Sic transit gloria — Glory fades. I’m Wes Anderson.
Prologue
So goes the opening line delivered by the protagonist of the 1998 school days film Rushmore to the woman who’s caught his eye, a teacher at the titular Rushmore Academy he attends. Strictly speaking though, the line ends with, “I’m Max Fischer,” the name of the precocious pupil brought to vivid life by Jason Schwartzman. It’s become clear after a career spanning two decades that there’s a lot of Anderson in all of his characters, but Max is perhaps the closest we’ve ever gotten to an authorial avatar in the writer-director’s oeuvre (Anderson’s alma mater, St. Mark’s School of Texas, stands in for the titular prep school in the film). He’s a portrait of the artist as a young man, brimming with imagination and insight, but not quite as clever as he thinks he is, or as befitting of the self-assurance he projects. Indeed, taken within the context of Max’s scenario, it’s an empty gesture, a hollow flexing of his linguistic skills (Max later mentions having, “saved Latin” [class]) and an attempt to project depth so as to impress the older woman. Its utter lack of relevance to their situation only betrays his youthful insecurity. But from Anderson’s mouth, it’s turned out to be a manifesto.
Cast of characters
The theme of faded glory is one that pervades all of his movies post-Rushmore, his sophomore feature, and that hangs over the heads of many of his characters. Like in Tolkien’s Middle-earth, there is a notion in the worlds Anderson creates, that life and the world had been better in the past, in a way that is now out of reach.
The eponymous oceanographer/Jacques Cousteau pastiche-cum-tribute of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou grapples both internally and externally with the question of whether he’ll ever again achieve the widespread renown and universal acclaim of his early work. This, as he struggles to achieve a sense of wholeness and self in the wake of his best friend’s death and the disintegration of his marriage.
A major impetus for Francis Whitman’s organizing a purported spiritual journey with his brothers in The Darjeeling Limited is so they can “become brothers again, like [they] used to be,” a journey whose true purpose turns out to be to establish contact with the mother who had disappeared on them at a crucial turning point in their lives.
Anderson reimagines the hero of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox as a regular stiff, albeit one with a former career as a master thief (to play up the heist film schtick even further, he’s voiced by Danny Ocean himself, George Clooney). His raids on the trio of villain-farmers, which are the catalyst for the series of life-threatening obstacles Mr. Fox and his family and friends must overcome throughout the course of the film, are a matter of course in Dahl’s book, and driven by survival. In Anderson’s film, they’re an attempt to recapture the excitement and personal liberation of the lifestyle he’d left behind so he could raise a family, through “one last job”.
The main storyline of The Grand Budapest Hotel is framed as the wistful recollection of the adventures had at the hotel in its halcyon days by its former bellhop-turned-owner Zero Moustafa, told amidst the tattered remnants of the same hotel, to the author of a fictional novel with which the film shares its title.
In Isle of Dogs, the chief motivating factor behind the main dog pack (except, notably, our main character Chief) helping the young boy Atari is that he’s the last link to the lives they’d led in human society before the outbreak of “dog flu” had them exiled to the island, lives in which they’d enjoyed considerable prestige.
The motif is perhaps least explicit in Moonrise Kingdom, whose heroes, Sam and Suzy, are children on the cusp of adulthood, discovering love for the first time. The viewpoint is present, however, in the way it depicts the purity of their young romance, especially against the backdrop of the more fraught relationships between the adult characters — Suzy’s parents’ crumbling marriage, and the furtive affair between her mother and police captain Sharp. Their relationship is tested, and endures, but not without changing. The innocence of youth exists only temporarily, and like the beach where Sam and Suzy make camp in the wake of a storm, is inevitably changed by the forces that surround it.
Chapter One
I’d recently unearthed a coffee table book by Matt Zoller Seitz I bought a number of years ago, which covered Anderson’s body of work up to that point with essays, interviews, and production photos. I don’t believe I’d seen all his movies at the time I got it, so I didn’t read the entire book cover-to-cover. It also escaped my notice that the introduction was written by one of my now-favorite writers, Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of my favorite novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, alongside other acclaimed pieces like The Yiddish Policeman’s Union and Wonder Boys (which I’ve not read, but I’ve heard has an underrated film adaptation).
He opens by saying, “The world is so big so complicated, so replete with marvels and surprises, that it takes years for most people to begin to notice that it is, also, irretrievably broken. We call this period of research ‘childhood’.”
I think the universality of appeal in Anderson’s depictions of faded glory is that for many of us, no glory shines as brightly, or hangs as heavily, as that of childhood. We call it the “age of innocence”, because the transition to adulthood is marked by the realization that some of our beliefs and assumptions, in systems, institutions, tenets, and people, which we had taken for granted all our lives, may not necessarily hold true. This alters our perspectives irrevocably and destroys some of our most closely held views, often without leaving answers to the questions that arise in the wake.
That the style and manner of Grand Budapest concierge Gustave H., Zero’s mentor, hearkens back to, to paraphrase one Obi-Wan Kenobi, a “more civilized time”, even within the bygone era of his nestled narrative, hints at a suggestion that the glorious state we yearn for or mourn perhaps only ever really existed in our minds and imaginations. That glory is more the product of perception than reality, much like the idyllic state of youth. Still, who among us doesn’t long for it?
It’s the central conceit behind 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums, my favorite of Anderson’s films and which, though not necessarily his technical peak, stands as his masterpiece, as well as the one that deals most directly and intimately with our theme.
The Tenenbaum siblings — Chas, Margot, and Richie — are hailed as geniuses early in life, and display a tremendous amount of promise in their respective fields. This success, however, fails to carry on into adult life, largely due to childhood experiences that continue to shape their perspectives, lifestyles, and decisions. Indeed, by the end of the prologue, Alec Baldwin’s narrator emphatically states,
All memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums had been erased by two decades of betrayal, failure and disaster.
Central to many of these experiences is their father, Royal Tenenbaum himself, who is a reprobate in the highest and most classical sense. He’s insensitive, self-serving, compulsively dishonest, and as brought to life by the great Gene Hackman, one of the most lovable, richest, most nuanced characters to be envisioned by Anderson or any filmmaker.
An unfortunate reality is that many of the qualities that make Royal endearing as a person also make him uniquely unqualified to be a father, especially to children. The same spontaneity and playfulness that are key to his natural charisma lead him to turn on his son Chas in the middle of a B.B. gun fight, the irony and absurdity of which are lost on the boy, who only registers the betrayal and subsequent pain. His forthrightness and sincerity bar him from feigning interest in or understanding of one of Margot’s early plays, or from even trying to, purely on the basis of it featuring animals as main characters (something anyone with a boomer parent who’s dismissed anything animated as “cartoons” should be able to relate to). That, and not neglecting to mention that the girl was adopted at random occasions, despite the ease with which he’s otherwise able to obfuscate the truth when it serves his needs. Not helping matters is his tendency to bring Richie, his obvious favorite, on regular weekend excursions to the exclusion of the two, simply because it’s what occurs to him.
Chas, who’d distinguished himself as a financial and commercial wizard as a boy, thus grows into a professionally successful but profoundly angry and paranoid man, something that’s only exacerbated by the accidental loss of his wife. Chas lashes out by suing Royal for using his status as parent to siphon funds from his projects, and gets the latter disbarred. What Royal did was completely unjust of course, but one gets the sense that it could’ve been resolved between them had he cultivated any sort of affection in their relationship. More unfortunately though, Chas’ neuroses color his interactions with all the other figures in his life, smothering his sons through his overprotectiveness and projecting hostility onto Richie, the recipient of all his father’s warmth.
Margot, for her part, indulges her need for validation through promiscuity, and doubles down on her alienation by refusing to open up to anyone in a meaningful way. Her simultaneous longing for and fear of pursuing real human connection creates a negative feedback loop that leaves her incapable to engage with life.
This induces pain and anxiety in the people in her life who do care for her, including her husband Raleigh, and Richie, who has tragically been in love with her since childhood. Having been relatively less starved for acknowledgement from their father as a boy, Richie is significantly kinder and more empathetic than his siblings (not that he was spared entirely, noting that his father cut off contact after the end of his tennis career). His inability to reconcile his romantic feelings for Margot with their social status, however, leaves him in a perpetual state of detachment and unhappiness.
Indeed, all the Tenenbaum children are trapped in a state of eternal adolescence. Their childhood traumas cling to them like disease, preventing them from moving forward, just as the splendor and promise of their youth looms over their every action, artifacts from that faded era littering the childhood home whose roof they find themselves sharing for the first time in years.
Chapter Two
Most of the dialogue around Anderson’s work tends to revolve around his stylistic, rather than his literary flourishes. Given how he’s established a signature aesthetic throughout his career, and has only doubled down on it in more recent works, it’s easy to understand why. But what’s often missing from those discussions is how those stylistic decisions feed directly into or support the message inherent in each of his films.
The often old-fashioned choices of dress his characters make serve to reflect their longing, or at least affection for, a lost age, whether it’s one they experienced directly or whose values they’re attempting to co-opt. The abundance of vintage equipment and antique curios on his sets perform the same function, and serve as a constant reminder to the viewer of the notion of a bygone era.
Likewise, his signature shooting style and color palette, coupled with a frequent use of highly stylized chapter cuts, highlight the artificiality of the productions, but in a manner evocative of contexts that would be familiar to a child, say a storybook or a toy house. I saw The Royal Tenenbaums for the first time when I was 10 years old, and despite the very adult themes of strained familial relationships and existential ennui, the redemptive story at the center rang true with me. Revisiting it over the years as I progressed through life has only deepened my appreciation for it, but my ability to connect with it at such a young age, when a lot of dialogue would usually simply fly over my head, I attribute entirely to the way Anderson presented his story.
Much of the success of the great tentpoles of popular cinema — Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Jaws, Back to the Future, Titanic — can be traced to particularly accomplished scores, with their narrative beats paired expertly with musical themes crafted to evoke the desired response. This breadth of appeal is due to music’s ability to cross linguistic barriers, as well as those of comprehension. When it comes to eliciting a particular emotional response from a person, music’s ability far exceeds that of visual or verbal cues. Anderson, of course, has benefited from collaborations with tremendously talented composers like Mark Mothersbaugh and Alexandre Desplat, but his most potent weapon in this area is his ability to curate from the library of popular music for accompaniments to his scenes.
His choices here parallel his visual ones; nearly every song that appears in his films is from the golden age of rock-and-roll, their nostalgic quality only growing as the style fades from contemporary trends. Watching Tenenbaums as a child, the lost promise of the youths of the Tenenbaum children was encapsulated perfectly by the orchestral arrangement of “Hey Jude” that plays over the prologue. Likewise, Royal’s childlike sensibility and the playful excitement he brings into the lives of his grandsons is made clear through Paul Simon’s jaunty “Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard”. I can’t quite recall if I really grasped all the emotional complexities of Richie and Margot’s conversation in the tent after his suicide attempt, but the Stones, ever the underrated balladeers, told me everything I needed to know about the intimacy, anxiety, and longing they were feeling through “She Smiled Sweetly”. In a neat little trick, the standard “Ruby Tuesday” serves to underscore the subsequent catharsis, both songs appearing on the album the characters were listening to (though not next to each other — never let reality get in the way of a good story).
Perhaps the Anderson signature most deeply connected to our theme of faded glory though, is the distinctive way his child characters speak and behave. Children in Wes Anderson movies routinely demonstrate a vocabulary and command of language not reflective of reality, or at the very least, highly uncommon. Beyond that though, they exhibit rationality and sound decision-making that’s decidedly rare in real life figures, and often completely missing in Anderson’s adult characters.
Chapter Three
This is because, given this understanding of childhood, there isn’t any sound line of reasoning behind chronological age serving as the delineation from adulthood. Anderson’s child characters are self-composed because they’ve yet to experience the disappointment, betrayal, and disillusionment that has left his grown-up characters confused and off-center. Because of this, the latter behave in petty, irrational, and self-destructive ways, having yet to properly process those experiences. Indeed, resolution in Anderson’s movies almost always stems from moments of realization that lead to self-awareness and acceptance.
The plot of Tenenbaums is kicked off when Royal, driven as ever by self-interest, decides to reinsert himself in the lives of his children and his ex-wife Etheline, ready to begin the next phase of her life with a new partner. Through deception and manipulation, he maneuvers himself into the home they now all share once again, intent on reclaiming the life that had since been lost to him.
Its resolution is made possible by his realizing two things. The first is that, for all his cavalier ways, he truly cared about his family, perhaps more than anything in the world, and their well-being was tantamount to him. When family friend Eli Cash says that he’d always wished he were a Tenenbaum, Royal concurs, “Me too.” He remarks, as he leaves the house following his ruse being exposed, that the week he’d spent with them was the best of his entire life. We’re told,
Immediately after making this statement, Royal realized that it was true.
The second is that through his thoughtlessness and lack of understanding, he was responsible for a great deal of the issues that now beset his family, and which led to the gradual decline and loss of what they once had. These two revelations in tandem spur him into a course of action aimed not at taking back what he’d lost, but at making amends for that which he’d destroyed.
He shares with Chas’ sons Ari and Uzi the affection and time he’d denied their father in his youth, just at the the moment the loss of their mother and their dad’s subsequent breakdown made it mean the most. He demonstrates to Chas that he does possess the ability to put someone else’s needs before his own, and when given the opportunity, extends to him the sympathy he needed to process the pain and grief plaguing him. He apologizes to Margot for his past callousness, and lets her know just how highly he regards her, and that despite all his actions to the contrary, he does treasure her as his daughter. When the one son whose resentment he hadn’t cultivated opens up to him about his feelings for Margot, Royal listens without judgment and, ever practical, expresses that people will think whatever they want to think, but in the end, it’s between them.
And, after thanking her for all she’d done to raise their children, he grants Etheline a divorce so she can go on to marry her beau. In letting go, Royal wins back a real sense of family. Together, they can begin to heal.
Maturity is acquired not through the passive passage of time, but obtained through thoughtful examination and more often than not, painful experiences. His neurotic, stunted, occasionally bumbling characters are exaggerated for comedic and dramatic purposes, but I believe this is as true in life as in Anderson’s films. Faded glory can’t be recaptured, but Tenenbaums, and Anderson, suggest it can be moved past, and with the wisdom obtained, something new can be built.
Epilogue
Rushmore ends with Rosemary asking Max to dance. He looks up at her, knowing that she’ll never see him the way he wants her to see him. He understands now though, that unlike in the plays he writes, not everything in life can be crafted and shaped according to his will. Indeed, there are things more important than his personal desires. She in turn has accepted that the loss of her departed husband has left a void in her life she can never truly fill, not by working at his alma mater, nor by befriending precocious young boys who exhibit the same brilliance and spark he did in life. They look at each other, not as projections of personal fantasy or emotional crutches, but eye-to-eye, as equals. The wistful opening strums of “Ooh La La” by the Faces enter as they step center-frame. Rod Stewart croons,
I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger.
I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was stronger.
Don’t we all?
