Wes Anderson (USA, born 1969)

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

(This review, written as part of the BBC’s 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century, freely makes reference to other films from the same list and does not read as well when taken out of its original context. It is reproduced here only for the convenience of having a director’s works collected on the same page.)

I have a problem relating to movies where people act in ways that people in real life rarely, if ever, do. I touched on this briefly when I reviewed Mad Max: Fury Road, and the theme resurfaces, somewhat unsurprisingly, here again.

I say ‘unsurprisingly’ because in the past I have found other Wes Anderson movies an alienating experience. I don’t really know how I am supposed to feel when I watch them, though I suspect the effect is meant to run along the lines of ‘whimsical’ and ‘delightful’.

I don’t know. The film reminded me of the Coen Brothers, a la Raising Arizona, in its melding of OTT kooky characters, arresting set-pieces, overtones of absurdity, and Rube Goldberg-esque plot devices which included MacGuffins. All this is whipped up into a hot, steamy brew and served to us with a wink-wink, a twirling baton and a top hat and tails. Again, I feel there is a huge gulf between how I am ‘supposed’ to receive this material and how I actually do, and that brings inevitable further questions as to whether that is the filmmaker’s ‘fault’ or whether it is, somewhat, mine.

And, y’know, maybe it’s neither. Maybe it’s just a question of personal taste. Ralph Fiennes’ performance was enjoyable enough, although I would wager that you’ve never met anyone who actually behaves like that here on Earth. And there is a certain amount of pleasure to be taken when a film’s roles, no matter how small, are filled to the brim with famous faces.

There is slightly more ‘excuse’ than usual for the film’s affectations. They are couched in a framing device and presented as a story being told in the form of memories, over dinner and drinks, from one man to another; one could reasonably propose that the events have been embellished, albeit mildly, and the movie’s more outlandish moments did not occur exactly as depicted. Either way, this framing device, a very small portion of the overall picture, happened to be my favourite part. F. Murray Abraham, ultimately holding the dramatic heart of the film, was excellent in a small but perfectly controlled, exceptionally dignified role.

The ending- tragic and undeniably effective- was abrupt. That was most likely a purposeful narrative tactic. Overall, though, the film left me cold and unmoved; disenfranchised, irritated.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

(This review, written as part of the BBC’s 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century, freely makes reference to other films from the same list and does not read as well when taken out of its original context. It is reproduced here only for the convenience of having a director’s works collected on the same page.)

Like many of the films I’ve covered recently (Synecdoche, New York being one, Requiem for a Dream being another), The Royal Tenenbaums is a film that defies easy categorisation, presenting itself to the viewer without allying itself with any specific genre and issuing imagery which alludes to some sort of dream-state rather than a full engagement with our reality. In this instance, far more than those two specific films, it looks like a comedy, and for me, it also feels like a comedy, but it isn’t funny. None of the films on this Top 100 are, really; if I had to pick a ‘funniest movie’ from the list based on the films that I’ve seen, it would probably be Ratatouille, though The Wolf of Wall Street also has its moments, and I guess a film like Amélie could be said to have something of a comic tone too.

When I touched on this quality regarding Spike Jonze’s Her, I stated outright that its lack of comedic elements wasn’t a problem. Would it be remiss of me, or hypocritical, to consider it more of a problem here, as I also do with Anderson’s 1998 effort Rushmore? No, I don’t think so. Why? Well, because I thought Her was a more cohesive piece, with a far more consistent tone, an interesting storyline and generally more digestible dynamics.

That’s not to say The Royal Tenenbaums is a bad movie. It isn’t, even though, as usual with Anderson, I had to exert a certain amount of effort just to try to ascertain what the film was supposedly saying to me and exactly what it wanted in response. From Wikipedia, I see that the film contains ‘fashions and sets combining the appearances of different time periods’. I don’t really see why that’s necessary, if I’m completely honest, but this sort of approach nevertheless contributes to making the film feel more slippery and more elusive than The Grand Budapest Hotel, and for me, ultimately more difficult to dislike or criticise. After all, it wants to have something of a muddled tone. It wants you to feel out-of-step, out-of-sorts, out-of-time, just like its cast of characters do.

Crucial to my relatively positive viewing experience was Gene Hackman’s superb, sparky performance, which I felt somewhat carried the film. Grounded, relatable turns from Anjelica Huston and Danny Glover, playing people who you could feasibly meet in real life, didn’t hurt either, despite being offset against the inevitable ‘kooky’ aspects of the film, which included a grown man erecting himself a tent inside a house, with a bed, and filling it with trinkets and looking like he’s generally living in it as well as sleeping there.

Like previous movies such as Ida and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring, the film contains a suicide scene which is sudden and somewhat out-of-context. It’s also bloodier and more explicit than those two films felt any need to be. I wondered if the film had ‘earned’ this narrative lurch into such serious territory, or even if it constituted a cynical attempt to afford the film supplementary import and gravitas; the movie also touches on drug abuse without much in the way of purpose or insight.

Despite these minor concerns, I generally felt that The Royal Tenenbaums had more going for it than against, though I could have done without the baritone voiceover and the ‘imaginary novel’ conceit. Its most prominent themes- redemption, regret, still being in love with someone who barely wants to look at you anymore, and a general malaise that settles upon people, pervading their thoughts and attitudes without any obvious identifiable cause- are rendered in effective strokes. I still think it was a relatively thin piece which didn’t explore the characters’ psychological depths in any meaningful way. I still think you could remove Owen Wilson’s entire character without losing anything, and Bill Murray’s too. But as its final scenes achieved a modest but valid amount of poignancy, and its personae stepped one by one out of frame to the strains of Van Morrison’s Everyone, under the implied spectre of death, I finished the film in a spirit of genial moderation that stood in marked contrast to the rather more apprehensive one I’d had when it started.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

(This review, written as part of the BBC’s 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century, freely makes reference to other films from the same list and does not read as well when taken out of its original context. It is reproduced here only for the convenience of having a director’s works collected on the same page.)

Moonrise Kingdom is a fable about two adolescents, poised around the transitional age of puberty, who ‘love’ each other and defy the elders that have forbidden the relationship to escape together into the woodland on the small island on which they live. It’s 1965.

These two characters are both as precociously intelligent as you would expect from a film with this storyline from this director, and their escapade is the focal point of the piece. Meanwhile, though, a quite different sort of movie is being played out in the background, one where characters of a certain age- that of their fifties and sixties- are spending the autumns of their lives wading through a fog of ennui, the kind of ennui that sees people drift into affairs and then impassively call them off.

We can see here a profound disconnect between the adolescents and the grown-ups; the young couple believe in the principles of adventure and don’t see perfect love as any sort of unattainable myth. If the adults in their lives are anything to go by, they will have these beliefs eroded over the years until the ensuing melancholy makes them resemble sleepwalkers. One thought process would decree that they should then try to hold on to their sense of wonder and enjoy it for as long as they can; another would ordain that the longer they live in this unreality, the worse it will be when the vagaries of age do solemnly dawn on them. This latter line of thinking would suggest that the younger incarnations of Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand and Bill Murray were themselves starry-eyed dreamers with all that further to fall, redolent of when Joni Mitchell bluntly sings ‘all romantics meet the same fate- some day, cynical and drunk, and boring someone in some dark café’ (though in this instance, the cynicism has not resulted in verbosity). Meanwhile, the Ed Norton character, noticeably younger than the other three, appears as-yet unaffected by the gloom, thereby providing something of a bridging influence between the very different- one might say incompatible- emotional worlds that the island is currently hosting.    

This is an okay film. There’s nothing much wrong with any of it, and as it develops at a measured, precise pace, its tone, I guess, is internally consistent, and it’s all reasonably presented and solidly acted- Bruce Willis, in particular, reminds us how good he can be when engaged in roles of quiet dignity and subdued restraint. Nevertheless, I felt his part, along with those of all the other adults, was underdeveloped and thinly written. McDormand, Murray and Norton are not really given that much to do, and this is even more applicable to Tilda Swinton and Jason Schwartzman. Moreover, just as in The Royal Tenenbaums, I felt that ennui was touched upon without Anderson or his co-writer Roman Coppola having anything particularly interesting or substantial to say about it- in this, I felt distinct similarities to Richard Ayoade’s 2010 effort Submarine, another film which features a teenage couple at its heart and pointedly offsets their outlook against that of their elders.  

Why do I feel that a film like Lost in Translation had so much more success in exploring disaffection and despondency? Maybe in part because it wasn’t an ensemble piece; that movie sees Bob and Charlotte, whose respective dispositions would typically relegate them to background status in your average movie, or outright non-presence, afforded the screentime that allows their characters to breathe and actualise themselves before your eyes. In this picture, mildly diverting and agreeable as the children and their central narrative are, I would rather have seen an exploration of McDormand and Murray’s marriage than this melange of knowing tragicomedy, retro reference points and intrepid boy scouts. I would rather have seen a sincere slice-of-life piece focused around Willis’s Captain Sharp, or maybe the island in general, than this masturbatory, water-treading run-through of Anderson’s usual tones and themes, low-key and digestible as their presentation nevertheless was.

Can’t have everything, I suppose.