Dir.: Wes Anderson

Herman Blume: "You guys have it real easy. I never had it like this where I grew up. But I send my kids here because the fact is you go to one of the best schools in the country: Rushmore. Now, for some of you it doesn't matter. You were born rich and you're going to stay rich. But here's my advice to the rest of you: Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs and take them down. Just remember, they can buy anything but they can't buy backbone. Don't let them forget it. Thank you."



Usually, when someone asks me what's my favourite Wes Anderson film, I reply Rushmore. It was my first Anderson film, the one that introduced me to him and his world, so I suppose it will always be my favourite. Although I wasn't aware of that when I first watched it, Rushmore would be the fulfillment of the promise of Anderson's quirky, little-seen 1996 debut, Bottle Rocket. When a filmmaker makes something this good, that hasn't been beaten (matched, at most, by The Royal Tenenbaums) at his second attempt - although Anderson isn't really a 'quantity' director, having made only five pictures so far - that's a pretty undisputable evidence of that filmmaker's utter talent.

Rushmore is probably one of the smartest (in the literal meaning of the word) comedies I've ever seen. A sometimes charming, occasionally funny, often thoughtful portrait of male adolescence. Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), a young private schooled high school student from Rushmore Academy is, the way I see it, one of the most brilliant and original protagonists ever to be transported from paper to the screen. He's a 35 year-old man in a 15 year-old body. He speaks with the eloquence of a university professor, and breathes the air like an upper-classman, but sadly disowns his father for leading an underachieving life of lowly barber. In fact, this theme of father-son alienation is the common theme with all of Anderson's work.

In the brilliant portrait-style montage of Max's varied extra-curricular projects, Anderson establishes Max as the jacks of all trades and master of none. Max Fischer is the king of his own insular world, but unfortunately he doesn't manage to fool the professors. As Dr. Guggenheim says, "he is one of the worst we have here at Rushmore". Max falls in love with one of the teachers, Miss Rosemary (Olivia Williams) and uses his faux intellectual skills to court her. But Rosemary doesn't give in and she's forced to give Max the cold hard truth. At this low point, Max's world totally crumbles when he's expelled from his beloved Rushmore and forced to go to public school. But he makes the best of it and goes about his extra-curricular activities at Grover Cleveland High with the same gusto as he did at Rushmore.

Meanwhile, Rosemary has developed an attraction to Max's mentor and best friend, Herman Bloom (a brilliant, delightful Bill Murray), thus forming one of the oddest love triangles ever seen on film. Despite a 40-year age difference, Max and Herman's rivalry becomes a childish game of quid pro quo. Max dumps a hive of bees into Herman's hotel room, then Herman runs over Max's bike with his car, then Max cuts Herman's brakes on his car. And so on. Max and Herman eventually make up and together they join forces to stage a hilariously-serious high school play based on Coppola's (Schwartzman's uncle) Apocalypse Now, called "Heaven and Hell".

The film lives in the world of Max's plays. The melodramatic dialogue and staging of his plays spill over into the dramatization of the actual plot of the film. When Herman and Max bond over their loss of Rosemary, their exchange is a romantic-comedy moment - Herman: "She was my Rushmore"; Max: "I know, she was mine too". Or Max's declaration of revenge against his nemesis Magnus, "Tell that stupid Mick he just made my list of things to do today".

The joy of Rushmore is that although it rarely goes the way you think it will, it always stays believable. Herman may regard Max as a friend, but at the same time he's unwilling to bow to some arrogant kid. And, while Max appears poised and at ease with the adult world, he's still just a kid, prone to the tempers and general twattish behaviour all 15 year-olds display. It's in generational inconsistencies - such as when Herman matches Max's adolescent fury or Max outdoes his peers - that Rushmore excels the most.

Anderson uses the '60s music of The Who, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and Cat Stevens to wonderful effect. In fact, many have argued Rushmore to be The Graduate of our generation with Max's oblique point of view of the world similar to Ben Braddock's. And, in addition to the music and the absurdist, deadpan humour, Schwartzman - in his debut, at 18 - has often been compared to a young Dustin Hoffman for his portrayal of Max Fischer. As for me, I won't encourage comparisons (although that's kind of what I'm doing) but that Rushmore is a work of true originality and vision that doesn't come very often, that it is.

Richie: "I wrote a suicide note.
Chas: You did?
Richie: Yeah, right after I regained conciousness.
Chas: Well, what does it say? Is it dark?
Richie: Of course it's dark, it's a suicide note.
Chas: Can I read it?
Richie: No.
Chas: Well, could you at least summarize it for us?"



Ten years ago, in 1998, Rushmore opened at the Toronto Film Festival to much acclaim around the world. It was a decidedly wacky and strangely upbeat film about a sad little high school genius in love with his teacher, and it was also the film that introduced Wes Anderson to the world. Whether its idiosyncratic, offbeat style appealed or not, Rushmore is certainly a film hard to forget.

Rushmore was the second feature by writer/director Wes Anderson and writer/actor Owen Wilson, old University of Texas classmates who began their respective feature film careers by home-growing Bottle Rocket (1996), a "crime spree" road movie of sorts. Five years later, The Royal Tenenbaums - arguably Anderson's best film and, therefore, the best Anderson-Wilson collaboration - mined much the same funny-sad territory as their previous films, only on a grander, much more ambitious scale.

The Royal Tenenbaums is about a family. There's a father and a mother, three grown children, two grandchildren. And the mother's new suitor. And his son. And a neighbor. And the spouse of one of the children. And a kid he's treating for a neurological disorder. And a faithful servant. You don't have to actually be related to be a family.

The father, Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman), screwed up his relationship with his family years ago, through his selfishness and casual cruelty. The mother, Etheline (Anjelica Huston), raised the children more or less on her own. The children all excelled at an early age: Chas (Ben Stiller) made a fortune before he was out of high school; Richie (Luke Wilson) was a championship tennis player; and Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) a prize-winning playwright in the ninth grade.

Through twists of fate that would seem improbable if we didn't come to realize how desperate they all are, the Tenenbaums all end up living under the same roof again. Royal claims to be dying and says he wants to reconcile with his family before he does, but in fact he's just broke. The children are rightly suspicious and resist his attempts to befriend them. Besides, they've all got their own problems. Chas, traumatized by the death of his wife, is busy trying to protect his two sons from any possible threat to their safety. Margot is chronically depressed and so secretive that, though she's smoked since the age of twelve, nobody in the family knows it. And Richie, well, he's in love with Margot.

The Royal Tenenbaums is mostly a comedy, but one of the most admirable things about it is its refusal to be confined to that genre. It's a comedy about deeply troubled people, and it is not at all shy about showing us their troubles. Their problems aren't funny, but the way they deal with them - or refuse to deal with them - very often are. There's a huge range of emotions in this film: laugh-out-loud moments, poignant moments, heartbreaking moments.

The script, by Anderson and Wilson (who plays the neighbor, Eli) keeps us slightly off balance. A character's actions might seem funny until you realize the pain that causes them. Or a situation may shock you until someone's offhand comment makes you laugh. The characters and situations are exaggerated, but the feelings behind them are genuine.

Anderson's direction is precise and focused. Every shot is meticulously framed, every set decoration tells a story. The costumes, the hairstyles, Margot's ridiculous eye makeup, all speak volumes. The characters are carefully arranged in family tableaux, shot in deep focus so we can see every expression. Nothing about this film seems accidental. Anderson also constructs the film as equal parts homage to Orson Welles and literary time, with a prologue - which introduces the family dynamic and individual characters' histories - chapters, and epilogue, title pages and omniscient narrator (a charmingly husky-voiced Alec Baldwin).

The strong, often brilliant ensemble cast at work in The Royal Tenenbaums battles Anderson and Wilson's writting for what is the film's strongest quality. Angelica Huston (for the first time on an Anderson film), Danny Glover, the brothers Wilson, Bill Murray (sadly underused). Special mention for three: Ben Stiller's characteristic sarcasm and barely controlled rage are perfect for Chas, a man almost at his breaking point. Gene Hackman is brilliantly funny as Royal, walking the line between manipulative schemer and devilish anti-hero. And Gwyneth Paltrow shines as Margot, packing more shades of sadness into one expression - literally, one expression through the entire film - than most actresses could even dream of.

The Royal Tenenbaums has few huge belly laughs, but it's never boring. It makes you appreciate the people in your life, forgive them their trespasses, forgive even your own. It's like a family: sometimes it makes you laugh and sometimes it makes you cry.

Francis: "[Francis and Peter are beating each other up] You don't love me!
Peter: Yes I do!
Jack: I love you too, but I'm gonna mace you in the face!"



Wes Anderson was recently asked by an American interviewer about the kind of fans his films attracted. He thought for a second, before replying: "Outsiders, misfits". The interesting part is that it's insiders that tend to be the objects of Anderson's films. All the four of them, before The Darjeeling Limited - Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zizou - were films populated by flunking students, high-society screw-ups, depressed magnates, sad-eyed auteurs. A psychoanalyst would probably diagnose these characters, almost all of them men, as suffering from affluenza.

The Darjeeling Limited is no different. Opening the film is Anderson's 13-minute short, Hotel Chevalier - which, if possible, I recommend to be seen in the theatre, immediately before the film, not on iTunes - best known for Natalie Portman's bare backside, a bit of an introduction to Darjeeling, featuring Jason Shwartzman's character, Jack, as he meets his ex, played by the perfectly dry and Anderson-esque Portman, in France two weeks before the feature film. The bright yellow walls of the hotel room and Jack's orange luggage clash with the downerness that is this relationship. It's perfectly quirky Anderson without the funny.

The funny comes in later as Darjeeling opens with Jack (Shwartzman) meeting his two older brothers, Francis (Owen Wilson) and Peter (Adrien Brody) in a first class sleeper car of the Indian cross-country train "The Darjeeling Limited", in a trip planned by the elder brother, the controlling and somewhat maniacal Francis, who goes so far as to hire a co-ordinator (Wally Wolodarsky), whose job it is to make sure that each day's itinerary is religiously followed. A year after their father's sudden death, the brothers haven't been in touch and Francis wants to bring them together on a 'spiritual journey' through India. What he doesn't tell them is that the real purpose of the trip is to reunite with and find their mother, played by Anderson regular Anjelica Houston, who is living in a convent at the base of the Himalayas.

The bit of dialogue with which I started this review was the best example I could find to exemplify the kind of brotherly love exhibited in The Darjeeling Limited, which is really an odyssey of total family disintegration and partial reformation. The three brothers both love and loath each other and their time on the "Darjeeling" is spent bonding, eating, smoking cigarettes, having sex with waitresses, downing Indian pain killers, and fighting with each other. Their spiritual journey actually begins when their inappropriate behavior gets them kicked off the train in the middle of India, with all of their luggage, a laminating machine, and without their trusty aide Brendan.

As is the case with most of Anderson's films, The Darjeeling Limited is a window into a poignant, mesmerising and heart warming reality where the journey matters more than the destination. By turns highly comic and then, without warning, utterly tragic, you'll laugh, (maybe) cry, and be deeply moved as the film travels across the screen with wonderful style and gorgeous cinematography.

It's really hard to put your finger on quite what makes this so special, but be assured that this is a film to be savoured in the utmost. It's a spectacle that no film lover should miss, an adventure of the spirit of an almost immoral indulgence - how else can you tolerate three wealthy Americans traversing some of the poorest areas on earth from a luxury train? The brothers are each memorable characters and the situations they are put through encompass all of human nature.

Owen is particularly impressive and shows a range and depth far beyond his lightweight comedy roles of late, and when combined with Brody (who shows for the first time he can play comedic roles) and Shwartzman, both dry and quirky enough, the three performances are good enough for us to believe they're real brothers. Amara Karan absolutely shines as Rita, the head stewardess on the train, and the small cameo by Bill Murray is the cherry on top of the cake. The orange Marc Jacobs luggage all of them seem to own becomes its own character, being carried and lugged all over the country. The same happens with India itself, perfectly captured by cinematographer Robert Yeoman, who, in the golden dust and light of the landscapes, revels the beauty of the country through which the brothers are travelling.

The usual pleasures of Anderson's work - the precise framing, eclectic soundtrack (with a lot of Indian music and several tracks from one of my favourite bands, The Kinks), and tiny marvels of production design, the offbeat humor, the well-proportioned, efficiently told story - are all present in The Darjeeling Limited, which creates a gorgeous palette out of local color. The second act includes a detour to an Indian village that's as vibrant and full of feeling as anything Anderson's done. The simplicity of his one liners - "I don't feel good about myself", "I want that Indian stewardess" or "I guess I have more healing to do" - say so much by saying so little that you find yourself in love with the film without even noticing.

You'll note that I haven't mentioned one negative aspect about the film. I could, if I wanted to, but I've learned that, when it comes to films, I love more than I hate, I'd rather focus on the good things and forget the bad ones - which is why I could never do what the so called professional critics do. I struggled a lot (probably 'cause of the film's X factor, the one that makes it so inexplainably enjoyable) before rating it as I did, but I did it because to rate it higher would be to state that it's as good as Anderson's Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, which it just isn't. Still, missing The Darjeeling Limited would be to impoverish tremendously your 2007 cinematic experience - go and witness this as soon as you can. You won't regret it.

Ned Plimpton: "I'm gonna fight you, Steve.
[Steve hits Ned in the face]
Steve Zissou: You never say, "I'm gonna fight you, Steve." You just smile and act natural, and then you sucker-punch him.
Ned Plimpton: You fight your way, and I'll fight mine.
Steve Zissou: Oh, listen, Ned. Don't you try to...
[Ned hits Steve in the face]
Steve Zissou: I think your Team Zissou ring might've caught me on the lip."



Wes Anderson's style - deadpan humour, colourful characters, expressive soundtracks - is unique and irreplicatable (although many are starting to try). One of the complaints about Anderson's films is that the humour is so dry, it often goes over a lot of people's heads. Sometimes, they argue, it feels like he's trying too hard to be witty. That exact criticisms seems to be more obvious in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and, apparently, the main reason why some people consider it his less achieved film. Now, I always respected different opinions, you guys know that, and I like to think I always will, but I'm afraid that's just unfair and untrue.

The script, co-written by Noah Baumbach (who'd write The Squid and the Whale a year later) is as original and quirky as anything Anderson has written: Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) was once a celebrated amateur oceanographer whose self-made documentaries won him a huge following - but the now middle-aged explorer has lost his spark, several wives, his funding, and most recently his best friend and long-time colleague Esteban, killed in a mysterious underwater accident. So, Zissou sets out with Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson) who may or may not be his long-lost son, on an failure-destined expedition which may or may not be his last, in pursuit of the man-eating leopard shark which may or may not exist. Joining him and his heterogeneous crew aboard the Belafonte (a sort of floating bachelor pad which, like Zissou himself, has seen better days) are Zissou's ex-wife Eleanor (Anjelica Huston), the pregnant journalist Jane (Cate Blanchett), the very needy crew member Klaus (Willem Dafoe), a three-legged dog named Cody, and a bunch of Alaskan student interns looking for course credit. Zissou must contend with pirates, beat arch-rival Alistair Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum), and his own sense of loss, deeper and darker than any ocean.

A "Moby Dick" for the postmodern age, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou can be seen as a story of a group of lost souls led by one of life's great losers on an idealistic quest for all the things that have been left behind - friendships, family, success, hope, research turtles, magic and childhood dreams. As the captain on this adrift ship of fools, Bill Murray is (once again) magnificent, capturing perfectly Zissou's mercurial combination of infantile enthusiasm and mid-life melancholy. He is the tragicomic anchor in a film full of free-floating whimsy, where even the sea creatures forming the 'scientific' background (Crayon Pony Fish, Sugar Crabs, Constellation Rays, and of course the Leopard Shark) are all products of Anderson's surreal imagination, beautifully realised by Henry Selick's stop-motion animation.

The 'adventure tale' aspect of The Life Aquatic resonates through the otherworldliness of the film, driven by its look (with bright colors and obviously man-made setpieces), its special effects (the way the mysterious sea creatures are animated), and its music (including uniquely resonant acoustic Portuguese cover versions of David Bowie songs by crew member Pelé (Seu Jorge), and a perfectly placed Sigur Rós song). The otherworldly atmosphere coincides with the plot in compelling ways. These are people escaping from the pain of real life by engaging in fantasy - the film suggests we're doing much the same. At the same time, the fable told in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou has a hard edge to it, with death and pain existing as real tangible forces.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, in the end, isn't Wes Anderson's best film - although the concept itself of 'best' is quite subjective (for some people this is their favourite). Inherent to its creator, it's something rich and strange, both a comedy of the absurd, and an allegory for all those who find themselves at sea - and the climactic scene in which almost the entire cast crams into the tiny submarine "Deep Search" (formerly named "Jacqueline", after Zissou's first wife) to share in the adventurer's broken dreams, is all at once as funny, mysterious and distressingly poignant as anything I have ever seen. I proudly remain a Wes Anderson fan.

Anthony: "One morning, over at Elizabeth's beach house, she asked me if I'd rather go water-skiing or lay out. And I realized that not only did I not want to answer THAT question, but I never wanted to answer another water-sports question, or see any of these people again for the rest of my life."



Detail, some believe, is what makes good art. One need look no further than the companion disc and commentary to The Royal Tenenbaums to understand the layers of detailed hard work that goes into a Wes Anderson production, even if the casual viewer is completely unaware.

This astute auteurism can be traced back through all of Anderson's work. Rushmore's intricate storyboards and accompanied drawings by his brother Eric Chase Anderson show not only a liking for detailed craft of a laborious control freak, but someone with the wit and guts to pull it off with flying colors, as represented in the resplendent theatrical performances of Max Fischer.

A jack-of-all-trades, Anderson and his work cannot stand without his solid screenwriting with his former roommate, Owen Wilson. It is the detail of their wit and cultural pulse which allows both self-indulgent inside jokes ("I know you, asshole!") and poignant melodrama ("I'm going to kill myself tomorrow") work without being pretentious. Yet at Anderson's humble beginnings, the detail is harder to see, for the production is much less extravagant. Bottle Rocket is as far from pretentious as they come and remains an intricate, well-driven narrative, despite the fact that the story is almost simplistically bare.

Based on a black-and-white short from two years earlier, the film centres around two best friends and would-be conmen, Dignan (Owen Wilson) and Anthony (Luke Wilson). Anthony thinks he's a failure in even his little sister's eyes and has just "escaped" from a voluntary mental hospital following a breakdown while Dignan, desperate for acceptance and full of ever-so-slight delusions of grandeur, puts on an air of self-confidence in long-term goals to cover up that he can't hold down a job with a lawn-mowing company. He fancies making it to the big leagues as a feared criminal, and longs to mastermind the kind of heist that'll gain him notoriety first and wealth second. So, after recruiting Anthony and their neighbor Bob, he sets about planning the big job to match his ambitions. They form a team who slowly work their way up the amateur ranks, but always fall a bit short. It's a buddy film, but Anderson's broad cinematic scope somehow makes it more than that.

Even in his first feature, Anderson is confident behind the camera. A number of simple, yet captivating visuals drive the narrative even when the momentum slows. Anderson's cultured ear for pop music perfectly accentuates the shot of a sheet waving across the frame while Anthony and his newly-found love interest Inez are in bed. The composition in which a distant sunset falls on Anthony and Dignan's boss, Mr. Henry, eating ice cream breathes a sophistication into the film which - even with his first film - establishes Anderson as a master of his domain.

Again, this film would be nothing without the tag-team writing of Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson. I hesitate to call the film 'deadpan' or 'dry', because it is executed in such a carefree fashion that they don't even seem like true jokes. I would have a difficult time explaining why Anderson and Wilson approach Jarmusch status when Dignan says, "And I can't fix a car like this. I don't have the tools to do it, man. And even I had the tools I can't promise you I'd know how to fix a car like that." The actors portray such obscure events with such astute simplicity, you would have a hard time convincing me that even a non-actor like Kumar Pallana is playing anyone other than himself, while Bob's brother is known only as "Futureman", as if it was an proper name.

The characters walk a blurred line between fantasy and reality. Dignan rides a motorbike and wears yellow jumpsuits and is overzealous in his robbery escapades so much so that his weapon of choice can quickly change between pistol or explosive. Anthony is in relapse and his solace comes in the form of a soon-to-be bilingual Paraguayan motel maid in Podunk, Texas, with whom he actually establishes a fairy-tale relationship.

Amazingly, the plot never really goes anywhere, but it's tremendously fun watching it do so. Anderson crafts what could have potentially been a self-absorbed mess into one of the most shining American debuts of the '90s. Of course, Wes Anderson never quite turned back after Bottle Rocket, and blockbuster actors have wanted to work with him ever since. Yet, as intricate as his eye for detail remains, Bottle Rocket was not only a promising debut, but a film that, till this day, proudly stands beside Anderson's later work.

A 13-minute prologue to Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited. From personal experience, I can say its viewing undoubtedly enriches the Darjeeling cinematic experience. It's about an American named Jack (Jason Schwartzman), in a fancy Paris hotel, who has an unexpected reunion with an estranged girlfriend (Natalie Portman). Shot two years ago, before screenwriters Anderson, Schwartzman, and Roman Coppola developed the character into one of the three brothers on Darjeeling's rail journey across India, Hotel Chevalier sees Anderson working in his customary jewel-box/dollhouse mode, but the form and length really suit each other here. Anderson's taste in '60s British Invasion pop tunes is present as well, in the repeated use of Peter Sarstedt's "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)". Chevalier is an exquisite short story where we learn not much but exactly enough about these two characters; plus, there are several allusions in Darjeeling to elements of Chevalier that, after watching the feature film, fit like a puzzle and that you won't catch if you haven't already seen the short. As for the drooling fanboy talk that Portman finally gets naked... well, not quite. Like the film, she reveals not much, just enough.