Bright red blood.
When you say the name Wes Anderson to me, that is the first thing that comes to my mind. Not mise-en-scènes that are perfectly balanced or stone-faced actors saying witty lines or whimsical European dreamscapes. No, it is blood cascading down the arms of Luke Wilson — sweet, beautiful Luke Wilson — as his character Richie Tenenbaum decides to take his own life in a dark bathroom bathed in blue light and surrounded by the hair he has just shorn from his face and head.
I was absolutely too young when I first saw Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums. My mom had rented the movie through Netflix’s DVD service (may it rest in peace), leading my sister and I to abscond with it before it was sent back as we so often did. I don’t know what drew us to the film. I doubt we knew many of the actors and it’s unlikely we knew Anderson. Perhaps it was the synopsis printed on the white envelope that held the disc, its smooth texture and no-nonsense font still crystal clear in my memory. Whatever it was, it definitely didn’t prepare me for that haunting image of Wilson.
I fell in love with Wes Anderson that day. But his films have never been easy for me to watch and I could never seem to articulate why. If I adore him as much as I think I do, why can’t I watch his work that often? Why do I have to be in a very specific mindset before I can press play?
The discourse around Anderson is often focused on his aesthetics, with words like “twee” and “cutesy” thrown around and accusations of style over substance forming the crux of many an argument. It’s frankly a boring way to approach the filmmaker, in my opinion, and one that entirely misses the aching humanity of everything he creates. (Yes, even his H&M Christmas commercial.) Seeing the blood leave Richie Tenenbaum’s body didn’t sear itself onto my brain because of the way his hair trimmings were artfully arranged around his sliced arms. It was the suddenness of the moment, its violence upending the complacency Anderson’s lovingly curated spaces had lulled me into. Isn’t this just supposed to be a film of pretty pictures?
In all of Anderson’s films, there is a moment of destabilization like this. Sometimes it can be a turn of the axis that thrusts grief and loss right to the forefront instead of allowing them to linger around the edges, such as Adrien Brody’s heartbreaking line of “I didn’t save mine” in The Darjeeling Limited, revealing to his brothers that one of the children they were trying to rescue from a rushing river didn’t survive. Other times, the destabilization I feel can be smaller, like the (tasteful) nudity of Natalie Portman in the short film Hotel Chevalier, the painting of a sex act that Ralph Fiennes hangs to hide the thievery of a different artwork in The Grand Budapest Hotel, or the gruesome accidental death of an adorable terrier named Snoopy in Moonrise Kingdom. Occurrences like these always unsettle me when I’m watching Anderson’s filmography because they disrupt this constant narrative others place on his work that emphasizes the specificity of his imagery and style over the mournful pathos that is so clearly at the heart of everything he does. I know that there is more to Anderson than pastels and Kinks songs, and yet I still become so hypnotized by the universes he conjures that I’m blindsided by the sexuality and physical and emotional brutality and vulnerability that inevitably emerge.
Watching his feature debut, Bottle Rocket, for the first time recently, I once again found myself struck by a moment that has been replaying itself in my head ever since. While using a motel as a hideout after robbing a bookstore with his friends Dignan (Owen Wilson) and Bob (Robert Musgrave), Anthony (Luke Wilson) falls hard for Inez (Lumi Cavazos), a maid who returns his feelings but worries they have too many obstacles to overcome. When it comes time for the guys to leave, Anthony sends Dignan to tell Inez goodbye. A man who revels in nonstop patter and ceaseless planning, Dignan is chattering away when suddenly Inez hugs him and asks him to take care of Anthony. All of his bravado immediately drops as Dignan looks at her with the realization that Inez just might love his friend as much as he does, rendering him speechless for the first and only time in the film. It’s not a moment as traumatic as Richie’s suicide attempt was for me, but it made me gasp in the same way. The tenderness of those few seconds with Dignan is so naked, so raw, that it almost feels like a magic trick, an intangibility I can’t fully explain and that you either can or can’t see for yourself.
In the end, that is the connection that will keep me coming back to Wes Anderson. Even if I may have to take a breather of a few years before I can return to his stunning, devastating world.
Wes Anderson’s latest film Asteroid City will be in theaters nationwide on June 23.
Anderson films that have screened at IU Cinema include Fantastic Mr. Fox as part of Meryl Streep’s 2014 visit to campus, The Grand Budapest Hotel when it was first released that same year, and Rushmore during last year’s inaugural Study Break Mega Marathon.
Michaela Owens is thrilled to be the editor of Establishing Shot, in addition to being IU Cinema’s Communications and Outreach Media Specialist. An IU graduate with a BA in Communication and Culture and an MA in Cinema and Media Studies, she never stops thinking about classic Hollywood, thanks to her mother’s introduction to it, and she likes to believe she is an expert on Katharine Hepburn and Esther Williams.