I don't get Wes Anderson

Gene Hackman played Royal Tenenbaum in "The Royal Tenenbaums."

 

totally disagree

 

Boom. Bingo. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

 

I walked out of Royal Tenenbaums after sneaking in. It takes a lot for me to walk out of a free movie.

 

Absolutely a case of my not getting a filmmaker's sensibility at all.
Same problem with Jim Jarmusch and, to a lesser extent, Tarantino.

 

Out of his body of work, I'd say The Royal Tenenbaums is terrific. In that movie, the detachment/approach works because Anderson/Wilson wrote a screenplay that explains the emotional inertia of the family, using a structure (Alec Baldwin's reading of the novel, which is a character of its own) that helps us understand the pain roiling beneath the blank faces. It's brilliant stuff, meta or not, and it so overshadows Anderson's other works that it suffers in their company ("it's just like all the others!").

I could have a long discussion about Life Aquatic if somebody wants to have at it. I think it may be the key film in Anderson's career, and not in a good way.

But Darjeeling, to me, is a total flop. It felt like a reaction to Life Aquatic, and while some critics embraced it - they like having their asses kissed - it struck me as crass, stale, boring and emotionally irrelevant. I didn't buy a minute of it.

 

The Royal Tenenbaums is the only Wes Anderson movie I've seen. And it's that way because TRT was a steaming pile of poo. Anderson has caricatures, not characters, and the "whimsy," "ironic detachment" and "outsider status" is a hedge to make the audience feel smart and Anderson immune to criticism, because if you don't like it you must not be smart enough to get it. If TRT is any indication, Wes Anderson has no more emotional depth in his films than does Michael Bay.

 

That was Royal Tenenbaums for me.

 

I don't get him either. Royal Tennenbaums just wasn't all that good, in my mind. Need to give Life Aquatic another chance, though.

 

Well struck.

 

This oughta be interesting. Fire away at LIFE AQUATIC.

On the tip of lumping them in, first and foremost, you have to take BOTTLE ROCKET out of his canon of work. It was a Sundance directors' project and was financed, er, produced by Redford and James Caan on the cheap, based on a short that Wes and Owen wrote. Art direction, yes, mainly found, with no set-building.

Wes' style really starts to emerge with RUSHMORE. While his shotmaking has come to be quite gorgeous, I fret that it's become too much style, not enough substance.

 

If it came down to a choice, hands down you've gotta give ROYAL TENENBAUMS a shot.