THE PERFECTLY PRECIOUS WORLD OF WES ANDERSON
By Kim Morgan
Special to MSN Movies
Recently, The Guardian's film blog ran a small piece highlighting the trailer
for Wes Anderson's upcoming -- and for
Anderson fans, greatly anticipated -- "Moonrise Kingdom." With perhaps a mixture of love
and mockery, the writer checked off the usual Anderson tropes: "Every box is
ticked: Schwartzman, Murray, pint-sized precocity, a retro palette, distracted
dads, slo-mo hand-holding, fab hats, dead-centre deadpan," and then asked
readers to weigh in on what they thought. As you can imagine, opinions were
split between excitement and annoyance. One of the more amusing comments came
from a reader who stated, "You can tell this is a discussion about Wes Anderson
movies when it boils down to the fact that he's definitely using a different
font this time."
Ah, yes, Anderson's attention to detail -- the clothes, the pastel colors,
the walkie- talkies, megaphones and record players, the ... Dalmatian mice.
Those things that many critics have decried as an addiction to quirk, an overly
precious and obnoxious palette that values style over substance -- a critique
that's decidedly more tired and lazy than anything Wes Anderson's ever done, I
might add.
In fact, nothing Wes Anderson creates is lazy. There's always some twist. It
takes an aggressive stylist, innovative soul and industrious spirit to create
Margot Tenenbaum, raccoon eyeliner, mink coat, Izod dress, missing finger and
all. She is singular Anderson (you actually forget Gwyneth Paltrow is playing her), not
only for her personal style, but for her bittersweet beauty, her sad, fatherless
childhood, her past triumphs, future failures and her deadpan demeanor,
something that fills his frame so perfectly that she becomes overwhelmingly
touching. I challenge anyone to get through Nico's "These Days" without, at
least once, thinking of Margot Tenenbaum stepping off the Green Line bus. And
yet, she's likable, intelligent and funny too. In short, she is style and
substance. She's not merely a cardboard cut-out of quirk -- she's an
interesting, mysterious woman, and nothing you've seen in any other film, and
she's now so iconic that no other filmmaker could create her. She practically
carries her own copyright. And yet, we recognize her, somewhere, in some kind of
buried childhood memory or something.
Which leads me to one essential element of Wes Anderson: nostalgia. And not
just nostalgia for nostalgia's sake, collecting memories like Star Wars action
figures encased in original packaging, never to be played with. No, he's getting
at something deeper and more ennui-filled: those feelings of childhood that are
both beautiful and painful because we can only access them through memories,
pictures, music and our father's clunky old dial phone (something you'll see in
an Anderson phone, no matter what year it is). It's not surprising that most of
Anderson's adults act much like children -- or rather, act like what we, as
children, might have imagined we'd be like as adults. We'd hail dented gypsy
cabs in New York, travel on the Darjeeling Limited with our siblings or, as in
"The Life Aquatic," become Jacques Cousteau Zissou explorers, calling our
competition "my nemesis." It's a lovely presage that the book Max Fischer checks
out in "Rushmore" is "Diving for Sunken Treasure" by Jacques Cousteau.
That's not to say Anderson's films are adolescent. There's too much adult
reflection and seriousness within his meticulously art-directed frames. Royal
Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) may be a lovable,
nattily dressed deadbeat dad, but he's also, eventually, a regretful man who
truly loves his family. The shot of the one son who resents him most, the
business-minded, now excessively safety-oriented Chaz (a red tracksuit-clad Ben Stiller), sitting teary-eyed with
a vulnerable and dying Royal in the back of an ambulance hits the viewer with
such a powerful punch that you are smacked into the reality of loss. It's so
emotional that, for some of us, you can feel it in your stomach and without
warning, you spontaneously sob. That's not just style. And it's not easy
sentimentality either.
But back to his style and signature. Anderson loves his slow-mo shots (and
montages) set to music (and with great taste -- the Kinks, the Who, Brian
Jones-era Rolling Stones, Love, David Bowie, David Bowie in Portuguese, Nico) to
the point where it drives some viewers crazy. Or, in the case of an Indian boy's
funeral in "The Darjeeling Limited," offends them (I don't agree
with that critique and find the slow-mo during that tragic moment powerful,
allowing us to drink in all of what's happening -- for all of the characters).
Anderson's slow-mo has become so recognizable that a savvy YouTuber created a
video comprised of Wes Anderson slo-mo shots, all set to Ja Rule (see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRGqeHIItY8 --
Editor's note: Contains profanities.). I have no problem with Ja Rule, but
it's not quite the same as Max Fischer emerging from an elevator to the Who's "A
Quick One, While He's Away."
And then there's the God's-eye view. Anderson adores that shot with an almost
fervid fetishization tantamount to Hitchcock's love of blondes. Books, letters,
laminated lists, even Richie Tenenbaum's bleeding, suicidal wrists are shot from
above (check out the YouTube tribute called Wes Anderson// From Above: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNpVURAgG5g). For me, each
method serves its purpose with potent panache. A slow-mo allows us to drink in
the scene and even feel placed in the action. The omnispective POV has us
floating above it, like a memory. Who stamps library books anymore? It's perfect
to view this outdated act from above, like how we often dream -- out of body:
something dislodged, both spatially and temporally, from the past.
It's interesting, then, that Anderson's brilliant debut feature, "Bottle Rocket," finds his most compelling character
planning for the future. Owen Wilson's Dignan has listed a
detailed 50-year plan of goals for his small crew (namely his best friend
Anthony, played by his brother Luke) that involves petty criminal shenanigans,
like robbing a book store (with unfortunate small bags), family homes ("You took
the earrings, Dignan? ") and a cold-storage facility, leading to Dignan's
valiant efforts to save crew member Apple Jack, and to his swift arrest. Though
Anderson would go further with set design and detail, Dignan is an Anderson (and
Wilson) creation through and through -- his defining moment in which viewers
were absolutely disarmed by a character and actor (Wilson brought a unique style
and wit that has been part of Anderson's universe since). And further, in an era
of Tarantino rip-offs (the 1990s), we were absolutely struck by the movie's
inherent sweetness. Dignan, like Anderson, is thoroughly well-organized,
micromanaging the kind of world he wants to live in, from his yellow jumpsuit
(he's ordered a dozen of them) to the correct way Anthony should escape from a
mental institution. And yet, in the real world, Dignan, like all of us, just
can't achieve that kind of perfection, which by film's end is overwhelmingly
poignant. The ever-enthusiastic Dignan (no matter what) jokes (perhaps
half-jokes) from the prison yard something like an action movie shoot: "Here are
just a few of the key ingredients: dynamite, pole vaulting, laughing gas,
choppers -- can you see how incredible this is going to be? -- hang gliding,
come on!" Is this Dignan? Or Wes Anderson? Pity Dignan couldn't have become a
movie director.
So, back to Anderson's critics. When J.D. Salinger passed away, I wrote a
piece for MSN about his influence on cinema (even as Salinger, save for one bad
attempt, never wanted any movies made of his work). Wes Anderson was a major
part of that piece, and I pointed out that critics of Salinger slapped Anderson
with similar derision. Both have been called overly precious, overly privileged
and overly adoring of characters living in a vacuum of nostalgia and sweetness,
dislocated from reality. Well, what, exactly, is wrong with nostalgia and
sweetness? Particularly if it's crafted with genuine heart and individual éclat?
And Anderson's distinct dislocation, inertia and wistfulness -- from the
Tenenbaums to the Foxes -- is part of the point. When Anderson sets it
beautifully, like when Margot and Richie Tenenbaum tearfully discuss his suicide
attempt and profess their love for each other in their tent while listening to
the Stones' "She Smiled Sweetly," Anderson allows the record to keep playing,
and so when we hear, up next, "Ruby Tuesday," the entire moment is filled with
such bittersweet beauty. As Henry Allen wrote in his remembrance of Salinger,
"Hemingway was a writer who made unhappiness beautiful. Salinger took it a step
further -- with the same uncanny ability to evoke the world his characters move
through, he made it a virtue." The same could be said of Anderson. That, and as
Dignan said, "I'm not always as confident as I look."
Kim Morgan is a film writer who runs the MSN Movies blog and has
contributed to many outlets including LA Weekly, Reel.com, DVD Journal, Salon
and The Huffington Post. She was a film critic for The Oregonian and served as
DVD critic on Tech TV's "The Screen Savers." She's also appeared as guest film
critic on AMC's "The Movie Club," E! Television, Reelz, Starz and "Ebert &
Roeper." Read her blog at SunsetGun.com.
