Let's Talk About Wes, Baby

NOTE: I just watched “Hotel Chevalier,” the short film that accompanies The Darjeeling Limited, which is available for free on iTunes. I still stand by everything below, which was written weeks ago.

It’s been awhile since my last full-on essay (if things go to plan over the next month or so, I’ll have more opportunity and need to churn these out faster), on Michael Bay upon the release of the first full trailer for Transformers. My speculation was wrong there (partially – Transformers is awesome, but I still say he missed a huge opportunity), and I hope it’s wrong now.

I can’t believe I’m treading into this territory, but…Wes Anderson may be losing his touch. It’s hard to believe that someone who made something as fresh as Bottle Rocket (1996), who practically reinvented the high school comedy (I’d go so far as to say invented a whole new genre) with Rushmore (1998), and who created something as weirdly touching as The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) could become so…predictable. I was looking forward to The Darjeeling Limited, but now that we have a trailer and a poster, it just makes me sad.

And look…I LOVE Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, and have a soft spot for Bottle Rocket (it's a solid debut film). Every movie fan can point to one or two movies and say, “You know, that was the one. That made all the difference. That was the one that really opened me up to this whole world.” And for me, that movie is The Royal Tenenbaums. That’s why it’ll probably always be my favorite, because that eye-opening experience is a one-shot deal. And Rushmore, man…if you don’t like that movie, you should be shot.

Then there’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004), which is a good film. More an interesting experiment than anything. It’s amusing and all, but never addresses anything Anderson hasn’t hit before. It too often trades story and character for style and quirk (it’s very telling that the part of the film that had everyone talking upon its release was the cutaway of the ship, when it in no way serves the story and never does anything more than look pretty frickin’ cool). When asked who the next Scorsese was, Marty himself said “Wes Anderson,” an answer that baffled me then (around the time that Tenenbaums was released…I think Scorsese was doing press for 2002’s Gangs of New York) and baffles me even more now. And it basically comes down to the one reason that, watching the trailer for Anderson’s fall release, The Darjeeling Limited, is becoming so apparent – Anderson isn’t growing. He’s telling the same stories in the exact same style with (mostly) the same actors.

Now, I have no problem with directors and actors collaborating frequently. It’s worked wonders with the Scorsese/De Niro team (or the Scorsese/DiCaprio team for that matter), Tim Burton and Johnny Depp (Depp’s performance in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) notwithstanding), or the troupe the Coen Brothers pulled from for the first fifteen years of their career (most notably John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, Frances McDormand, etc.). Most of the time, you see a real growth happen as the teams learn to work more and more closely. And it’s true that Owen Wilson delivered, hands down, the best performance of his career in The Life Aquatic, but Angelica Huston was just playing a version of Ethel Tenenbaum, and Bill Murray seemed to be somewhere else the whole time (how much of that has to do with the grueling production, which he referred to as a “death ship” at the 2004 Golden Globes, I do not know). Besides Wilson, the standouts of the film are people new to the Anderson crew – Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, and Jeff Goldblum (sort of…he’ll always have a job playing Jeff Goldblum, but it works for me).

But the script is very loose, not particularly involving (did anyone really doubt that a) the film would convince you beyond a doubt that Ned Plimpton turned out to be Steve Zissou’s son, b) that it would never actually tell you for sure, and c) that Cate Blanchett would never go for Murray?), and only occasionally as funny as Anderson’s three previous films were. And people can say all they want that Anderson was growing by expanding into sort of an adventure story, but wasn’t Bottle Rocket just that? Stylistically, the two have a lot in common, Bottle Rocket just does it better. And has a guy named Future Man. Come on!

I’ve always held that Owen Wilson, the credited co-screenwriter, was a much more important part of Anderson’s first three films than anyone gave him credit for. Reportedly, he had much less to do with Tenenbaums than with the two before it, but Anderson had the benefit of Wilson’s input, and of writing from experience (the film is essentially about his parents’ divorce, but it rises above so many other autobiographical films by using all those thoughts and feelings without being a big nostalgic ego trip for the director). The Life Aquatic script, foolishly trading Wilson for the overrated Noah Baumbach, is a mess, with Anderson giving in too feverishly to his own whim, and Baumbach just happy to be working again.

Meanwhile, Anderson is holding on fervently to his composition, which (while still his greatest strength) is growing tired fast. It’s completely unlike anything anyone else is doing, but it wouldn’t kill him to grow a bit. And it’s not just that he works with the same Director of Photography (the awesome Robert Yeoman) – a lot of directors do the same thing and manage to pull new tricks out (the Coen Brothers and their DP, Roger Deakins, are PERFECT examples of this – there’s a definite skill, craft, and focus to every single shot, but it really is incredible just how flexible and inventive those three have been, film after film after film, over the past seventeen years and eight films (soon to be nine)). And besides, Yeoman also did the photography for The Squid and the Whale (2005) and Dogma (1999), which have nothing in common with Anderson’s work (stylistically, anyway – you can try to convince me The Squid and the Whale isn’t a steaming pile of a rip-off of Anderson’s work some other time).

And then there are the stories – The Darjeeling Limited is about three brothers (excessively defined by their quirks, and who haven't seen each other since their father's death) who go soul searching in India and try to rebuild their relationship. Replace India with New York, make the father estranged instead of dead, and you’ve got The Royal Tenenbaums (see also the huge father issues present in Rushmore and more especially The Life Aquatic).

There’s no word that turns me off more to a movie than “quirky.” It’s so overused and only slightly passes as positive word. The problem is, Wes Anderson pretty much raised a whole new generation of (mostly independent) filmmakers who have been trying to make movies that work as well as Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums. I wonder if Anderson is holding onto this quirk so fervently to try to continue to reclaim what’s his. By continuing to give his characters weirder and weirder quirks, is he hoping to, what, outdo everyone else? I mean, what other reason is there for a woman wandering around an all-male boat topless? Or for a man of Willem Dafoe’s age to be seeking fatherly approval from a man only a few years older? I know The Royal Tenenbaums is chock-full of quirks, but for the life of me I can’t think of one (maybe the Dalmatian mice) that doesn’t in some way serve to define an important aspect of the characters.

Anderson seems like a smart enough guy, and he knows his history. He's safe financially - A recent article in New York magazine quoted a friend of Anderson's as saying “For studio executives, supporting Wes is like collecting art.” And really, this is all speculation. I won’t see The Darjeeling Limited until around the time it opens in early October [NOTE: It'll be this Friday or Saturday]. Maybe it’s actually great. It did opening the New York Film Festival and played in Venice, so there’s hope yet. If I end up being wrong, no one will be happier than I.