Saturday, January 29, 2022

Wes Anderson, Ranked

 

I offer you: an extremely definitive ranking of the films of a one mister Wesley Wales Anderson, also known as Wes Anderson: a director, of course; a visual stylist rarely paralleled in contemporary Hollywood (maybe only Quentin Tarantino would be as easily recognized by a single frame); a whimsician to the highest degree; a North Star in my own personal cinematic constellation. 

Wes Anderson is, to me, a certain shade of pink; a particular font; characters in uniforms (either official or of their own choosing); a warm soundtrack, probably filled with both classical music and pop hits from the 1960s and 1970s; themes of family, escape, adventure, alienation, redemption, and death; lavish production design that is scrutinized down the dust jackets on the books; framing borrowed from French New Wave and signature shots that include the god's eye, dollhouse, and slow-motion. (Taken together, these elements have become easy to spot and easy to spoof.) He is the first director that I was aware of as a director, when I first saw The Royal Tenenbaums when I was eighteen, the first movies I claimed as being for me. We recently re-watched all ten of his films, stretching from 1996 to 2021, and developing a rating of enjoyment was, for me, a wonderful undertaking.

Let us begin:

Isle of Dogs (2018): A good litmus test for a Wes Anderson movie is considering what it would be like if this was the first Wes Anderson movie a viewer had ever encountered. In this regard, Isle of Dogs is probably a failure. It's a high-concept story about a retro-future Tokyo where the city's dogs, diseased and infected, have been exiled to a garbage island, and one young boy—the ward of a corrupt and cat-loving mayor—goes to retrieve his loyal pet/bodyguard, Spots. The movie drags in places; the voice cast, while superb, is hidden behind stop-motion animation and puppets; and half the movie is in untranslated Japanese. Worst of all, the decision to place the story in Tokyo reveals a weakness in Anderson's trademark whimsy: his visual heightenedness can easily turn to the stereotypical, and this movie is not so assured that that turn doesn't happen. Missable. 

The Darjeeling Limited (2007): One of the major through-lines of Anderson's work is "daddy issues," or his attempt to process whatever feelings he has about parents. Darjeeling is the clumsy, clunky version of this work. It's a mid-career movie that is so formalized that the emotion comes across like a telenovela or a 1920s drama: there's a lot of shouting, a lot of explication of emotion, and characters talk like they're in a play rather than than actually feeling anything. The Indian setting is utterly wasted on the three brothers as they whine and sulk their way across the subcontinent. This one is boorish to me.

Rushmore (1998): On re-watching Rushmore, I was struck by how much I never wanted to see Max Fischer again. Like, he's an asshole. On the other hand: this movie is the larval version of what was yet to come, and those elements are fantastic. We have Bill Murray in a sad-sack role; some improbably and extremely good high-school theatre; and a Scottish bully who calls Fischer a "wee dirty skidmark," an insult that is actually perfect, I have no notes on that. When I was younger adult, I was sort of charmed by Max's arrogance; now, older, I can see that it's 100% shitty, and the quick turnaround Max evinces over the last 20 minutes of the film feels forced and unearned. If the movie was about literally any other character than Max, I wouldn't have fallen out of love with it.

Bottle Rocket (1996): Anderson's first movie has some of his cinematic trademarks, like his in-camera slow-motion, and it also marks the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration with Owen Wilson. In all other ways, this movie is a generic love story/lazy heist movie. It's a bit slow, quite small, lacks a memorable soundtrack, and isn't all that quotable. I mean, it's based on his film school thesis, and it shows; it's enjoyable, but it's not really a "Wes Anderson" movie in the ways we've come to expect. I still liked it more than Max Fischer, though.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004): I once had a boyfriend for whom this was his fall-asleep movie, so I watched this twice-monthly for nearly a year, and reader, that is too many times. I remember being disappointed when it first came out—I found the quasi-meta-documentary set-up contrived, I missed Margo Tenenbaum desperately, and the animations were unserious—but considered next to Darjeeling, its daddy-issues duological twin, Zissou is more fun, has a stronger cast, tells a more cohesive story, and is probably one of his funniest films. Plus, the soundtrack is perfect, I have no notes on that.

The French Dispatch (2021): Anthology movies are tricky, because navigating shifts in cast, tone, and style can disorient viewers: here we were, having a nice time, and all of the sudden, that story is gone! Never to be seen again! The French Dispatch is filmed versions of stories appearing in a venerated New Yorker-like magazine: three main tales, plus an introductory section where Owen Wilson walks us through a faux-Paris where most of the action takes place (and, in my favourite joke, falls into a subway entrance). Like all anthologies, there are more and less successful segments: the first, a portrait of an artist told in flashbacks by the absolutely marvelous Tilda Swinton, is probably the best; the middle section, a student-uprising narrative ("the children are grouchy"), would be forgettable if not anchored by Frances McDormand and Timothee Chalamet; the last, a tale of food, queer loneliness, and a hostage situation, is about as meditative as Anderson can get while still featuring a chase scene animated in the style of Herge's Tintin. This is Anderson at play, which is fun! We like a not-totally-serious Anderson.

The Fantastic Mr Fox (2009): When Anderson first announced that he was going to be making a stop-motion adaptation of the beloved Roald Dahl book, I was like [insert Scooby-Doo voice] "Ruuhhr?" But here's the thing about Wes Anderson: because he adheres so closely to his regular themes (family, alienation, and coming-of-age) and his cinematic style (French New Wave), introducing new genres or audiences can actually feel quite thrilling. Not having read the book since I was a child myself, I can't tell you how closely the film hews to its source material; what I can say is that Wes Anderson's entry into the genre of children's film is technically marvelous, yes, but also tender, warm, funny, and interesting: all things a children's movie should be. (Tied with Grand Budapest)

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014): This was the first movie in seven years (!!) that Anderson made explicitly for adults. Ralph Fiennes is perfection in the role of M Gustave, the preening maitre d' of an Alps-adjacent hotel right before the start of not-quite-WWII. His young mentee, a lobby boy named Zero, will become his successor, and this is their story. The movie is a nesting doll: a tale inside a memoir at least two layers deep, and the cast, therefor, is absolutely riotous with Big Name Actors. If this movie has a failing, it is that, like Darjeeling and Isle of Dogs, the female characters are greatly underserved: few in number, and playing young-person or old-lady roles that shunt them to one side in favour of The Men and Their Feelings. But this is a darker, twistier Anderson than we've seen before, and it's rather delicious. (Tied with Fantastic Mr Fox)

Moonrise Kingdom (2012): I love this movie, and that is because of, and in spite of, it being thornier than some of the others on this list: the kids are moody young teens, the adults are swept up in their own extracurricular dramas, and the setting—a New England island before it's ravaged by a storm—feels cooler to the touch than Anderson's rumpled New York City or his extravagant hotel rooms. But I believe this movie is a bit of a trick: instead of being "for" adults, I actually think Moonrise Kingdom functions the way a young-adult novel from the 1960s-1980s would: high adventures, very interested in the process of becoming an adult (flawed though we may be), romantic without being super sexual, and keen to feel everything. It is dreamy and weird, and perfect for a phase in a young person's life where they themselves may feel dreamy and weird.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001): This is where it all began, for me. We saw this movie as a family in the theatre—probably on New Year's Day 2002, or a few months later in New York City—and where I fell in love. I was nervous to watch it again, as it had been a defining event for me in my late teens and early 20s, but I haven't watched it in at least a decade. The story of a fractured family of former geniuses who are duped by their ne'er-do-well patriarch into coming together for a last hurrah, I fell in love with the characters, from the rumpled glamour of secret-smoker/writer Margot; Ritchie and Chaz, the damaged brothers; Etheline, their no-nonsense mother, and Eli Cash, the drug-addled novelist who always wanted to be a Tenenbaum. Leading the charge is Gene Hackman as the irascible Royal, who is always running some kind of con or jibe; Billy Murray plays a key supporting role, as do a number of other Hollywood legends and Anderson regulars.

Rewatching it, I am struck by how much Anderson's movies benefit from having women at their centers; both Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelica Huston are perfect, and their stories anchor the whole plot, which is unusual for Anderson and very welcome. This the last movie Anderson did on a relatively small budget ($21M, compared to Zissou's $50M), and the whole thing feels more organic, looser, and playful than the ones that came next; it wouldn't be until 2009's Fantastic Mr Fox that Anderson would make a movie that feels as playful as this one. While most of his movies traffic in redemption narratives, this one sticks the landing: the characters start out bedraggled shadows of their former selves and end the movie, however, shakily, where they're supposed to be. It's a love letter to all the ways families fail us and lift us up, and all the ways life swerves and dips, and all the ways we are wounded and we heal. When one of his sons says to Royal, "Dad, you were never really dying," Royal replies waggishly, "Yeah, but I'm gonna live!" What better motto do we want?