Wes Anderson

[Jeff]

Wes Anderson (1969 - )



"I do feel a bit like my characters from one movie could walk into another one of my movies and it would make sense, whereas people from other peoples’ movies would probably feel a bit uncomfortable there."

Filmography

Theatrical Features and Short Films
Bottle Rocket [short] (1994)
Bottle Rocket (1996)
Rushmore (1998)
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
Hotel Chevalier [short] (2007)
The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Isle of Dogs (2018)
The French Dispatch (2020)

Selected Commercials and Promotional Shorts
Prada: "Castello Cavalcanti"
Moonrise Kingdom: "Cousin Ben Troop Screening"
Prada: "Prada Candy" (Co-directed by Roman Coppola)
Sony Xperia: "Made of Imagination"
Hyundai:"Modern Life", "Talk to My Car"
AT&T: "Actor"
IKEA: "Living Room"
American Express: "My Life, My Card"
SoftBank Japan:untitled Tati pastiche with Brad Pitt
Stella Artois: "Apartomatic"
H&M: "Come Together"

Print Resources
Fantastic Mr. Fox: The Making of the Motion Picture
The Wes Anderson Collection, by Matt Zoller Seitz
The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel, by Matt Zoller Seitz
The Wes Anderson Collection: Bad Dads, curated by Spoke Art Gallery

Web Resources
Martin Scorsese on Anderson in a 2000 Esquire piece
Conversation in Interview magazine with Arnaud Desplechin
"The Life Obsessive with Wes Anderson," in New York magazine by David Amsden
"Wes Anderson's Worlds," in The New York Review of Books by Michael Chabon
"Wes Anderson: Whimsical Like a Fox," at Big Think, by Austin Allen

"The Substance of Style" a five-part series on Anderson's key influences, at Moving Image Source, by Matt Zoller Seitz
A Little Love: The Art of Bill Melendez, a short documentary by Matt Zoller Seitz discussing Melendez's influence on Anderson
Matt Zoller Seitz's video essays on Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom
Matt Zoller Seitz, Lisa Rosman & Richard Brody discuss Wes Anderson at The Strand bookstore

B-Roll footage of Anderson directing Moonrise Kingdom (part one of four)
B-Roll footage of Anderson directing The Grand Budapest Hotel

Anderson's interviews with Terry Gross: Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Darjeeling Limited, Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Music supervisor Randall Poster discusses his work with Anderson on Fresh Air

Anderson's interviews with Charlie Rose: Rushmore, The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Anderson fills in for an ailing Charlie Rose and interviews Robert Evans

Forum Discussion
Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson
Self Conscious 'Quirkiness'
450 Bottle Rocket
65 Rushmore
157 The Royal Tenenbaums
300 The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
540 The Darjeeling Limited
700 Fantastic Mr. Fox
776 Moonrise Kingdom
The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)
Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson, 2020)

[bainbridgezu]

There appear to be two somewhat distinct camps of Anderson fans: I've always felt that the trifecta of Rushmore--Royal Tenenbaums--Life Aquatic is the perfect encapsulation of Anderson's aesthetic (if not for the "interruption" of Darjeeling Ltd., The Fantastic Mr. Fox would also fit nicely into this formula: taking the "dollhouse" (doll-boat?) from Life Aquatic and filling it with actual dolls (perhaps the extended production-period for the latter film explains the chronological break)).

A friend of mine, who also loves Anderson, holds Bottle Rocket and Darjeeling Ltd. in highest esteem, while I've always felt that these are his least accomplished/successfully-developed works. Poking around the internet after the Moonrise trailer appeared, many people seem to fall into similar distinctions: Darjeeling is either his best or worst film, with little in-between sentiment; similarly, Bottle Rocket has cultivated champions who claim it as Anderson's "purest" film, while others (probably a minority at this point, especially since Criterion's release) tend to overlook the film (either out of ignorance of it, or due to a critical/aesthetic preference for Rushmore).

[mfunk9786]

I love all of his films with the utmost sincerity for their own reasons, which camp is that? I am waiting for one that I'll dislike.

[flyonthewall2983]

There appear to be two somewhat distinct camps of Anderson fans: I've always felt that the trifecta of Rushmore--Royal Tenenbaums--Life Aquatic is the perfect encapsulation of Anderson's aesthetic (if not for the "interruption" of Darjeeling Ltd., The Fantastic Mr. Fox would also fit nicely into this formula: taking the "dollhouse" (doll-boat?) from Life Aquatic and filling it with actual dolls (perhaps the extended production-period for the latter film explains the chronological break)). A friend of mine, who also loves Anderson, holds Bottle Rocket and Darjeeling Ltd. in highest esteem, while I've always felt that these are his least accomplished/successfully-developed works. Poking around the internet after the Moonrise trailer appeared, many people seem to fall into similar distinctions: Darjeeling is either his best or worst film, with little in-between sentiment; similarly, Bottle Rocket has cultivated champions who claim it as Anderson's "purest" film, while others (probably a minority at this point, especially since Criterion's release) tend to overlook the film (either out of ignorance of it, or due to a critical/aesthetic preference for Rushmore).

Hopefully this saves us from pages and pages of bickering at each other.

[domino harvey]

[Moonrise Kingdom] looks fantastic, and I'm hardly an Anderson apologist for any period (the Royal Tenenbaums is Great, Rushmore and the Darjeeling Limited are good, Bottle Rocket I'm indifferent to, and Life Aquatic and Fantastic Mr Fox are godawful cinematic abominations-- what's my classification, Binary Guy?)

[knives]

Wrong, animation is always better.

[swo17]

Bottle Rocket I'm indifferent to

When is Bottle Rocket coming?!

:-k

[domino harvey]

Wait, did Bottle Rocket finally come out?

[bainbridgezu]

I love all of his films with the utmost sincerity for their own reasons, which camp is that? I am waiting for one that I'll dislike.

Perhaps "camp" was too strong a word.

I'm interested in the strong, polarized reactions to Darjeeling Limited; my personal "issue" with the film is that all of Anderson's features (including Bottle Rocket) present a clear, linear through-line of an evolving aesthetic, with this one exception. I do not dislike the film, nor do I think it is "bad," but I'm not sure what Anderson set out to accomplish with it. I acknowledge that this assessment depends upon my own conception of Anderson's oeuvre as a whole, but I feel that there is an argument to be made that while his films become more distinctively stylized and controlled, Darjeeling Ltd. breaks the pattern: it does nothing with a train that The Life Aquatic didn't do with a boat (in terms of both story and visual invention). Furthermore, that The Fantastic Mr. Fox does fit into this pattern, making Darjeeling even more puzzling (from this standpoint).

As Anderson's career progresses, perhaps Darjeeling will fit more clearly into another phase or movement, one spearate from these other films. However, at this stage it stands out to some degree as being unlike the others (when all his features thus-far are considered as a whole, not because it does not look or "feel" like the other films).

Obviously there are many ways to look at Anderson's films: some people feel that it was all downhill after Rushmore, others champion Tenenbaums but dump on The Life Aquatic, while even many of Anderson's harshest critics praise The Fantastic Mr. Fox (with numerous other preferences and positions). It struck me as worthwhile is that The Darjeeling Limited seems to be the most pronounced love-it-or-hate-it of all Anderson's films (among his fans). In retrospect, I've regrettably muddied the waters of my own premise by bringing Bottle Rocket into things, which I did only to observe that people who respond postively to Darjeeling Ltd. as either Anderson's best film or a personal favorite, also seem to rank Bottle Rocket at the top of his oeuvre.

[Brian C]

It struck me as worthwhile is that The Darjeeling Limited seems to be the most pronounced love-it-or-hate-it of all Anderson's films (among his fans). In retrospect, I've regrettably muddied the waters of my own premise by bringing Bottle Rocket into things, which I did only to observe that people who respond postively to Darjeeling Ltd. as either Anderson's best film or a personal favorite, also seem to rank Bottle Rocket at the top of his oeuvre.

I suspect that you'll find it very difficult to get a concrete explanation for trends that probably don't exist except in your anecdotal, cherry-picking mind.

[swo17]

What is this thread supposed to be about again? Oh right, camps. Here's mine:

[bainbridgezu]

I suspect that you'll find it very difficult to get a concrete explanation for trends that probably don't exist except in your anecdotal, cherry-picking mind.

Are you referring to the Darjeeling Ltd.--Bottle Rocket correlation, which I've admitted was ill-conceived and taken off the table, or the trend I proposed in Anderson's filmography? Because all personal preferences and assements of quality aside, I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that Anderson's aesthetic consistently evolves further in the same direction with each successive film--with the exception of The Darjeeling Limited.

Bottle Rocket has the most "realistic" look of any of these films (perhaps to to budgetary restraints), while still bearing elements of what is now reconizably Anderson's style.

Rushmore pushes these stylistic elements to the foreground, while adding in the framing device of the-film-as-another-kind-of-art (in this case, a play) seen again in Tenenbaums (a novel) and The Life Aquatic (a documentary).

The Royal Tenenbaums employs a similar conceit, albeit presenting the film as a story in a book, with chapter headings and narration instead of rising curtains and physically-present signs. Anderson also furthers the controlled element of his aesthetic by making the Tenenbaum home the focal point of the film's action. The worlds of his films are becoming smaller and more managable (in terms of enforcing his aesthetic): Bottle Rocket presents a physically-open environment, while Rushmore is centered around the school grounds, with The Royal Tenebaums orbiting around a single residence/family, each film presenting a smaller universe for its characters to explore.

The Life Aquatic further isolates its characters by putting them out to sea: even though the film is bookended by the premieres of Zissou's documentaries, and the Bellafonte and its crew make stops on land as well as encountering "outsiders" while at sea (the pirates, Goldblum and his crew), there is, for the most part, no where for these characters to go. Some critics said that Tenenbaums gave Anderson a dollhouse to play with, an idea literalized in this film through the cross sections and miniatures used to demonstrate the ship.

At this point, I would agrue that things become less clear: while The Fantastic Mr. Fox picks up on these concepts (the sets are literal "doll houses" with "actors" whose motions and appearance Anderson can dictate down to the slightest hair), he seems to be treading water (with regard to his aesthetic push) with The Darjeeling Limited: it looks and feels like The Life Aquatic, but with a train instead of a ship.

[mfunk9786]

Oh my god, I think this guy might have ruined them for me

[hot_locket]

Yes, the 'Wes Anderson character' as 'Wes Anderson fan' experiment is coming along nicely...

[matrixschmatrix]

Honestly, I think exploring the worlds of Anderson's movies by their setting isn't a great way to divide them up- one of the characteristics of his movies is that, wherever they are, his characters are always largely living inside their own little worlds. The specifics of the outside world seem largely to put that in greater or lesser relief, but they don't seem especially a good way to distinguish one work from another- no matter which of his movies you watch, there's going to be a contrast between the safe little self-enclosed places that reflect the characters' inner worlds, and the places outside those with which they have limited contact. The 'dollhouse' idea isn't totally irrelevant, but I think it's more important in terms of an externalization of his characters' personalities than as necessarily a feature of Anderson's progressing aesthetic.

[knives]

Good point and a great illustration of that is in the two schools featured in Rushmore. In both cases they don't reflect reality, but instead present us with the emotional place Max is in at that moment and as we arrive at the end the second school begins to change in ways that would only be representative of Max as no public school could afford such things. Less obvious would be the use of retro in The Royal Tennebaums and open spaces in The Darjeeling Limited. Anderson is a very point of view director and has differentiated his films far more than people give him credit for.

[Jeff]

While I don't for a minute imagine the "two camps" notion is anywhere close to universal, I certainly see the two different aesthetics and styles that Bainbridgezu is referring to. Looking for stylistic trends and internal narrative structures seems to me to be a legitimate means of classifying a director's work and looking for trends in his development. It's certainly just as valid as looking at character considerations, even if the insights it offers tend to lie closer to the surface.

The idea of Anderson's films as dollhouses (or often, more pointedly, as dioramas) is not a novel one, but it's an important one since his films often feature characters who are intent on constructing miniature artistic worlds of their own (Max Fischer, of course, being the archetype here). It points to the idea of having a need to create small worlds that we feel like we are in control of, when we don't often feel in control of the larger one. Any narrative artist -- novelist, playwright, filmmaker -- is ultimately a creator of such worlds. Anderson simply embraces that idea, sees that character trait in himself, and puts it on the surface of his work. I like Bainbridgezu's observation that the size of the dioramas seemed to shrink with each of Anderson's first few films giving him more and more control over his characters. Anderson's career is far too nascent to see if that's an actual trend that will play out or an anomaly. If it's a cycle, it certainly makes sense that The Fantastic Mr. Fox, a film which literally is an actual diorama, is the culmination of that cycle.

I adore Anderson's work. I do happen to fall neatly into the Rushmore-Tenenbaums-Zizzou-Fox camp. I like the other two films (even if I was reluctant to come around to Darjeeling). Of course envisioning these sorts of informal cycles when they aren't defined by the artist is subjective and personal. The fact that some of us see that relationship within the films and some don't doesn't make one party right and the other wrong. We all categorize art according to our own preferences. I'll admit that the relationship of those films is tenuous and feels vaguely arbitrary.

When Darjeeling came out, it felt like a departure to me. I said that even though it was my least favorite, I could see how many could view it as maturation. I wondered where Anderson would go next, and was excited to see what I presumed would be the "next phase" of Anderson's career. What came next turned out to be the ultimate diorama film. I don't pretend to know where Anderson's career is headed. Though Tenenbaums and Rushmore were easily my favorites, I also like the idea of him exploring larger worlds, and it seems like that might happen a little bit with Moonrise Kingdom.

Like the trailer for every Anderson film that has come before, this one has me eagerly anticipating the film. It looks absolutely charming. I love that he's working with juvenile protagonists, as it feels like such a natural fit for him. We saw that a little bit with Max and his pals and with Ash Fox and friends. My favorites, though their appearance was brief, were young Richie and Margot Tenenbaum. When he had them hiding out in a museum a la Frankweiler, I wanted to see a film of that. It looks like I might finally get to. I also love the comfort of Anderson's tropes of meticulously designed props and precise framing. It feels like a Wes Anderson film. I don't think that anyone who saw that trailer would have a difficult time figuring out who directed it. I know those are turn-offs to many of his detractors (first person who uses "twee" gets banned), but they are also part of his appeal. I like that we're getting turns both from members of Anderson's stock company and a litany of major actors who suddenly look and sound like they were born to be in a Wes Anderson film.

I guess what I'm saying is that I want the best of both worlds. Maybe I'm just hoping to see the absolute magic of The Royal Tenenbaums repeated. I don't know. I want Murray and Schwartzman, and stylized costumes, and 70s-era nostalgia props, and title cards, and British Invasion tunes. I also want to see how Anderson grows as an artist and whether he might have anything larger to say. It appears that he's already abandoned Futura-esque block print for a curlicue script: a new frontier on the horizon!

I hope I'm not raked over the coals for asking - but since I don't follow Wes Anderson that closely, but do enjoy his films, I'll ask - wasn't his next film supposed to be a remake of the French film "My Best Friend"? That he was hired to do?

Brian Grazer hired him to write a script, which he did. He turned in a draft called The Rosenthaler Suite. I don't know that he was ever committed to direct it himself. There are reviews of the script floating around.

[mfunk9786]

Young Richie Tenenbaum's smile is still one of the most charming things committed to celluloid in the last 20 years.

[Michael]

I’m in mfunk’s camp. I love all of Anderson’s films. Some more, some less. To be Anderson’s true fan is to love all of his films because his brilliance remains on a roll from Bottle Rocket to The Fantastic Mr. Fox and he hasn’t hit a bump. Surely it’s nice to analyze Anderson’s trademark “dollhouse” ambience but that's only a speck of Anderson's universe. There is sooo much going underneath all the pretty surface in those rooms and their surroundings and horizons…and the characters breathing through them. Slit wrists here, a dead fingernail there.

Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums are the most emotional of Anderson’s oeuvre. They hit me hard and leave me blubbering like a big baby every single time. It seems to me Anderson opened his heart wide with those two films but reserved it a bit with the rest of his films - nothing wrong with that, every one of his films is still so wonderful.

[flyonthewall2983]

Me third, and Michael hits the nail on the head as to why. I think Darjeeling comes close to that feeling of a heart wide open, or at least something coming from a very emotional place inside. You'll never see more realistic brothers than you will in that because I saw a bit of what dynamic I have with my own in it. But you're absolutely right, Rushmore and Tenenbaums are definitely emotional if not artistic high-points for him.

[aox]

The Darjeeling Limited: it looks and feels like The Life Aquatic, but with a train instead of a ship.

Is this for real?

[Professor Wagstaff]

You'll never see more realistic brothers than you will in that because I saw a bit of what dynamic I have with my own in it.

Sums up my affection towards The Darjeeling Limited, particularly in the way that it's always two brothers against the third when it's not all of them not trusting each other. Schwartzman's quote, "Stop including me!" always felt like the one line of movie dialogue that could sum up the relationship I have with my own brothers. To echo others, I too have a lot of love towards all of his films.

[zedz]

Surely one of the most aesthetically distinctive things about The Darjeeling Limited is that Anderson applies his rigorous, hyper-stylized aesthetic to a film shot on location in India. That's a pretty enormous development and one of the most interesting formal aspects of the film (and then in Fox he pushes his aesthetic into another unliklely, unexpected place).

The location shooting is also a useful place to start looking for clues as to what's so divisive about the work (e.g. aestheticizing poverty, co-option of another culture in order to chart the self-actualization of privileged white males). I personally like the film a lot, but it's not hard to see where people's problems with it are likely to arise.

[colinr0380]

I agree with zedz on Darjeeling. The argument is that at least Anderson is honestly showing the insularity of these characters, and the issues that zedz notes have to at least be acknowledged as occurring in Tenenbaums and Life Aquatic as well. Darjeeling Limited is playing with these issues in quite pointed ways (the Indian couple on the train vs the 'real' India outside; the mother's repeated abandoment of her family to work in a mission; "I couldn't save mine"), as if simultaneously withdrawing from the world of the characters and letting the air of the outside world into the hermetically sealed bubbles (the New York flashback and Hotel Chevalier, the iPod/Bollywood soundtracks) for the first time.

I personally find Slumdog Millionaire far more troubling for its simplistic portrayal of 'Indian existence' through the medium of a gameshow!

[flyonthewall2983]

From above