While eviscerating "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou," some are taking the opportunity to retroactively review Wes Anderson's entire output thus far. Having missed the boat, they're still sending us cables insisting that it is going to sink.
They decry the singular design of his films and dismiss the considerable compassion and warmth with which he treats his characters. They ghettoize him as the latest "savior of independent film-making" (a straw-man argument if ever there was one) or they minimize his distinctiveness both as a visual stylist and a writer of comedy. Most unfortunately, they neglect to recognize how Anderson, through the visual, aural, and dramatic elements in his films, examines the act of film-making itself.
Would it help to mention that Martin Scorsese named "Bottle Rocket" one of the ten best of the 1990's? To cite the literary and film predecessors to whom Wes Anderson is indebted, and how he fuses them into something all his own? To quote Kent Jones of _Film Comment_, who calls him "the most original presence in film comedy since Preston Sturges"?
No matter. Why Wes Anderson is derided and filmmakers such as David Gordon Green ("All the Pretty Girls," "Undertow") and Sam Mendes ("American Beauty," "The Road to Perdition") emperors whom, in my view, wear no clothes are heralded, is a mystery to me. I suspect it may have something to do with the unmistakable imprint Anderson leaves upon his films, and that as such they are not waiting to be discovered or explained by the arbiters of taste and importance.
Yes, it's all here again in "The Life Aquatic": the taboo female, the fractured father-son relationship, the (increasingly, with each film) despicable protagonist, the folly of the showman, the crimped-together family of eccentrics, the intricacies and importance of correspondence, the font Futura, the iconic costumes, the popular-song score (an element warranting separate analysis), the seemingly arbitrary use of slow-motion. There is no mistaking a Wes Anderson film for anyone else's.
And a Wes Anderson film is, first and foremost, a comedy, albeit one unlike the Adam Sandler-Will Farrell-Jim Carrey antic histrionics, bloated "SNL"-style skits, fantasies of romance, and feature-length sitcoms that pass for "comedy" today. There is such a paucity of fully-realized, director-driven comedies that "The Life Aquatic" may not be appreciated for its best qualities. Reminder: a comedy need not be desperate, loud and crass, nor artistically unambitious.
The one glaring error in "The Life Aquatic" is its lack of narrative thrust, that it has nothing to consistently propel us through its diverting episodes. No *one* thing to pull itself along, mind you; there's just too *much* going on, too *many* threads to be tied together. The film's intended emotional heft is lightened, and its humor lessened, because it doesn't have the tension that a serviceable story provides. More than could be fixed by editing, this appears to have resulted from the overstuffed toy-sack nature of both the script and production design.
For "The Life Aquatic" to achieve its ambitions, Anderson would have had to heed one phrase, that old adage from high-school English: Kill your darlings. But given millions upon millions to see my own dreams realized, I probably wouldn't self-censor, either.
And what darlings! There is enough detail here to fill a dozen features. If the movies are, as Orson Welles said upon being allowed (for a time) the run of the RKO Pictures lot, "the biggest electric train set a boy ever had," "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" is Wes Anderson's deluxe Lionel engine on a platform filling the lobby of Grand Central Station. As such, it is most remarkable for its accoutrements, like the radio-equipped dolphins, or the put-upon interns, or the myriad idiosyncrasies of the research ship Belafonte.
That more detaillovingly rendered as it iswas not sacrificed for the movie's greater good makes me worry that Anderson is inordinately enamored with his affectations, a post-college hipster who still defines himself by his clothes, collections, and opinions. But I will accept his first three films as evidence of his heart, and look upon "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" as the growing pains of a developing artist.
(As for those who chide Anderson for his inept staging of action: no, the Ping Island sequence isn't executed well, but you can't accuse him both of stagnation and not extending himself- and even so, there's still the marvelous set of the decrepit hotel to ogle.)
Wes Anderson's four features are, like them or not, clearly and undeniably the work of an individual artist, and this alone makes them unique and significant in this age of pre-fab franchises. If only, for every "National Treasure" or "Fat Albert," there were two "Life Aquatic"'s.
They decry the singular design of his films and dismiss the considerable compassion and warmth with which he treats his characters. They ghettoize him as the latest "savior of independent film-making" (a straw-man argument if ever there was one) or they minimize his distinctiveness both as a visual stylist and a writer of comedy. Most unfortunately, they neglect to recognize how Anderson, through the visual, aural, and dramatic elements in his films, examines the act of film-making itself.
Would it help to mention that Martin Scorsese named "Bottle Rocket" one of the ten best of the 1990's? To cite the literary and film predecessors to whom Wes Anderson is indebted, and how he fuses them into something all his own? To quote Kent Jones of _Film Comment_, who calls him "the most original presence in film comedy since Preston Sturges"?
No matter. Why Wes Anderson is derided and filmmakers such as David Gordon Green ("All the Pretty Girls," "Undertow") and Sam Mendes ("American Beauty," "The Road to Perdition") emperors whom, in my view, wear no clothes are heralded, is a mystery to me. I suspect it may have something to do with the unmistakable imprint Anderson leaves upon his films, and that as such they are not waiting to be discovered or explained by the arbiters of taste and importance.
Yes, it's all here again in "The Life Aquatic": the taboo female, the fractured father-son relationship, the (increasingly, with each film) despicable protagonist, the folly of the showman, the crimped-together family of eccentrics, the intricacies and importance of correspondence, the font Futura, the iconic costumes, the popular-song score (an element warranting separate analysis), the seemingly arbitrary use of slow-motion. There is no mistaking a Wes Anderson film for anyone else's.
And a Wes Anderson film is, first and foremost, a comedy, albeit one unlike the Adam Sandler-Will Farrell-Jim Carrey antic histrionics, bloated "SNL"-style skits, fantasies of romance, and feature-length sitcoms that pass for "comedy" today. There is such a paucity of fully-realized, director-driven comedies that "The Life Aquatic" may not be appreciated for its best qualities. Reminder: a comedy need not be desperate, loud and crass, nor artistically unambitious.
The one glaring error in "The Life Aquatic" is its lack of narrative thrust, that it has nothing to consistently propel us through its diverting episodes. No *one* thing to pull itself along, mind you; there's just too *much* going on, too *many* threads to be tied together. The film's intended emotional heft is lightened, and its humor lessened, because it doesn't have the tension that a serviceable story provides. More than could be fixed by editing, this appears to have resulted from the overstuffed toy-sack nature of both the script and production design.
For "The Life Aquatic" to achieve its ambitions, Anderson would have had to heed one phrase, that old adage from high-school English: Kill your darlings. But given millions upon millions to see my own dreams realized, I probably wouldn't self-censor, either.
And what darlings! There is enough detail here to fill a dozen features. If the movies are, as Orson Welles said upon being allowed (for a time) the run of the RKO Pictures lot, "the biggest electric train set a boy ever had," "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" is Wes Anderson's deluxe Lionel engine on a platform filling the lobby of Grand Central Station. As such, it is most remarkable for its accoutrements, like the radio-equipped dolphins, or the put-upon interns, or the myriad idiosyncrasies of the research ship Belafonte.
That more detaillovingly rendered as it iswas not sacrificed for the movie's greater good makes me worry that Anderson is inordinately enamored with his affectations, a post-college hipster who still defines himself by his clothes, collections, and opinions. But I will accept his first three films as evidence of his heart, and look upon "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" as the growing pains of a developing artist.
(As for those who chide Anderson for his inept staging of action: no, the Ping Island sequence isn't executed well, but you can't accuse him both of stagnation and not extending himself- and even so, there's still the marvelous set of the decrepit hotel to ogle.)
Wes Anderson's four features are, like them or not, clearly and undeniably the work of an individual artist, and this alone makes them unique and significant in this age of pre-fab franchises. If only, for every "National Treasure" or "Fat Albert," there were two "Life Aquatic"'s.