Diana Ringo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Geoff Carter
In The New Wave 2.0 series, The Pen in Hand Blog will be examining the work of today’s most provocative and influential filmmakers, artists whose filmic stylings and compelling narratives have stretched the boundaries of modern cinema. Referencing Francois Truffaut’s definition of an auteur, these pieces will be looking at writer/directors whose singular visions have transcended the art of filmmaking and expanded the boundaries of cinematic storytelling. This week, The Pen in Blog will be examining the wildly diverse worlds of Wes Anderson.
The Best of All Worlds: The Films of Wes Anderson
His films are so unexpectedly and delightfully unconventional, witty, inventive, and good-natured that the sublime undercurrents of melancholy flowing just beneath the surface seem all the more poignant and disturbing. The familial tensioins in The Royal Tenenbaums, particularly between the father Royal (Gene Hackman) and eldest son Chas (Ben Stiller), Royal and daughter Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), and Royal and his ex-wife Etheline (Angelica Huston), would seem appalling in not framed in the context of a man desperately trying to reunite—albeit for financial reasons—with his family. There is a similar sadness behind the runaway misfits in Moonrise Kingdom (tempered by the absurd scout troop and weirdly New England exotic island culture) and the longing and anguish of the banished hounds in Isle of Dogs(tempered by the love story between a boy and his dog).
No one makes films like Wes Anderson. A master of color, style, production design, animation, and narrative innovations, his films—or more properly, structured fragments of them—run the gamut from broad comedy to offbeat sidebars to meticulously framed and colored canvases. The color palettes for his films are carefully chosen and meticulously followed. A Wes Anderson film is immediately identifiable, partly because of the innovative structures and devices, but also because of his gently whimsical tone. Some critics have compared the narrative structures of Anderson movies to books, or, in the case of his latest creation, The French Dispatch, to magazines—in this particular case, The New Yorker.
Dispatch is structured like a series of magazine articles running the gamut from a travelogue by Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson), a bicycling travel writer with a quirky view of Ennui-Sur-Seine, to an exotic restaurant review—kidnapping mystery—car chase—by Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright), to an obituary of the magazine’s founder and editor Howitzer (Bill Murray), and to a profile of recent student protesters by Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand), the film is a tribute to The New Yorker magazine. Indeed, most of the characters are based on actual New Yorker staff writers.
The writer/narrator of each segment lends a separate authorial point-of-view to each segment. Wilson’s Sazerac narrates the seamier side of Ennui-sur-Blasé, comparing locations like Pickpockets’ Alley, the arcade, and other locations that have changed over time. His earnest dedication to “his people”, the workers, students, prostitutes, and pimps, is touching.
“The Concrete Masterpiece”, an art review by the bombastic art reviewer J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton) is a masterpiece of narratorial persona and cinematic pastiche. Framed as a lecture, Swinton’s Berenson article is excessive, breezy, and hilarious. The tale of artistic Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro) is told in a combination of unexpected color, black and white, tableaux, stop-action, and animated cutaways (the airplane trip). This technique of abruptly—although mostly seamlessly—mixing media during his films is an Anderson trademark, also found in Moonrise Kingdom, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
Stylistically, Anderson draws on elements from Mon Oncle by Jacques Tati, Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir, and even The Red Balloon by Albert Lamorisse. Other stylistic he uses are carefully coordinated color palettes within his films, symmetrical framing, and knolling (the placing of objects at careful right angles to each other—giving mise-en-scene a look of a selectively contrived reality). Anderson also is known for his use of miniatures, flat space, whip zooms, and a carefully choreographed production design—often used for striking effect.
In The Royal Tenenbaums, one of the numerous scene in which Royal (Gene Hackman) confronts Chas (Ben Stiller) takes place in a tiny closet filled with dozens and dozens of board games, offering a instantaneous one-shot x-ray into the fractured childhoods of the Tenenbaum children as well as drawing audience members into that distant past. Who among us hasn’t played “Operation”, “Go to the Head of the Class” or “Risk”? Solely through his use of mise-en-scene, Anderson encapsulates Chas’s—and the audience’s—childhood memories.
Anderson uses animation freely in other features but has delved into full-length feature animation films. Based on the Roald Dahl story, The Fantastic Mr. Fox is a stop-motion animation film about a settled family man, Mr. Fox (George Clooney) who cannot resist the wild animal within. He decides to raid neighboring corporate farms with disastrous results. Anderson’s use of shorthand—almost comic-book like—graphics to convey character are priceless. The classic “X’s (signifying the classic cartoon demise) flip onto Rat’s (Willem Defoe) eyes just after his undoing. Kylie’s (Wallace Wolodarsky) eyes turn into op-art swirls when he is puzzled. Stylized animations, as when the characters dig through a cross-section of Earth or show joy and relief—dancing as stick figures—are priceless images, similar to a child’s storybook illustrations.
In fact, many Anderson films draw stylistic and narrative tools from the printed page. In Moonlight Kingdom, set on the island of New Penzance, the film is mainly about two runaway misfit kids who fall in love, but is also complemented with short scenes of the Narrator (Bob Balaban) patiently explaining the natural features and meteorological tendencies—and history—of the island. His character is almost footnote, although he is definitely not invisible, but his commentary, while enlightening, gives an insular and inquisitive nature to this cinematic island world.
Wes Anderson films are also notable for its recurring appearances of actors, including Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Willem Defoe, Luke and Owen Wilson, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody, Jeff Goldblum, Angelica Huston, Bob Balaban, Tilda Swinton, and Edward Norton. This “company” of players lends an air of comfortable familiarity to his films; the audience—as much as is possible with a Wes Anderson film—knows what to expect. Plus, it seems as if they’re having a great time.
Auteurs create a personalized and unmistakable imprint on their films, but Wes Anderson does more than that. He creates peculiar, stilted, but wonderfully accessible cinematic worlds in his movies. The perfect framing, selective palettes, and fabulistic storytelling make watching any of his films a visual feast. His stories always display a wry humor that is tempered by the almost always omnipresent melancholic desires of his characters. His films are always a visual treat and always, always enlightening. They are the best of all worlds.