How I Came to Love Wes Anderson (with the Help of a Dead Russian)
Below the surface beats the heart of a director preoccupied with failure, loss, and alienation.
By CHARLIE GILLETTE
The name Wes Anderson brings a number of things to mind: a palate of pastel colors, off-beat dialogue, large casts of quirky characters, slow-motion sequences set to music, and nostalgic soundtracks. And yet, for all of these presumably harmless characteristics, Anderson’s films provoke polarizing responses: complete adoration or absolute loathing.
Love it or hate it, Anderson’s style is unique, and it is identifiable in every single frame of his films. He has, over the course of two decades and eight features, established himself as a distinctive voice in contemporary American cinema.
Detractors of Anderson’s work criticize his carefully crafted world as “style over substance,” emotionally detached, quirky, and twee. They say he places aesthetic showiness over human connection, which can leave storylines stagnant.
Some claim not to know what his films are about, and some say his characters go through a bizarre sequence of events yet fail to arrive anywhere. Some people just don’t get Wes Anderson’s world. I was one of those people.
Watching Wes Anderson, I Wanna Die
The first Wes Anderson film I saw was The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004). On our third date, my former significant other mentioned it was one of his favorite films. When he suggested we watch it, I thought “I've heard of this Wes Anderson character! Why not?” I imagined us nestled on the couch, eating popcorn, bonding over a mutual love of this film.
What actually happened: I sat through what felt like eternity trying to follow the bizarre plot, occasionally laughing, but mainly waiting for the ordeal to end. After the 119 minutes, I felt confused and drained. Bill Murray feels my pain.
Sure the movie was visually appealing and had some quirky charm, but honestly, how was this anyone’s favorite film? Was it supposed to be funny or sad? What was this movie even about? I really felt like I was missing something.
What I didn't realize until much later, is that Anderson has developed an incredibly nuanced style where visual aesthetic is a manifestation of the psychologies of characters that hide behind cold exteriors and displacement techniques. His films are not stoic, but deeply personal.
Just below the surface of the candy-colored sets, the music and ensemble of dysfunctional characters, beats the heart of a director preoccupied with failure, hesitation, loss and alienation.
Anderson’s Influences
Many of Anderson’s films include literary devices that suggest a strong connection to writing and literature. See, for example, the inclusion of Alec Baldwin as the omniscient narrator in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and the division of the film into chapters—a format usually reserved for books (and Quentin Tarantino films, I suppose).
Additionally, many of Anderson’s characters — Margot Tenenbaum (Gwyneth Paltrow), Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), and Jack Whitman (also Schwartzman) — are writers. Likewise, from Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012), Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) is obsessed with escaping to other worlds through reading.
Anderson openly acknowledges his literary influences. His stories of dysfunctional families and disaffected youths are often compared to the works of J.D. Salinger. Specifically, the genius Tenenbaum family is reminiscent of Salinger’s Glass Family. Rushmore’s (1998) protagonist, Max Fischer, and Bottle Rocket’s (1996) Anthony (Luke Wilson) are often compared to The Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield.
In addition to literary inspirations, Anderson is clearly influenced by filmmakers who came before him. For example, in Rushmore Bill Murray, a depressed millionaire who hates his sons, seeks reprieve under the water of his pool. This scene is an active symbol of Murray’s emotional state and is reminiscent of Dustin Hoffman’s pool scene in The Graduate (1967).
Further, Anderson says, “The Royal Tenenbaums was really inspired by [Orson Welles’] The Magnificent Ambersons more than anything.” What’s more, the cast of characters sequence from the beginning of The Royal Tenenbaums (below) is a nod to other Orson Welles films like Mr. Arkadin (1955).
Anderson is also influenced by the films of the French New Wave, most deeply by those of François Truffaut.
In The Royal Tenenbaums, Ari and Uzi steal milk from a bodega by hiding it in a track jacket. A similar scene takes place in Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959) when Antoine steals milk from outside a shop. He also hides it in his jacket. Additionally, Suzy Bishop from Moonrise Kingdom and Marianne from Pierrot Le Fou (1965) both use “lefty-scissors” to wound and kill their attackers.
Although Anderson’s inspirations and influences are widely known and acknowledged, it is difficult to pin down the director’s essence. He borrows bits from everywhere, yet doesn't emulate anyone or anything. He remains unique.
Anderson and Chekhov, Match Made in Heaven
I made an unlikely connection that inspired me to revisit Wes Anderson’s work. Three years after my first encounter with Wes and team Zissou, I was taking an acting class focusing on the works of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. A large part of the class consisted of deep text analysis of Chekhov’s plays. We combed over every detail, prop, stage direction, and punctuation mark the playwright left to garner clues about his characters and intentions.
I really grew to love Chekhov’s quirky characters and dark sense of humor. Then, after months of painstaking analysis, it suddenly hit me: Anton Chekhov reminded me a lot of Wes Anderson.
“I have always been drawn to long takes in film…I like the experience of seeing the actors play the scene through and maybe that’s like the theatre a bit…not having cuts…I have always wanted to work in the theatre, but I’ve never actually done it, but I’ve had many plays in my films and maybe theatre is part of my movie work.” — Wes Anderson on his style for Way Too Indie
Anderson’s privileged milieus, self-deceiving, maladjusted characters, and deadpan comedy actually reflect, possibly unconsciously, the work and style of Chekhov. Both have an indefinable quality to their work. Because of this, each is commonly described in terms of itself: a Wes Anderson film is “Wes Anderson-y” and a Chekhov play is “Chekhovian.”
So why did I enjoy one and not the other? Once again, I felt I was missing out on something, but this time I was determined to find out what it was.
If I could spend months analyzing intimate details of Chekhov’s plays, I could do the same for Anderson’s films — and I intend to do just that, in my senior thesis for the film department at Columbia University.
My aim, in comparing Anderson to Chekhov, is to expose nuanced elements present in the former’s work, which have generally been overlooked by mainstream audiences and largely ignored by critics. In doing this, I hope to come to appreciate Anderson’s sense of humor, fastidious detail, and characters. Ironically enough, I can now say he is one of my favorite filmmakers.
“You have to be ready for them. That was the experience I had, for instance, with Luis Buñuel. The first Buñuel movies that I saw were some of the last ones — you know, ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’ and ‘That Obscure Object of Desire.’ I watched them when I was first in college and I didn't get them at all. I just didn't respond to them. And then, three years later, I saw one of his earlier films — I think it was Jeanne Moreau in ‘Diary of a Chambermaid’ — and I suddenly understood his sense of humor. So I went back and started watching all of his films, and finally I arrived back at the ones that I’d started with, except this time I loved them. I got them, you see. I was ready for them.’’ — Wes Anderson from “Watching Movies with Wes Anderson” NY Times
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