Wes Anderson’s films have an obvious artificiality about them, a very distinctive style sometimes verging on self-parody. This sense of artifice has often been criticized as twee, or simply as too artificial, and while I sympathize with the criticisms to some extent, I think Anderson’s signature style has sufficient formal strength to lift it out of its occasional plunge into cutesiness. I also think he utilizes his artifice to relate fiction and reality in some interesting ways.
In his films, the characters yearn for a kind of whimsical world of yesteryear; the films are bathed in nostalgia for a nonexistent past. This is true especially of Tenenbaums, where the characters are perpetually aware of their past glories and failures. But the form of the films insists that this wished-for world is the actual world that the characters live in. The symmetric compositions, the slow motion, the art direction littered with personal mementos, and the costumed characters all present the world as something contrived, something fictional; this effect is heightened in Tenenbaums by the narrator reading the story from a whimsical little book, and by presenting the story within an obviously fantastical version of New York. The world of Anderson’s style isn’t just any world: it has precisely the sense of a whimsical, ideal world that the characters yearn for (and which probably never existed for them); at the same time, all of the mementos and costumes encapsulate the characters—not in their entirety, but in their storybook dimensions. In a sense, the characters have secreted their desires and essences into the style of the film itself. Thus, the style surrounds the characters with the world that they are perpetually searching for, adding to the sense of pervasive bittersweet melancholy.
But the style is also extremely overt, drawing attention to itself. This ensures that we see the world not merely as it relates to the characters, but as it relates to Anderson himself. The world is presented as his creation as much as it is the ether of his characters’ wistful yearnings. But rather than the authorial voice taking precedence over the characters’ subjectivity, as in much of traditional pre-modern storytelling, here the authorial voice and the characters’ subjectivity meet in the film’s form and perpetually play off each other within it. This is exemplified by scenes like that in which Margot arrives on the bus. She comes toward the camera in slow motion, her arrival set to music; we see her as the idealized image that Richie wishes for. But the characters’ conversation (together with earlier and later events) ensures that we see this moment through a bittersweet lens; we know the characters are deeply unhappy, and that the film’s presentation of this moment is a reflection of their desires rather than a fulfillment of them. At the same time, the narration, the costumes, and the overt style insist that the entire scene is an artifice. But this artificiality is not ironic. It is not intended to distance us from the characters. It is the sincere authorial voice, which carries all the wistful melancholy of the characters themselves; it beckons us to sympathize, to wish for this artificial world even as we see it as an artifice. By making us aware of the artifice, rather than subverting the reality of the characters’ feelings, the film reinforces them.
This type of interplay between artifice and desire might not be sufficient in itself to justify the film’s twee leanings. But in addition to it, Anderson also inserts the occasional scene that breaks through the artifice. For example, in Rushmore there is the scene where Ms. Cross confronts Max with the reality of his sexual fantasies. In Tenenbaums, there is the scene of Richie’s attempted suicide. Of course, the scene is filled with an artifice of its own—it’s all blue-lighting, jump cuts, and Elliott Smith music—but the artifice is strikingly dissimilar from its surroundings, and the conveyed emotions are utterly raw. Pointedly, the scene largely consists of Richie removing his “costume”, discarding the artificial essence that tethers him to the past and the nostalgic world of the film. Scenes such as these offer a glimpse through the wall of artifice, into the emotional realities behind it; they form painfully real emotional cores around which the yearned-for world coalesces. And they make themselves felt within the artifice. They are always there, affording resonance to the whimsical melancholy of Anderson’s style.
Tags: favorites, movies, narration, real and ideal, Wes Anderson
