Tag: The Royal Tenenbaums

‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ and Wes Anderson Fatigue

And the worst of it is that awards recognition will probably just send Wes Anderson further up his own ass, if such a thing is even possible. I don’t think I’ll be rushing to see his subsequent films until I hear that he’s finally tried something different.

Ralph Fiennes in 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'
Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest Hotel

Written by Robin Hitchcock as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

I used to love Wes Anderson’s style and now I hate it. Did I change? Did his movies change? Or have they not changed enough?

The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson’s eighth feature film, is his first to receive wide awards season attention. Although his screenplays have been nominated twice before (The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom) and Fantastic Mr. Fox got a Best Animated Feature nod, The Grand Budapest Hotel is the first Wes Anderson film to amass a broad range of Academy Award nominations, including his first Best Picture and Best Director Oscar nods. And it won Best Comedy or Musical Film at the Golden Globes, beating out Oscar Best Picture front-runner Birdman.

So unless you are properly cynical about Hollywood awards, you’d probably guess there is something exceptional about The Grand Budapest Hotel compared to Wes Anderson’s other movies.  But there isn’t. There’s pretty much nothing in The Grand Budapest Hotel you haven’t seen before if you’ve seen a Wes Anderson movie.  It’s possible the Academy is so out of touch they’re just now noticing this young whippersnapper with a quirky vision and a fondness for Futura title cards.

How many perfectly symmetrical shots of a beautiful frown-faced women in an incredibly detailed set does this world really need?"
How many perfectly symmetrical shots of a beautiful frown-faced women in an incredibly detailed set does this world really need?

But if you’ve been watching Anderson’s movies all along, I don’t know how you could not be sick of his schtick at this point. How many perfectly symmetrical shots of a beautiful frown-faced women in an incredibly detailed set does this world really need? And Anderson has become ever more indulgent in his stylistic quirks over the years, with diminishing returns.

I remember how excited I was by the offbeat humor and buzzing energy of Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. I remember being delighted by the bizarre world-building in The Royal Tenenbaums. Was it because I watched those movies as a teenager? Or has Anderson’s vision just gone off like expired milk? (I wanted to re-watch The Royal Tenenbaums before writing this piece, but I couldn’t find my copy. I was relieved. I don’t want to lose my happy memories of that movie.)

The quirky details in Wes Anderson's movie, like this shot from 'The Royal Tenenbaums', used to delight me. Now I roll my eyes.
The oddball details in Wes Anderson’s movies, like this shot from The Royal Tenenbaums, used to delight me. Now I roll my eyes.

Maybe something that used to be there is now missing. Discussing Moonrise Kingdom, Molly McCaffery posited that Anderson’s first three films benefited much more than we realized from his collaboration with co-writer Owen Wilson: that the films “were as much about character development as they were about oddball behavior, unusual costumes, retro props, quirky sets, and elusive ingénues.” Whether or not Wilson was the source of it, those early movies certainly had a heart that has been lacking from Anderson’s later films.

Another issue is that Anderson’s slavish devotion to his form is without regard to its function.  His quirky style is perfectly suited to the story of an oddball family like the Tenenbaums, but what does it bring to the narrative of The Grand Budapest Hotel? Moonrise Kingdom actually worked better for me than the other latter-day (sans-Wilson as co-writer) Wes Anderson films, because the twee tone and retro details suited the inherent nostalgia of small town childhood adventure story. For an ambitiously sprawling story like The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson’s attention to detail felt almost confining to what could have been an epic and sweeping tale. Is this the only way Anderson knows how to make movies?

Anderson's style was better suited to 'Moonrise Kingdom' than 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'
Anderson’s style was better suited to Moonrise Kingdom than The Grand Budapest Hotel

It is strange that the Academy seems to be only noticing Wes Anderson now, 20 years into his shockingly repetitive career, when his style feels so played out and empty. Maybe the Russian Doll framing device structure of The Grand Budapest Hotel (perhaps its only innovation) really knocked everyone else’s socks off (I found it showy and pointless, like the rest of the movie). Maybe it is just a really, really, really weak year for movies.

Anderson's 2006 American Express ad poking fun at himself now feels like it could be a legit documentary.
Anderson’s 2006 American Express ad poking fun at himself now feels like it could be a legit documentary

And the worst of it is that awards recognition will probably just send Wes Anderson further up his own ass, if such a thing is even possible. I don’t think I’ll be rushing to see his subsequent films until I hear that he’s finally tried something different.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who can’t decide if she should stay up all night to watch the Oscars this year.

2013 Golden Globes Week: An Open Letter to Owen Wilson Regarding ‘Moonrise Kingdom’

This is a guest post by Molly McCaffrey and is cross-posted with permission.

Movie poster for Moonrise Kingdom

Dear Mr. Wilson,
For many years, I believe people had the sense that Wes Anderson was the genius behind the three films you co-wrote with him:

Bottle Rocket,

Rushmore, 
and The Royal Tenenbaums.



This is probably because Anderson’s persona jibes with our expectations for an artistic genius whereas you, as much as I hate to admit it, come off as the class clown, the cad.
So it was easy to believe that Anderson was the brains behind the operation, and you were the color. But, having seen all of the Wes Anderson movies—including the ones you co-wrote and the ones you didn’t, it’s now clear to me that we all had it backwards.
Clearly, you are the brains, and Anderson is the color.
Because ever since you stopped collaborating with Anderson, things have gone downhill in his work. Don’t get me wrong—some of the movies Anderson made without you showed moments of true brilliance, but none of them were the masterpieces that are Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums—two films that were as much about character development as they were about oddball behavior, unusual costumes, retro props, quirky sets, and elusive ingénues, the trademarks of Anderson’s style.
In fact, after watching the four Anderson films you did not co-write, one is left asking the question: what went wrong after Tenenbaums?

There is no doubt that both The Life Aquatic 

and The Fantastic Mr. Fox 

hit some high notes, and it’s not unusual for intelligent viewers to defend one or both of them.
The Darjeeling Limited is another story.

Anderson’s fifth is generally regarded by most of his fans to be his most disappointing film. That’s reason enough not to talk about it, but I want to talk about it precisely because doing so might lead us to the source of Anderson’s current problem.
In order for absurdity—the hallmark of any Anderson film—to work, it must be paired with emotional honesty; otherwise, the story risks alienating the audience. For instance, in The Royal Tenenbaums, the viewer can overlook the absurdity of Margot listening to old albums on a child’s record player inside a pup tent in the middle of her brother’s childhood bedroom because Richie has just tried to kill himself and is about to tell her—his sister—that he did it because he loves her. The audience is so caught up in the depth of Margot’s and Richie’s emotions that we don’t become distracted by the fact that the two of them share them in front of what looks to be a child’s bed sheet decorated with bright red rocket ships and ringed planets.
In contrast, The Darjeeling Limited doesn’t provide an honest moment of emotional complexity—when the three main characters save some Indian children from drowning—or include a named female character—when they finally reunite with their mother—until almost an hour into the film. Unfortunately, by this point, Anderson has lost most of his audience, viewers who find themselves desperate for an authentic hook on which to hang their emotional needs.
No doubt absurdity is a popular trend in 21st century cinema. We see it in the work of Anderson and in the work of other admired filmmakers such as Charlie Kaufman, Sofia Coppola, Spike Jonze, Diablo Cody, and David O. Russell just to name a few. And, of course, we see it in the work of a handful of their predecessors: David Lynch, Tim Burton, and Jim Jarmusch, for instance. For this reason, it’s crucial to understand how and why absurdity can and cannot work. For evidence of why this issue is so important, please see I Heart Huckabees. See Broken Flowers. See The Darjeeling Limited.
And that brings me back to the films of Wes Anderson without you, Mr. Wilson, and specifically to Moonrise Kingdom.
Simply put, Moonrise Kingdom broke my heart.
It broke my heart because it had so much potential. It was, in fact very close to being a truly great film, another Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums. But, sadly, it failed to get there.
At its core, this ode to young love is an incredibly moving story, a story with emotions that remain with you days later. A story that grabs you by the shoulders and spins you around in circles until you fall happily to the grass, laughing euphorically to yourself. But that grab-your-heart story gets lost amidst far too many knee socks

and lightning bolts

and short skirts.

It’s heartbreaking to watch because it’s easy to see that with the right help—with your help perhaps—this film could have been as brilliant as the others.
But it’s not.
After much soul-searching and speculation, I’m forced to admit that the only noticeable difference between the great Anderson films and the almost-great Anderson films is you, Mr. Wilson. And once I realized this, it wasn’t hard for me to begin to believe that Anderson—like Sonny without Cher—can’t make great art without you.
And that’s why we need you, Mr. Wilson. We need you to stop whatever you’re doing right now and go find your buddy Wes Anderson. We need you to make certain he never again creates another almost-great film. We need you to tone down his oddball moments, 

to edit out his Parisian prologues

and his gratuitous girl-on-girl action,

to say no to his unnecessary narrators in inexplicable long red coats,

to curtail his need to document every quirky corner of his detailed sets,

to tone down his male gaze,

and to encourage him instead to capture the provocative emotions of his always fascinating characters—both male and female. We need you because you might be the only one who can do this for Anderson.
In short, we need you, Mr. Wilson… Wes Anderson needs you… American cinema needs you.
Please send help.
Molly McCaffrey
———-

Molly McCaffrey is the author of the short story collection How to Survive Graduate School & Other Disasters, the co-editor of Commutability: Stories about the Journey from Here to There, and the founder of I Will Not Diet, a blog devoted to healthy living and body acceptance. She has worked with Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple and received her Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. Currently she teaches at Western Kentucky University and designs books for Steel Toe Books. She is at work on her first memoir, You Belong to Us, which tells the story of McCaffrey meeting her biological family.