Who exactly is Wes Anderson?
The simple answer is that Wes Anderson is a detail-obsessed, eccentric writer/director (some might even say auteur) from Houston who hangs out with the Wilsons and Coppolas.
There are many who would stop right there, dismissing his work as overly-art-directed, emotionally vacant, adolescent slosh. Those people do have a point. His films are heavily art-directed. His actors never break their cool deadpan. And adolescent themes are rife within all his characters from young to old.
Others see his new movie Moonrise Kingdom as part of a continuing trend of maturity present in his films. Personally, I think both of those views are missing out on the grand variation that Anderson has managed to achieve in his films while still keeping his style intact. He’s had his highs and his lows but there’s merit in these movies that can’t be boiled down to maturation.
Anderson’s body of work could be described as a vibrant dollhouse of primary-colored set pieces, off-beat, pithy dialogue and decidedly underplayed characters. Moonrise Kingdom, a film set in the 1960s that follows the search for a pair of runaway young lovers in a island town somewhere in New England, will join the likes of The Royal Tenebaums and Rushmore. The film will be released in limited cities Friday (Evanston dwellers can see it at the Cinemark Century 12 starting June 1).
Based on the trailer, we can expect Moonrise Kingdom to hit on many classic Anderson tropes. So will the new film be just a rehash of that tried and true Andersonian aesthetic?
According to early reviews from the film’s premiere at Cannes last week, maybe not.
Critics are noting a maturation of style, even a meta-commentary on and slight parody of that style, which is perhaps an indication that Anderson is moving on to different tricks.
Enemies of Anderson may rejoice at that news but is it even valid to suggest maturation over Anderson’s body of work? To imply a lineage from Bottle Rocket to Fantastic Mr. Fox ignores the clear variation that can be seen from film to film. The sophistication and effectiveness of Anderson’s method comes in waves, not a straight incline.
It would be hard to convince me that The Life Aquatic is more adult than The Royal Tenebaums. Or that the performances of the three leads in The Darjeeling Limited were as rich as Bill Murray’s in Rushmore. So I don’t think it’s fair to say his work hasn’t been mature and it has definitely varied. Anderson’s last movie, Fantastic Mr. Fox is a clear departure from his strict rules that still carries his unique stamp.
Granted, these distinctions all occur within a box. In all his films, Wes Anderson takes the color from his characters’ expressions and grafts it onto the background. Accordingly, the typical performance in an Anderson film is not just nuanced, it’s confined. But as The Darjeeling Limited taught us, even though they operate on rails, trains can get lost. At best, this style can produce some truly emotionally crushing and powerful moments (a la “Needle in the Hay” scene in The Royal Tenebaums). At its worst, it is bland and unexciting (the entirety of The Life Aquatic).
It’s an interesting approach, no doubt, but it’s one that Anderson has complete control over. All of his moves are deliberate and calculated.
In Anderson’s own words, “I want to try not to repeat myself. But then I seem to do it continuously in my films. It's not something I make any effort to do. I feel I get criticized for style over substance, and for details that get in the way of the characters. But every decision I make is how to bring those characters forward.”
You may not find it effective, but you have to concede that it’s different and often dynamic. That alone might be reason enough to keep watching.
So who is Wes Anderson? The real answer, the deeper meaning under all the production design and constrained emotions, changes in subtle ways with each new movie. With Moonrise on the horizon, it will be interesting to see where he goes next.
Will it be farther into the realm of meta humor as some reviews suggest? Maybe. Although it might be hard to top the abundance of self-referential jokes in The Darjeeling Limited. Will it make the first steps away from the potentially stifling, vibrant dollhouse aesthetic? That remains to be seen.
So if you really want to know who exactly this little weasel of a filmmaker is, you’ll have to head to the theater. I understand that’s a real cuss of an answer, and I apologize for that. But the truth is that it’s hard to pin this little weasel down.
