The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) — Read Along
“In fact, virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums had been erased by two decades of betrayal, failure and disaster”
Narrated by Alec Baldwin throughout, Wes Anderson’s third cinematic offering opens as you’d expect, with an overhead shot of a book. Which is upside down, naturally! The book is “The Royal Tenenbaums” and it’s being checked out of a library and we continue the book theme as a title slide of “Prologue” appears which is clearly a page from the aforementioned book. Cue an instrumental version of The Beatles “Hey Jude” and sit back, relax and enjoy another Wes Anderson master class of melancholic madness, surrealist satire and heart warming humour. The opening seven and a half minutes has it all: beautiful sweeping camera shots, straight on unemotional character shots, close ups on ordinary everyday items, zoom push ins and out on characters and title slides, lots and lots of title slides, from “Chas’ Room (2nd Floor)” to “Financial Magazines” to “Library of Plays” and “Models of Sets” to name just a few. Oh, and a champion tennis player, a cold and deadpan Father, a loving and devoted Mother, a highly ambitious and successful young boy, a 9th Grade Playwright, a missing finger, a failed painter and a very awkward Birthday. And some survivors on “crackers and root beer” and a Falcon named Mordecai! As Mordecai takes flight and is captured beautifully by a slowly moving sweeping camera, The Beatles reach their well known and crowd pleasing crescendo and the continuing theme of the book returns with another title slide “Cast of Characters (22 Years Later):
“Royal Tenenbaum” (Gene Hackman) Family Patriarch who through his own aloof and singular attitude has become estranged from his wife and three children. The onset of cancer forces Royal to re-evaluate his life and seek a family reconciliation. Direct and a force of nature, Royal speaks his mind without regard for those around him and Hackman portrays him superbly in a tragi-comedic way. The film revolves around his central performance as he tries and comically fails to ingratiate himself back into the lives of his disparate and distant family and this is personified by his early attempts to involve himself in the lives of his grandchildren Ari and Uzi. His highly inappropriate first meeting with them and his comment that their mother was a “terribly attractive woman” is wince inducing, but a later montage sound tracked by Paul Simon’s “Me and Julio down by the schoolyard” is a true highlight of the film, both in its simplicity and choice of music. But it’s also perfectly symptomatic of Royal himself, a man out of time, quite literally, but whose heart is very nearly in the right place.
“Etheline Tenenbaum” (Anjelica Huston) Family Matriarch and polar opposite of her husband. A busy archaeologist, Bridge player and utterly devoted Mother to her children who overlooks their individual foibles. A burgeoning relationship is developing with her Accountant, Business Manager and Bridge partner Henry Sherman, but it’s her laughter filled walk with Royal that really showcases Anjelica Huston’s understated performance. She may well rebuke her husband for impertinently enquiring about her love life at the end of the scene, but the scene itself is a joy as both lead actors perform admirably whilst Director Anderson follows their stroll with a long sweeping, tracking camera throughout. As with Hackman above, this part was written specifically for her and is the first of several collaborations with the Director.
“Chas Tenenbaum” (Ben Stiller) Perma track suited, aloof and very, very angry but often comically so. Chas is fiercely protective of his two sons which is exemplified by their chaotic and highly amusing late night fire drill but a touching scene soon follows sound tracked by John Lennon’s Look at Me and the highly prescient lyrics of “What am I supposed to be?”. Chas’ thoughts through the prism of John Lennon and another master stroke from the Director. Chas is deeply resentful of his Father and this is brilliantly encapsulated in their amusing yelling match inside the tight confines of a cupboard housing board games! This is Stiller’s one and only collaboration with Anderson to date and subsequently he’s rarely been better than his performance of Chas here.
“Margot Tenenbaum” (Gwyneth Paltrow) Margot sure has had a colourful life so far! And it shows in every look, touch and nuance of Gwyneth Paltrow’s performance as the deeply depressed and psychologically damaged Margot. On the surface she is a secret yet chain smoker, fulfilled yet anything but and a successful child prodigy playwright. Margot simply hasn’t found her place in the world and has been deeply unhappy since her adoption into the Tenenbaum family aged two. She is in love with her brother Richie, cuckolding her much older neurologist husband and having an affair with Richie’s best friend Eli! But this is just the tip of her twisted love life which is brilliantly realised in just one minute of screen time in a flurry of flashbacks and sound tracked by the excellent “Judy is a Punk” by The Ramones. Despite a particularly difficult role as Margot, Paltrow, like Stiller above, has rarely been better since.
“Eli Cash” (Owen Wilson) Joint co-writer again with Director Anderson in their third such collaboration, Owen Wilson returns for his second acting stint here as reckless and feckless family friend Eli Cash. Professionally, Eli is a moderately successful author and Assistant Professor of English Literature but he’s slowly and surely going off the rails and very definitely on drugs. His awkward and secret tryst with Margot is satisfying no-one and tellingly he states to his best friend “I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum, you know”. A superbly comedic cameo from Wilson and deserving of his Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay at the 2002 Oscars, an honour he shared with his friend and Director Anderson.
“Raleigh St Clair” (Bill Murray) In this, his second collaboration with the Director, Murray is excellent as the neurologist cum author Raleigh St Clair. It’s a subtle performance of gradual heartbreak but you’ll be cheering for Raleigh before he says “Au Revoir”.
“Henry Sherman” (Danny Glover) Accountant, Business Manager and Bridge partner of Etheline whom he adores and wishes to marry, Glover portrays Sherman with aplomb, typifying his gentlemanly, noble and stoic mannerisms well.
Also does a mean comedy fall down a hole!
“Richie Tenenbaum” (Luke Wilson) Permanently dressed like Bjorn Borg at the height of his late 1970’s power in a headband, wristband and Fila tennis shirt, Richie is a professional tennis player who’s dropped out of life to sail around the world to nurse his broken heart as he’s deeply in love with his adopted sister Margot but their love is doomed following her recent marriage. Richie is his Father’s favoured son and particularly close to his Dad however he’s as estranged from him as everyone else. This is Luke Wilson’s third collaboration with friend and Director Wes Anderson and owner of two of the film’s most heart breaking scenes, sound tracked by “Needle in the Hay” by Elliott Smith and “Ruby Tuesday” by The Rolling Stones.
Aside from the central performances noted above, each of these characters has a real narrative arc and all have their individual and distinctive character costume. Richie is perennially dressed in his tennis attire and sunglasses, his brother Chas was always dressed in a formal suit as a child and now as an adult is constantly dressed in a red Adidas track suit, Eli is always dressed as a cowboy and the remaining older male characters are attired in formal suits throughout the film. Etheline is the only character that doesn’t adhere to this rule and this is possibly a reflection that her character is the only one to have moved on with her life? In supporting roles are numerous actors and personal friends who return again from previous Wes Anderson films, notably Father and Son Kumar Pallana “Pagoda” and Dipak Pallana “Doctor”, Seymour Cassel returns as “Dusty” and friends Stephen Dignan and Brian Tenenbaum both return in roles as a “Paramedic”. Anderson’s brother Eric Chase Anderson is also involved as “Medical Student”. Stephen Lea Sheppard deserves great credit for his bizarre, surreal and almost wordless performance as Raleigh St Clair’s pet project “Dudley Heinsbergen”.
Behind the scenes, Robert Yeoman returns for his third stint as Director of Photography and watching the DVD extras and reading numerous articles on this gem of a film it’s apparent how key the partnership between Yeoman and Anderson is with their meticulous planning of every possible camera angle and ideas fleshed out in full before any principal photography is commenced. With every aspect of Anderson’s vision pre-planned to the nth degree a skilled Editor is a pre-requisite and Dylan Tichenor excels here. Surprisingly this is the only collaboration to date, however when you consider the films Tichenor has edited since The Royal Tenenbaums (Brokeback Mountain, There Will Be Blood, The Town, Lawless and Zero Dark Thirty) you can perhaps see why. A man in demand for sure! David Wasco deserves immense credit for the huge amount of production designs and similarly, this is his one and only collaboration to date however he has been rather busy working on the films of a certain Quentin Tarantino. Mark Mothersbaugh does return for his third stint as Music Composer however it’s a more subliminal score here than with “Rushmore” but the film excels again with it’s inclusion of so many classic 60’s/70’s and 1980’s tracks. In addition to the aforementioned songs from The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Paul Simon and The Ramones there are further songs from Bob Dylan, The Clash and many others before the film’s closing credits and the perfectly fitting “Everyone” by Van Morrison.
The story of The Tenenbaum family continues throughout in a story book fashion with titled slides announcing Chapters 1 through 7 before this darkly comedic yet melancholic familial tale of insecurities, loss, unrequited love, redemption and finding your place in the world concludes with a title slide of “Epilogue” and another classic slow motion ending and the strains of Van Morrison. Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson fully deserved their joint Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay for their disturbingly funny tale. Rushmore was an incredibly hard act to follow and they almost, almost surpassed it. 13 years on The Royal Tenenbaums is another bona fide Wes Anderson masterpiece with all of his trademarks of title slides, overhead shots, tracking shots, close in unemotional character shots and extreme zoom ins on ordinary everyday objects in place and The Tenenbaum family tale still resonates deeply with me and remains a melancholic gem well worthy of two hours of your time.
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