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The word most often used to describe Wes Anderson is ‘twee’. It generally refers to a kind of folksy whimsy or childlike sensibility that a lot of people have identified with his aesthetic -both in his films and personality. He’s a very soft-spoken, thin, pale, white man who dresses almost exclusively in colourful tweed suits -the word is right there in his fashion sense! It’s a very particular look, charming in an idiosyncratic, anachronistic way. His movies too have a particular look, and one that seems to match his in style and attitude. They might almost seem unassuming, shy like the man is, and yet they exude extreme confidence and precision. They have the air of a modest indifference, subtle spontaneity and a lackadaisical charm, but are in fact rigid in design, calculated to the finest detail. In fact, Wes Anderson’s body of work may be among the most deliberate movies made by Hollywood in the last twenty-five years.
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It was indeed twenty-five years ago that Anderson’s first movie, a little indie heist flick called Bottle Rocket, came out to a lukewarm response. Since then, his movies have gained in profile, as he has defined and refined his artistic voice. With that has come public scrutiny, some of it often unfair, especially once it became so distinctly recognizable. Anderson is a filmmaker with a lot of deep ideas, a great deal of empathy, and a breadth of knowledge that sometimes gets lost in his movies being perceived strictly through the lens of his “quirky” aesthetic. Everybody knows what a Wes Anderson movie looks like, but do they know what it is saying? So pop culture will often write his films off or underestimate them, conflate or misunderstand them. There has been a lot of this recently in sectors of the online film community directed towards his latest, The French Dispatch –which has experienced a vocal backlash in spite of all the praise, as most Anderson movies do, criticizing him for maintaining those things that are a staple of his work. Headlines like “Wes Anderson Overindulges on Whimsy”, “Overstuffed Cast Indulges Wes Anderson’s Worst Habits”; terms thrown around like “exasperating”, “pretentious”, “shallow”, and of course, “twee”. There’s a sense among some viewers and critics that Anderson has reached a ceiling, that he’s just running in place, and has been for a while. Far from it, in my opinion. And as many who have seen his movies can attest to, he is not a clear-cut filmmaker, and is anything but predictable.
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That image of what a Wes Anderson movie is sticks with people, especially those who may not actually have much point of reference beyond that, those who haven’t actually seen his movies. I was one of these people for a while, having simply caught The Royal Tenenbaums on TV as a kid and later watched The Grand Budapest Hotel shortly after it came out –and didn’t know what to think of either of them. Grand Budapest certainly didn’t seem to live up to what I expected of a Wes Anderson movie based on the parodies –that is aside from the visual symmetry and ensemble cast. Its’ humour was different, perhaps more direct than I expected it to be, and though the plot was largely farcical, there was a sadness there I couldn’t have anticipated.
In fact, the sadness and bittersweet sincerity is what I tend to remember in Wes Anderson movies as much as if not more than particular comic moments. There is a lot of melancholy in his work that can sometimes be missed in lieu of his comforting whimsical atmospheres, smart sense of humour, and graceful pacing; but he might just be one of the best at expressing such dimness among modern American filmmakers.
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And it goes all the way back to Bottle Rocket, a very silly film about three average guys in West Texas trying to pull off an elaborate caper. But it’s also a movie that ends with two best friends on opposite sides of a prison yard, their relationship diminished, and them likely parting ways for good. The friendship between Anthony (Luke Wilson) and Dignan (Owen Wilson) is a low-key emotional tenant of the movie behind all of the humour. Bottle Rocket on a whole doesn’t really invest in drama any more than an average comedy with romance or bromance subplots, but Anderson does hint at a desire and capacity for more serious themes.
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Rushmore, which followed Bottle Rocket two years later, has those in spades. It’s a more personal film, so that makes sense, drawing upon feelings and experiences of both Anderson and Owen Wilson –who co-wrote the film with him. Rushmore is also characterized by a heightened comedic sensibility and eccentric characters, but underlying it is an unmistakable despondence. On paper it’s funny that a fifteen-year-old dweeb with no footing in reality would be friends with a late-forties businessman detached from his family and in a professional slump –and it is, but it also very distinctly highlights a fundamental sadness in both of these people who just can’t connect meaningfully with anyone else. Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) and Herman Blume (Bill Murray) are emotional peers, and Anderson conveys exactly how sad an idea that is. Rushmore has often been compared to The Graduate, a clear influence on Anderson and Wilson’s script; and I daresay it’s the more powerful of the two. There’s an affecting rawness to both its’ characters and their relationship to the world around them that they are, in different ways, woefully out of place in. I mostly despised Max the first time through, but on the second watch I pitied him, and could even understand on some level his particular emotional immaturity. The disaffection of Herman is quite resonant too, his desire for a second chance at adulthood. Anderson writes these characters with an attached honesty and he takes seriously their feelings –in spite of the quirks in his world and story, Max may be one of the most authentic teenagers on film. All the while Anderson shrouds the movie in a dismal autumnal mood, he incorporates songs that have a sad air –a couple Cat Stevens tracks namely; and he evokes well in his direction a critical sense of solitude.
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That pervasive loneliness also factors into The Royal Tenenbaums, arguably Andersons’ most important movie –it’s where a lot of the most recognizable aspects of his visual and narrative language first took root. It’s a movie about a wealthy dysfunctional family that has fallen on hard times after collectively peaking too early, and the dishonest efforts by their patriarch Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman), the source of many of their miseries, to make amends. Once again, it’s a funny premise coloured by eccentric characters: Chas (Ben Stiller) permanently sporting a red tracksuit, Richie (Luke Wilson) living in a small tent in the sitting room, and Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) with her wooden finger and near-constant daze. Yet there’s a deep resonant sadness in each of them that accounts in some way for their behavioural quirks. As Anderson draws comedy out of fucked-up things like Royal pretending he has terminal cancer to get closer to Etheline (Anjelica Huston) and especially the quasi-incestuous attraction Richie and Margot harbour for each other, he also interrogates them with empathy so that you actually feel for these people.
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There are multiple tragedies in how these relationships have unfolded, and Anderson doesn’t so subtly couch them this time. Deep trauma is there on the surface, unaddressed wounds -one character even attempts suicide in maybe the harshest moment in an Anderson movie. Chas has extreme resentment towards Royal, Royal doesn’t even know Margot’s middle name, and Margot has gone through a series of empty relationships to fill a void in her life left by Royal and Richie. Vain and terrible though he is, Royal, is seen to have heavy remorse for his role in all this, his absence in the lives of his children -and when he dies having atoned for that, there’s a real catharsis. It’s a weird and wonderful movie for this. The scene where a brother and his adopted sister mourn their shared but impossible love set to “Ruby Tuesday” is one of the most profoundly affecting in Andersons’ entire oeuvre, not to mention both Paltrow’s and Wilson’s best acted moment.
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The theme of family continues to be employed in a melancholy way in Andersons’ next two films. In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, about the wild exploits of a documentarian oceanographer, an apparent father and son relationship is once again coloured by absenteeism. Of course the bitter irony is that Ned (Owen Wilson) believes so emphatically that Zissou (Bill Murray) is his long-lost father, but is in fact just an unrelated role model he set expectations on. He goes to the grave not knowing the truth. And Zissou’s got something of both Herman and Royal to him, Murray hinting at his layers of regret. There’s also of course, his capacity to be moved by natural beauty. The Life Aquatic is arguably the most outrageous of Andersons’ films, but there is still something haunting and woeful about it. It does begin after all with the death of Zissou’s close friend and partner, and end with the death of his surrogate son.
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Death likewise hangs over The Darjeeling Limited, up until this point Anderson’s ‘most serious’ movie –a story of three brothers on a journey of spiritual enlightenment and reconciliation in India after their fathers’ passing. This movie packs more overt bleakness as it deals with an estranged family with deep wounds, an allusion to another suicide attempt, and perhaps most infamously the death of a child as symbolic of one brothers’ insecurity. Anderson openly stated the film was inspired by the cinema of Satyajit Ray, which contains a lot of grim tragedy (the Apu trilogy especially), though in replicating that, Anderson demonstrates not quite the necessary tact –Darjeeling is generally considered one of his weaker films. I agree with that assessment, and yet there’s no denying it stands as uniquely ambitious in terms of his dismal subject matter. And it is rather effective some of the time.
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However, I think perhaps Andersons’ greatest indulgence came a few films later with Moonrise Kingdom, his inauspicious, poignant coming-of-age tale of young love. Moonrise Kingdom, perhaps because it centres on two atypical children who fall in love and run away together, is one of his most stereotyped movies; one of the most frequently labeled with cutesy monikers of “twee” and “whimsical”, but in actuality it’s one of his most serious and emotionally mature. Because it deals with difficult issues related to family, social structures, burgeoning sexuality, and belonging, and takes seriously the dismay and malaise of its’ two young protagonists. Above all, the film is driven by a rejection of institution, whether it be the foster care system, the regulatory scouts’ organization, or even just a nuclear family that neglects a childs’ emotional needs. Both Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward) are non-emotional, introverted, implicitly depressed kids who receive little love and have minimal freedoms, that you can hardly blame them making out on their own to create a paradise for themselves.
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Few movies so validate the intensity of childhood resolve, the significance of their wants and needs; few better understand and communicate that desperation to be understood when nobody around them seems interested or capable. Anderson convinces his audience that Sam and Suzy are meant for each other, for as minimalist as their relationship often is. It’s incredibly sweet in this way. And each time their tranquil Eden is interrupted it’s dejecting to see –the prospect of them being returned to those listless lives. And Anderson knows exactly how to craft this so that it goes straight to the heart without being maudlin. The sheer casualness of Sam’s foster parents deciding to give him up for example makes it that much more shockingly bitter. Moonrise Kingdom being less in the habit of jokes or open comedy as Andersons’ other films, I feel it is what he strove to accomplish with Darjeeling. A thoughtful movie exploring sincere emotions with a melancholy air that nonetheless blossoms into something beautiful and heartwarming.
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Decidedly less heartwarming ultimately and more bittersweet (with an emphasis on bitter) is The Grand Budapest Hotel. This is a movie about loss, loss of innocence and specifically the loss of one’s world and its’ memories. These themes don’t feature much into the main plot, which is quite silly as it deals with a missing painting and a posh concierge being framed for murder in 1930s Germanic Europe. But creeping in occasionally on the edges are signs of a changing world, the encroachment of fascism, and a social order in decline. Anderson wrote the film with Hugo Guinness, inspired by the work of Stefan Zweig, incorporating a degree of fatalism into the movie, as discussed remarkably by Mikey Neumann. The characters of the film are destined for misery -the final scenes of the story proper, following a jovial, fun, and silly farce, detail how Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes) was killed by soldiers in defence of Zero (Tony Revolori), and how Zero’s beloved Agatha (Saoirse Ronan) died early into their marriage of influenza alongside their child.
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There’s idealism too in The French Dispatch, but more optimism paired with it, and a tangible reverence. Anderson’s New Yorker analogue is about as romantically portrayed as Zero’s idea of the Grand Budapest. I don’t think Anderson particularly minds romanticism though -he’s fascinated by it. The French Dispatch also deals with the end of things -the death of editor Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray) signaling also the death of the newspaper itself. Yet its’ stories are innately tributary, homages to the work of their journalists and the curious lives of the figures they shed light on. The loving air of that in tandem with the mournful mood courses through the film as it finds additional moments of pathos. Like Moses Rosenthaler’s (Benicio del Toro) nondescript yet potent love for Simone (Léa Seydoux). Or the premature death of that visionary Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet). Or just the general experiences of Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) and Nescaffier (Stephen Park) whose shared perceptions and anxieties in their lives and role in France allude to that same sense of un-belonging that characterized much of Moonrise Kingdom. Each story featured is tinged with its’ own degree of moroseness, as otherwise inspiring or poignant as they are. Yet the film is this mirror to Grand Budapest, the two being particularly indicative of Andersons’ maturity as a filmmaker of solemnity. There’s a palpable sadness that good things must end but an appeal for celebration in the fact that they were.
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I think because Anderson does always come back to that kind of warmth, that the dramatic sadness to his movies is overlooked. Melancholy is there in his animated films too, The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs, but not to as thorough or interesting a degree I feel as in his live-action projects -which is why I didn’t go into them here. Indeed it does permeate all of his work, alongside his unique comedic tastes and ever-evolving mode of visual expressionism, and he ought to be recognized for it. His movies have a soulful maturity and emotional resonance often outstripping those of his contemporaries, in spite of the box pop culture has put him into. His movies are devastating, amidst being joyful and sweet, he humbly stitches those things together to the point you might not walk away thinking about the gloom. Yet taken on its’ own, those detours into sadness are enlightening and poignant -they speak credibly to a truth and humanity that is a vital grounding force in films so aestheticized and seemingly unreal. It’s just part of the way these movies grasp your heart. So the next time someone tries in vein to recreate or appropriate his style, they better throw some depressing beats in there, some bummer moments and melancholy story devices. Like symmetrical framing and Bill Murray, it isn’t a Wes Anderson movie without them.
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