as well. The movie is hilarious – getting great, Wes Anderson-style performances from his largely game cast of his stock company – Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton and Owen Wilson – and newcomers like Abraham, Wilkinson, Law, Saorise Ronan, Mathieu Amalric, Lea Seydoux – and the two main characters, newcomer Tony Revolori as Zero, and especially Ralph Fiennes as Gustave. There are great set pieces – a stalking through a museum that ends in a grisly demise, and hilarious race down a mountain. You could fill a whole review talking about the surface of The Grand Budapest Hotel, call it another triumph for Anderson, and move on.

But that would, I think, do a disservice to the movie – which I think is the deepest work Anderson has done to this point in his career. Before now, Anderson has mainly focused on the personal – strained family relationships and longtime marriages on the brink of collapse, surrogate and real father figures who often let the main characters down, idealized young love, and withering older love. Many of these themes run through The Grand Budapest Hotel as well. This is every inch a typical Wes Anderson movie – and then it’s more than that. For the first time, Anderson is looking at something bigger, more wide ranging than the personal. It’s no coincidence that he sets his movie is various time periods important in 20^th Century History – the main action during Hitler’s rise, the second during the Prague Spring of 1968, and the final scenes on the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Anderson doesn’t explicitly reference any of these things – he sets his movie in the fictional country of Zubrowska, we don’t see a Swastika as any point, although the soldiers Gustave calls “fascists” do sport a stylized double S on their uniforms.

The Grand Budapest is the harshest film of Anderson’s career – and certainly the most violent. Willem Dafoe’s Jopling, an employee of Adrien Brody’s Dmitri, furious that his elderly mother left Gustave a valuable painting, and will do everything possible to prevent it from happening – is responsible for many of those moments – a surprisingly comedic moment with a cat, that turns grim in a hurry, more than one brutal murder. The film is harsher, coarser in other ways as well – there is more swearing in this film than any other Anderson film. In some ways, the relationship between Zero and Gustave echoes that in other Anderson films – a young man and surrogate father has been addressed in films like Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and Moonrise Kingdom. But the reasons why Zero is looking for a surrogate father are a little harsher than normal – and ties in Anderson’s broader themes that he’s working with – tying his old aesthetic and themes, with a more wide ranging worldview.

The same is true of the character of Gustave as well. Like many Anderson characters – Dignan in Bottle Rocket, Max Fisher in Rushmore and Francis in The Darjeeling Limited for example – he is an obsessive planner - extremely detailed oriented and wanting everything to be perfect. His obsession with civility and politeness in a world that is becoming coarser and more violent will strike some as hopelessly naïve – or delusional – that Gustave is a man who doesn’t realize that the world has changed. But as Zero says, that time had passed long before Gustave was even alive – but he continues to behave in a civilized manner – and despises vulgarity and violence. It’s not delusion or naiveté then drives Gustave – but a little bit of defiance. He may not fight against the encroaching fascism in the traditional sense – but he does refuse to give into it. There are twin scenes with Gustave and Zero on a train – one of which Gustave prevails, in part because he refuses to sink to their level, and one that with a result so painful, Anderson’s camera doesn’t even record it. Fiennes delivers what just may be the best performance of his career as Gustave – outwardly fitting perfectly into the world that Anderson has created, but also helping Anderson to create his deeper portrait of a world sinking into violence and despair.

I have always thought that Anderson’s films are deeper than just their meticulously crafted surfaces. It is the surfaces that everyone knows – even my wife, who is not a fan of Anderson, knows one of his films pretty much by a single frame. But if Anderson was nothing more than a stylist, than he wouldn’t be any better than say Tim Burton – a director whose visual style is undeniably his own – but more often than not at the service of an empty worldview. Anderson makes films that get deeper with each new viewing – Burton makes films that are fun to go through once, but not very interesting a second time. Anderson’s films get deeper every time – and I feel that after one time through The Grand Budapest Hotel that I am barely scratching the surface of Anderson’s deepest film yet. Is it Anderson’s best film? I’m not sure – ask me again after I’ve seen 2 or 3 more times.

Wes Anderson Retrospect Part III: Maturation

I know I was not the only one in 2009 concerned that perhaps Wes Anderson was never going to quite become the great director I thought I was going to be after Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. In the 8 years since Tenenbaums, he had only directed two features – and as laid out in the previous section, they were the weakest since his debut film Bottle Rocket. Anderson seemed at least bit like he was drifting after Tenenbaums’ success. While The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited both looked great, neither rose to the level of Anderson’s previous films. I was not alone in thinking this – just look at last week’s Criticwire Survey – the film most often cited as Anderson’s “Worst” was The Darjeeling Limited – followed by Life Aquatic (which also had a few “best” citations as well) and Bottle Rocket.

I wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that Anderson’s next film was an animated family film, based on a Roald Dahl book. On one hand, Dahl had clearly been a huge influence on Anderson – you can see that in pretty much all of his previous films, so the subject matter would be in Anderson’s comfort zone. And animation, especially stop motion animation, requires meticulous attention to detail – something Anderson obviously possesses. I was still worried however that perhaps what we would get was another Life Aquatic – a brilliant looking film, where Anderson allows his idiosyncratic visual obsessions to take over completely from plot and character – ending up with only half a great movie.

It was a relief then to find that not only was Fantastic Mr. Fox a great film – it may just be Anderson’s best – but also that for the first time since The Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson was able to marry his obsessive visual details to a genuine story, with (and this is surprising) realistic characters. Anderson and Noah Baumbach adapted Dahl’s short classic children’s story – expanding it to fill it out its running time, but not in the same way the filled out the Dr. Seuss stories like How the Grinch Stole Christmas or The Cat in the Hat – but in a way that felt consistent not only with Dahl’s creation, but also Anderson’s obsessions.

Fantastic Mr. Fox addresses many of the same themes that have run through Anderson’s work – the challenges of a long term marriage that at least threaten to end in divorce and a complicated father figure who is charming and liked by all – except perhaps his son, who tries everything to impress him but can never quite measure up. The relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Fox (brilliantly voiced by George Clooney and Meryl Streep) is a somewhat softer version of many longtime marriages in Anderson movies – she wants him to change his ways, and while he tries, in the end he can never quite let go of the past. He is a chicken thief and a wild animal– and a damn good one – and while he tries to go straight when they have a cub, he slips back into his old ways. There is an argument between the married couple – where she literally claws his face – that is as honest and realistic as anything that Anderson has ever put on screen (“I love you, but I never should have married you”). As a father, Mr. Fox is not unlike Royal Tenenbaum or Steve Zissou – he is rather distant from his son Ash (a great vocal performance by Jason Schwartzman) – because he isn’t as athletic as his father was. This is only exasperated by the arrival of Cousin Kristofferson – who is able to do with ease what Ash cannot do at all – and it doesn’t escape the attention of Mr. Fox – who invites Kristofferson, but not Ash, to join him as his lovable, dimwitted possum sidekick Kylie on their raids on the farms of Boggis, Bunce and Bean.

This being an animated film aimed at children (at least outwardly), Anderson softens things a little bit – Mr. and Mrs. Fox do not get divorced, and Mr. Fox eventually does tell Ash how much he loves him – but not a lot. This remains a Wes Anderson movie to its core and the director seemingly makes few concessions to try to reach a wider, younger audience (which probably explains why he really didn’t – the film didn’t exactly set box office records). Yet Fantastic Mr. Fox is – to me anyway – Anderson’s most purely entertaining film. Visually, the film is stunning as all Anderson films are – filled with little details in the background that you don’t notice the first time through. The story moves quickly – from Fox robbing all three of Boggis, Bunch and Bean, to them coming after them and the rest of the animals. The voice cast is stellar – no one more so than Clooney, who is in full movie star mode as Mr. Fox, and I’m not sure if he’s ever been funnier. The score by Alexandre Desplat is wonderfully strange, and despite Bean’s complaint (“That’s just weak songwriting. You wrote a bad song Petey”) – Petey’s Song gets stuck in my head every time I hear it. The film is full of more quotably one liners than anything else Anderson has made. Fantastic Mr. Fox is brilliant because every element comes together just about perfectly – from the melding of the sensibilities of Dahl and Anderson, to the use of stop motion animation, and Anderson’s attention to detail (which apparently, drove some of the animators crazy – which is odd because you think if you work in a field that requires you to make miniscule adjustments to puppets 24 times to get one second of film, you would be used to obsessive types). I don’t know if Anderson will ever work in animation again – given the lackluster box office for the film, and the fact that they’re not exactly cheap to make, my guess would be not – but I hope he does. It fits his sensibilities perfect.

Three years later, Anderson followed up Fantastic Mr. Fox with Moonrise Kingdom – a return of sorts to a film focusing on younger characters for the first time since Rushmore. While Moonrise Kingdom contains all the trappings of Anderson’s film – the meticulous production and costume design, the precise deadpan delivery of its stars, it is also perhaps the most nakedly sincere film of Anderson’s career. The story involves two children on the cusp of becoming teenagers who feel isolated and alone – and together forge a romantic bond in the waning days of the summer of 1965 on the New England island of New Penzance. Jared Gilman is Sam – an orphan, who has been shuttled from one foster home to another, and is spending the summer with the Khaki Scouts on the island. The previous summer he met Kara Hayward’s Suzy – when she was playing an melancholy raven in a local theater production. Her parents (Frances McDormand and Bill Murray) are both lawyers, think she is “disturbed”, and are too absorbed in themselves to really see her properly. The two agree to meet up and run off together and form their own Moonrise Kingdom – while Suzy’s parents, the Khaki Scouts and the police all close in on them, looking to snatch away their happiness.

Anderson has always seen romance in two ways – young love is often idealized in Anderson’s movies – even if it is inappropriate, like Max’s crush on his teacher in Rushmore or Richie falling in love with his adopted sister Margot in The Royal Tenenbaums. Nowhere is this more true than with Sam and Suzy – who do genuinely seem to love each other in the way that only teenagers can – and it’s a love that so sweet, that it eventually wins almost everyone else over. They may be young – and lord knows that the chances are their love will not last – but for now, there love is pure. Contrast this with the romantic entanglements of the adults in Moonrise Kingdom – Frances McDormand is having an affair with the local police chief (Bruce Willis), who is left heartbroken when she breaks it off (when Sam asks him if he’s ever been in love, and he says yes, and Sam follows up with “What happened?”, Willis’ response “She didn’t love me back” is perhaps the best line reading in Willis’ career). As with all of the long term marriages in Anderson’s films, Suzy’s parents are in danger of breaking apart. The kids are in a rush to grow up – and get married themselves – but as an audience member, I wanted them to slow down and enjoy their lives – things are going to get worse for them, and Anderson knows it. Although the ending of Moonrise Kingdom is superficially a happy one – Sam gets a new adopted father, and he and Suzy are not forever ripped apart – it’s also somewhat melancholy – Sam and Suzy will probably never have the freedom they did during their short moments on the beach – full of awkward kissing, proclamations of love and a surrogate loss of virginity (the earrings). This is a typical Anderson tactic in ending his films – where the characters may be in a better place than when the film started, but still not truly happy – just more able to soldier onto to the next stage in their lives.

Conclusion

Wes Anderson is now eight films into a distinctive career. I haven’t seen The Grand Budapest Hotel yet – and I hope it’s as good as I have heard it is. Already, I’ve heard some complaints that it is a “typical Wes Anderson movie” from some – that it’s all style and no substance. And I’ve also heard the counter argument – that because the surface of Anderson’s films are so distinctive, he often doesn’t get enough credit for the film’s emotional and thematic heft. Kent Jones made this argument in Film Comment when writing about Fantastic Mr. Fox – Sam Adams made the argument in regards to The Grand Budapest Hotel. This is something I’ve often felt about Anderson’s work – which so many people, even some of his biggest fans, get so obsessed with the surface of his films that they don’t give Anderson credit for how complex the movies actually are. He is one of the filmmakers whose films reward you when you re-watch them. Part of that is the surface – Anderson is so obsessed with the surface, that it is impossible to catch all the details he layers in on a first viewing. But part of that is because you need to look beyond the surface to see what Anderson is really up to. As with any filmmaker whose films are so distinctive visually, at times he makes films that are precisely what his detractors claim them to be – all style, no substance. The Coens have done this in films like The Hudsucker Proxy, Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. Anderson has done this in a film like The Life Aquatic. If he continues to make films, he will probably do the same thing again. But he also keeps on pushing himself to be better, to go deeper. And when he succeeds, he is one of the best filmmakers in the world today.  

Wes Anderson Retrospective Part II: Growing Pains – The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) & The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

In the span of five years, Wes Anderson had directed three films that got an increasing amount of acclaim and attention. At the tail end of the 1990s and the early 2000s, he made pretty much everyone’s list of the best emerging filmmakers in America – hell Martin Scorsese himself choose Anderson as the “next Martin Scorsese”. I love Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums so much that in the winter of 2004 the amount of anticipation I had for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was rivaled only by the anticipation I had for Scorsese’s The Aviator – and Scorsese is my favorite filmmaker of all time.

When it finally came out, The Life Aquatic was one of the biggest disappointments of the year for me. It was undeniably a Wes Anderson film – it was a masterpiece of production design, contained some eye popping stop motion animation work by Henry Selick (Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas), contained another fine sad eyed, yet funny performance, by Bill Murray – and other strong performances as well – most notably by Willem Dafoe as Zissou’s right hand man Klaus, , and had some interesting music – including a host of David Bowie covers sung in Portuguese. And yet I felt The Life Aquatic was ultimately a rather empty film – one that looked great, but didn’t connect in anyway emotionally. This was the common complaint (and remains the most prevalent one) about Anderson’s work – but it’s one I never agreed with before. However much style there is in Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, I still connected with the characters and their pain – The Royal Tenenbaums even had me crying in my most recent re-watching of the film.

I watched The Life Aquatic in 2005 on DVD to see if perhaps it was simply a case of my expectations being too high – or if perhaps it was a film that rewarded audiences with multiple viewings – Anderson’s films always benefit from seeing them more than once, because he packs so much into them. But I was left with the same feeling. I didn’t watch the film again until last week – once again hoping that this time I would connect with it. Sadly, I still didn’t.

The film is still brilliant to look at – there is so much detail to Zissou’s ship, the Bellefonte that I could probably watch it again and again and still not capture all the visual details. Yet, the film still feels emotionally distant to me. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the scene where Owen Wilson’s Ned dies in a helicopter crash. Visually, the scene is striking – with Steve and Ned floating in the water after the crash, the camera bobbing in the water that is gradually revealed to be turning red – bloody water even splashes the camera lens at one point. But the whole scene seems to have staged only for the visual impact of it all – not the emotional one. As with the rest of the movie, I never felt any real connection between Steve and his (potential) long lost son played by Wilson. Part of it, I think, is because of Wilson’s silly, exaggerated Kentucky accent (Wilson, from Texas himself, has never gone so over the top with his Southern accent before). Part of it is that I cannot help but think that no matter how good Murray is in certain scenes of the film, that he was still wrong for the role of Steve Zissou – who is a character not that different than Gene Hackman’s Royal Tenenbaum. Hackman –rightly – went boldly comedic and emotional with his performance. Murray does more of his understated, sad eyed routine – which works for him in every other Wes Anderson movie, but doesn’t here. Steve Zissou is the engine that drives the plot, and Murray is always better playing a little more passive – reacting to the things around him he cannot control, rather than setting in motion the action himself.

There are other things that could be the reason the film doesn’t work as well as it should. Perhaps we always under estimated Wilson’s contributions as a screenwriter with Anderson – this was the first film that Wilson did not co-write with Anderson – that honor going to Noah Baumbach this time around. Given Wilson’s (now public) struggle with depression, it’s not wholly inconceivable that he contributed to the sense of melancholy that was present in Anderson’s first three films – and handled better. Perhaps Baumbach simply let Anderson indulge in all of his own idiosyncratic obsessions, and didn’t push Anderson to ground them in believably emotional terrain. That’s all speculation of course – perhaps it’s something altogether different – but given that I think the film is a step back for Anderson, and it’s the first one without Wilson as a co-writer, it makes sense.

Or maybe it’s just that while in his mid-30s, Anderson never really connected with Zissou as a character. This is a character who is worried about failure – someone with a long career behind him, who worries that he will never be good again, and worries about his legacy and the roads not taken in his own life. Whatever the reason, no matter how much I admire parts of The Life Aquatic – and there are brilliant moments sprinkled throughout the film – I think my initial feelings on the film are still correct – it’s a disappointment from Anderson, and his weakest overall film to date.

It took Anderson another three years to complete his next film – The Darjeeling Limited. I like this film a lot more than The Life Aquatic – I actually think overall it’s a very good movie – although I still think that it is fairly minor Anderson – and one where he’s still trying to figure out where to go next. That works for the film however, as that is basically the journey the three brothers at the core of the movie are also going on.

It’s been a year since their father died – and Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) haven’t seen each other in that time. They are reuniting however for a train trip across India. Everything has been meticulously planned by Francis – who has an assistant on another part of the train, who helpfully provides them with laminated itineraries every morning. Francis was in a motorcycle accident, that may not have been so accidental, and his head is bandaged up. Peter’s wife is pregnant – 6 weeks away from giving birth – which makes him nervous, because he assumed that they were going to get divorced. Jack has just broken up with his girlfriend (seen in the brilliant short, Hotel Chevalier aka The Darjeeling Limited part 1, which is 13 minutes of Anderson’s best filmmaking) but obsesses over her still. Unbeknownst to Peter and Jack, at the end of their journey, the trio of brothers will meet their mother (Anjelica Huston), who has become a nun, and who they haven’t seen in a long time (she didn’t even show up for their father’s funeral).

For the first little bit of The Darjeeling Limited, the film seems like it’s going to be little more than a relaxed comedy about these three brothers who both love and hate each other, travelling through a culture they do not understand. There are worse things a movie can be – especially when, like the boat in The Life Aquatic, the train in this movie is an art director’s wet dream – and Anderson uses the colorful Indian backdrop in a unique, non-traditional way.

The movie is better than that I think – and becomes so in three sequences – most notably when the trio of brothers attempts to save another trio of brothers – much younger, when they fall into the river – two of them succeeding, and one failing. Yet the sequence, which brings life and death into the movie, deepens everything else in the film – and sets up the other two great sequences – a flashback to their father’s funeral, and their eventual meeting with their mother. The ending of The Darjeeling Limited is more than a little heavy handed – as the brother literally leave their father’s baggage behind them as they move off into an uncertain future.

I had only seen The Darjeeling Limited once before last week – back when it was in theaters in 2007. I remember liking it then, but also shrugging it off. I pretty much feel the same way about it now, having seen it a second time. It’s a very good film – a little looser than most of Anderson’s work, not quite as controlled. Like most of Anderson’s films, it provides an ending that offers hope for its characters, but doesn’t neatly tie their problems in a bow – they’ll move on, but to what, I’m not sure. The performances by Wilson, Brody and Schwartzman are great – and they get some good support from everyone – especially Huston, and in a wordless performance, Bill Murray, representing the father they are leaving behind. Yet I still cannot help but view the film as Anderson treading water – figuring out where to go next. Again, since that’s where his characters are, it works for the movie, but also makes it somewhat lesser of a film that his best work.

The final part goes tomorrow – looking at two more of Anderson’s best film.

Wes Anderson Retrospective: Part I: Early Promise and Success

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 8^th 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.

Movie Review: Moonrise Kingdom

Moonrise Kingdom ****
Directed by: Wes Anderson.
Written by: Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola.
Starring: Edward Norton (Scout Master Ward), Bruce Willis (Captain Sharp), Bill Murray (Walt Bishop), Kara Hayward (Suzy), Tilda Swinton (Social Services), Jason Schwartzman (Cousin Ben), Frances McDormand (Laura Bishop), Harvey Keitel (Commander Pierce), Jared Gilman (Sam), Bob Balaban (Narrator), L.J. Foley (Izod), Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick (Roosevelt), Jake Ryan (Lionel), Charlie Kilgore (Lazy Eye), Neal Huff (Jed), Gabriel Rush (Skotak), Lucas Hedges (Redford), Chandler Frantz (Gadge), Tommy Nelson (Nickleby).

Because Wes Anderson’s films are so meticulously constructed – with every detail of the art direction, costume design, cinematography and even the performances seemingly so precise and obsessed over by Anderson, there is a temptation to dismiss his films as navel gazing. But underneath the outward the precise surface of his films, there lies real stories, real characters and real emotions. His movies are about dysfunctional families – parents who cannot connect with their children, and the children who become messed up adults as a result. Even when he made an animated film – the great Fantastic Mr. Fox – his animated characters went through those same feelings. In his latest, Moonrise Kingdom, the kids and still kids – and anxious to grow up at that, but looking at the adults, you just want to tell them to slow down a little.

The movie centers on two young teenagers, trapped in worlds that seem to be entirely self-contained. There is Suzy (Kara Hayward), who lives with her lawyer parents Mr. and Mrs. Bishop (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) and three younger brothers, in one of those big houses that exist in Anderson’s films (think the Tenenbaum house). She has no friends, and knows her parents think her troubled – especially since she finds a pamphlet entitled “Dealing with the Troubled Child”. Then there is Sam (Jared Gilman), an orphan who doesn’t fit into his foster family, and also doesn’t fit in in his Khaki Scout troop. Her house, and his scout troop, are both on Penzance Island, off the coast of New England, near the end of the summer of 1965. We see how they met the previous summer, and how they planned their escape from their isolated worlds in the past year by being pen pals. They meet up in a field – him with a load of camping supplies, her with her beloved binoculars, books and kitten – and head off on an adventure across the island. Meanwhile, the adults – the dysfunctional Bishops, the Police Captain (Bruce Willis), who may be having an affair with Mrs. Bishop and Khaki Scout leader Ward (Edward Norton) go into a tizzy trying to find them.

From the opening scenes of the film, you know you are watching a Wes Anderson film. From the pans across the house the Bishops share – kids in one part of the house, adults in another, separated so much they might as well exist in different worlds – to the record deconstructing an orchestra, to the first view of camp Ivanhoe, as the camera tracks Edward Norton in profile going through his daily inspection, the precise art direction, the strange color palette, to the details which stretch reality, and the deadpan narrator, we know we are in Anderson’s storybook world. This is a childhood adventure story, and a real love story – Suzy and Sam may be young, and playing out an adventure fantasy, but they really are in love – at that they are not playing. Their journey has elements of the French New Wave – I was reminded of Jean Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (which, not coincidentally, came out in 1965, the year this movie is set. Suzy is made up to look, and act like  Anna Karina in Godard’s film – stylish, yet aloof. The two disappear into their own fantasy land – listen to a French singer on their record player, and act as if they are the only ones in the world.

The film contains Anderson’s trademark deadpan comedy – played to perfection by its cast. We know Bill Murray is up for it – and he delivers another wonderful performance as Mr. Bishop. But he is matched by Frances McDormand as his wife, and Bruce Willis as the third part of the love triangle. Best of all is Edward Norton as the Khaki Scout leader  - he’s good at his job, although as one thing after another happens, he looks worse and worse, and Norton becomes more befuddled. It is a welcome reminder of just what a gifted comedic actor the usually intense Norton can be in the right role.

 
Moonrise Kingdom is a wonderful film – expertly crafted by Anderson, but with a mixture of tone from comedic to melancholy that Anderson handles just right. It has the sweetness and innocence of a children’s fantasy, and yet the realism that the world of adults is a whole lot messier and confusing than it all seems as children. This is one of the best films of the year.

Movie Review: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Fantastic Mr. Fox ****
Directed By: Wes Anderson.

Written By: Wes Anderson & Noah Baumbach based on the book by Roald Dahl.

Starring: George Clooney (Mr. Fox), Meryl Streep (Mrs. Fox), Jason Schwartzman (Ash), Bill Murray (Badger), Wallace Wolodarsky (Kylie), Eric Chase Anderson (Kristofferson), Michael Gambon (Franklin Bean), Willem Dafoe (Rat), Owen Wilson (Coach Skip), Jarvis Cocker (Petey), Wes Anderson (Weasel), Karen Duffy (Linda Otter), Robin Hurlstone (Walter Boggis), Hugo Guinness (Nathan Bunce), Helen McCrory (Mrs. Bean), Roman Coppola (Squirrel Contractor), Juman Malouf (Agnes), Brian Cox (Action 12 Reporter), Adrien Brody (Field Mouse).

Just because Wes Anderson’s latest film, Fantastic Mr. Fox, is a stop motion animated film, that doesn’t mean that it is any less of a Wes Anderson film. It has the same visual look - the exacting attention to detail in terms of its cinematography, art direction and costume design, the same musical fixations on the 1960s and the 1970s, and the same basic themes - about children’s disappointments in their parents - particularly their fathers. The audience I saw the film with was mostly made up of kids and their parents, who seemed confused by what they saw on screen. Like Spike Jonze’s recent Where the Wild Things Are, Fantastic Mr. Fox is a kid’s movie that is more about families and their disappointments than really for children.

Mr. Fox (George Clooney) is the best thief in the area. There is not a farm that he cannot infiltrate and steal chickens, geese or whatever else he wants. But when he finds out that his girlfriend (Meryl Streep) is pregnant, and the two decide to get married, he agrees to give up his thieving ways. 12 Fox years later, their cub Ash (Jason Schwartzman) is on the cusp of adolescence, and Mr. Fox is bored with his new life as a newspaper man. He is also tired of living in a hole. So he purchases a tree and moves the family in. This is when Cousin Kristofferson (Eric Anderson) comes to live with them as well, because his dad has “Double Pneumonia”. Mr. Fox takes an immediate liking to Kristofferson. He is athletic, just like he was, and unlike Ash, who fancies himself an athlete, but doesn’t have the talent. But the real action in the movie begins when Mr. Fox notices that his new house faces the three biggest farms in the area. The farms belong to Boggis, Bunce and Bean, three notoriously cruel farmers. Mr. Fox cannot help himself; he decides to rob all three farms with the help of his new friend, the dimwitted possum Kylie (Wally Wolodarsky). Of course, things do not work out like he planned they would.

The surface level of the film is brilliant. It has a distinctive look that marks it as different from even other stop motion animated films. The characters move with a jerkiness that fits their characters. When the wind blows, the hair on the animals ruffles. The characters all have their own unique ways of moving, and very specific character design. The film is full of color, and visual inventiveness. As with the other Wes Anderson films, the humor comes out of the details. I love Owen Wilson’s Coach trying to explain the extremely complicated game of Whack Bat, the details of the robbery schemes, and a throwaway moment when Mr. Fox and his crew sneak over to hide behind a motorcycle, and come out riding a miniature version of the exact same bike. The dialogue has many hilarious moments in it (I particularly love how they replace every bad word with “cuss”, as in “You cussing at me”). Brilliant.

Yet, as with all the other Anderson films, Fantastic Mr. Fox has an emotional underpinning that many people are going to overlook. Anderson’s films have always been praised for their visuals, but often times the pain and emotions in his films have been overlooked in critics rush to praise his exacting attention to detail. But the characters in Fantastic Mr. Fox belong to a family much like the others that have populated Anderson’s films. Ash resents his father, who is distant from him, and seems to like Kristofferson a lot more than he likes his own son. Mr. Fox is not unlike Royal Tenenbaum, from Anderson’s best film, as his is a lovable rogue (which makes Clooney perfect for the role, and he delivers one of the best performances of his career in the role). We like him, but we feel like perhaps we shouldn’t. He is not really a good father or husband, or at least he isn’t at the beginning of the movie. He does learn as he goes through though.

Fantastic Mr. Fox also contains some startling moments that we do not expect to see in an animated film that at least hopes to reach children. Rat (Willem Dafoe), is the one animal around that does not fall in line with Mr. Fox, and their encounters become increasingly tense, until they reach fatal levels. But the physical pain and violence in that scene is nothing compared to a scene between Mr. and Mrs. Fox, where she lashes out at him and tells him that she never should have married him, leaving him alone in front of a downfall of water in the films most memorable image.
This year has been full of movies aimed at children that have been more mature than most aimed at them. Not only Fantastic Mr. Fox and the aforementioned Where the Wild Things Are, but also Pixar’s Up. All of these films deal with more serious issues than most kids movie do. They treat children with respect, and think they are intelligent. Even if these films are not really appropriate for the youngest of viewers, older kids should like these movies. But even if they don’t, adults should. This is one of the best films of the year.