The Essentials: The Films Of Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson isn’t merely a filmmaker in 2021. He’s a brand unto himself: a curator, a collector of objects and memories, a mascot for twee culture, and everything that’s either shallow or transcendent about contemporary auteur filmmaking, depending on whom you ask. 

Over the years, Anderson has proven himself to be a veritable renaissance man: he’s designed bars in Milan, helmed exhibits at museums in Vienna (“Spitzmaus Mummy In A Coffin And Other Treasures”), and somehow, he even found time to contribute to 2018’s “Beastie Boys Book.” His detractors have accused him of style over substance, cultural appropriation, and reducing his characters to live-action dolls moving around ornately constructed dioramic interiors. Anderson has also been lauded time and time again as one of the most original and influential storytellers of his time: you can see traces of his artistic fingerprints in everything from the comedies of Taika Waititi and Jared Hess, to seminal 2000’s-era coming-of-age indies like “Juno” and “Garden State,” and even the world of high fashion. 

This year, blessedly, and after many delays, Anderson is finally giving us “The French Dispatch”: Anderson’s tenth film received largely favorable notices off the Croisette this year, with our own Jessica Kiang raving that Anderson’s latest “must be seen on the largest imaginable movie screen.” Kiang really went for “The French Dispatch,” calling it “a work of such unparalleled Andersonian wit, that at times the sheer level of detail – mobile, static, graphic and typographic – that bedecked the screen was enough to make your correspondent’s jaw slacken.”

Throughout his career, Anderson has remained a brilliant and utterly unique artist who specializes in melancholic grown-up fantasies wherein the characters pine for a kind of imagined past that may have never actually existed. These pictures are often entrancing in their artifice, yet they always bear the tactile, handcrafted touch of their creator. The physical settings of Anderson’s films – a WWII-era submarine, a glorious New York City brownstone, a luxury train car passing through India, a European grand hotel that has seen better days – signify a restless spiritual inquisitiveness that spans centuries, the globe, and the gulf that separates live-action and animation.

As our cinematic landscape continues to change, it’s worth asking: Will people still flock to Anderson’s films as they once did? Will audiences still yearn to escape into the director’s trademark worlds of make-believe, where every character dresses perfectly, everything is stylish and symmetrically pleasing, and everything is underlined with a sense of wry, sorrowful comedy? It seems that the answer would obviously be ‘yes.’ For fans, Anderson’s movies have always been a refuge. They are buoyant, inimitable, and spiritually restorative: no one really claims that they are reflective of the so-called “real world”; that has never been the point. Rather, Anderson’s films are a deliciously heightened interpretation of emotions and themes that are very real, seen through a lens that is hypnotically left-of-center.

A new Wes Anderson movie is a gift. His is a vision we will be lovingly picking apart for decades to come, all the better to understand the myriad threads of mystery and heartache that his finest works contain. “The French Dispatch,” if nothing else, could very well cement a legacy as the director’s biggest movie to date, although, really, only time will tell what space it will eventually occupy in the Anderson canon. 

Alas, we thought the upcoming release of the director’s latest would be as good a time as any to go back and take a look at all of Wes’ movies, which run the gamut from “pretty good” to “absolutely great” to masterpiece status. Enjoy reading, and remember: “Sic Transit Gloria… glory fades.”

“Bottle Rocket” (1996)
Viewers whose understanding of Wes Anderson’s artistry is primarily rooted in their reactions to the hyper-stylized likes of “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” are likely to be shocked by the relatively un-stylized, at times even naturalistic tone of the writer/director’s breakout movie, “Bottle Rocket.” You have to squint to see traces of the Texas filmmaker’s DNA in this gentle oddball heist dramedy, but it’s all there: in the Swiss Watch precision of the dialogue, the morose yet openhearted comedy, and, of course, the presence of the brothers Wilson. Like most of Anderson’s films, “Bottle Rocket” is about a group of flawed misfits searching for a larger sense of purpose in a world they only sort of understand. The film is also Anderson’s first of many collaborations with former college classmate and lifelong BFF Owen Wilson, who would go on to become one of the more essential members of the director’s constantly-expanding repertory company. “Bottle Rocket” feels as ragged in its realism as “Mean Streets”-era Martin Scorsese when compared to the more hermetic likes of “Moonrise Kingdom,” but perhaps that’s because Scorsese – who has been a champion of Anderson’s since the beginning – was a considerable influence on the film itself. “Bottle Rocket” is, in its own roundabout way, a story of crime and punishment that depicts three sheltered, harmless suburban dorks harboring romantic fantasies of the outlaw life without having the slightest conception of its traditionally brutal implications. The film is a strange brew to be sure, but “Bottle Rocket” stands as one of the most winning and original debuts of the 90’s. If nothing else, the film contains one of the more memorably revealing lines Anderson’s ever written: “They’ll never catch me, man. Because I’m fucking innocent.”

“Rushmore” (1998)
It is one of the great, twisted love triangles in cinema history: an overachieving, pathological prep school student with terrible grades and the sneer of a young Mick Jagger falls head-over-heels in love with a widowed schoolteacher, who is simultaneously being courted by the young man’s mentor, a lonely tycoon played by Bill Murray. This glancing plot description does little to convey the unbridled joy one gets from watching “Rushmore” for the first, second, or even dozenth time. Anderson’s near-perfect sophomore feature stands as arguably the most expressive work of self-portraiture in his filmography: here, we have an impeccably well-mannered and impossibly sweet black comedy about a hyper-perfectionist dandy who seeks to construct a world more fashionable and exciting and dynamic than the comparatively humdrum one he occupies. “Rushmore’s” protagonist, Max Fischer, is a bit of an impostor. He’s the president of every extracurricular club at his school, but he’s in danger of flunking all his classes. He’s a working-class kid who dresses like the protagonist of a Francois Truffaut classic and, at one point, fabricates a story about his humble barber father being an affluent neurosurgeon. Honestly, Max is sort of sociopathic – he’s a compulsive liar with a rather vindictive mean streak and a penchant for prankery – but because he is played by regular Anderson player Jason Schwartzman, who delivers a disarmingly lovable breakout performance here, we come to love Max, and, by the film’s discreetly lovely conclusion, we understand him. All these years later, “Rushmore” remains a triumph, and one of the quintessential high-school outcast movies of all time.

“The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001)
Nearly every character in a Wes Anderson movie is trying to make peace with the past to one degree or another, whether it’s over-the-hill oceanographic stoner Steve Zissou, or the grieving Whitman brothers of “The Darjeeling Limited.” Nowhere has this narrative preoccupation been more gorgeously realized than in “The Royal Tenenbaums,” Anderson’s radiant and devastating tragicomic epic about a dynasty of precocious, grown-up child geniuses who never actually grew up, and who are brought together after years of separation via the schemes of their uncouth con-man father Royal, played without apology by a magnificently cantankerous Gene Hackman. “Tenenbaums” is a significant watermark in Anderson’s filmography in that it is arguably his first real attempt to create an invented world; in this case, it’s a permanently autumnal New York City equally influenced by vintage “New Yorker” covers, P.G. Wodehouse, Hal Ashby, and Simon and Garfunkel and The Velvet Underground lyrics. Anderson has never worn his heart on his sleeve as nakedly as he does in “Tenenbaums,” his most empathic film, and each character – Luke Wilson’s suicidal former tennis pro, Angelica Huston’s deadpan matriarch, Danny Glover’s nerdy suitor, and Ben Stiller’s wound-up, tracksuit-wearing malcontent, who makes long-overdue peace with Royal in the movie’s most heartbreaking scene – is afforded a moment of genuine humanity. The Tenenbaums may have been great once, but by the end of Anderson’s masterpiece, we learn that they still might be. The same turned out to be true for the writer/director himself.

“The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” (2004)
It feels safe to say that the release of “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” is when the Wes Anderson backlash officially began. Even today, we’d argue that this bizarre nautical picaresque remains the director’s most divisive movie. The film’s critics proclaim that “Steve Zissou” is nothing but surface-level eccentricity: they argue that the script too taken with its own cleverness, too concerned with “crayon pony-fish,” pirate attacks, Portuguese David Bowie covers, and other, assorted forms of whimsy to truly get to the heart of the story it wants to tell – which, in this case, is that of an errant, narcissistic father figure embarking on one last, Hemingway-style voyage with a pregnant reporter, his estranged would-be son, and a weary crew in tow, to salvage what’s left of his former greatness. We’re here to tell you that “The Life Aquatic,” in spite of the mixed initial reception it was greeted with, is one of Anderson’s richest, most rewatchable pictures: a delightfully unpredictable high-seas adventure that exists as a blissful marriage of the director’s unconventional familial fixations with his undeniable talent for world-building and sophisticated silliness. “The Life Aquatic” also stands as one of Anderson’s funniest works, although most of the laughs are tinged with the hint of acerbic bitterness (some of which can surely be credited to co-writer Noah Baumbach), and it should also be mentioned that the film contains one of the saddest and most moving performances that Bill Murray has ever given, which is really saying something when you consider the actor’s impeccable mid-aughts indie run. “The Life Aquatic” offers its audience a trippy, transportive journey into an unknown world, one that you can revisit again and again and again and again.

“The Darjeeling Limited” (2007)
There is a lingering sense of solemnity and gloom coloring the otherwise colorful edges of “The Darjeeling Limited” that is really only hinted at in Anderson’s earlier, more overtly comedic works. That’s because “Darjeeling” is the director’s movie about death and its trickle-down effects: its lead characters are privileged, oblivious, superficially well-meaning brothers who are embarking on a journey through India, by train, in the wake of their father’s passing, in effect revealing a desire to outrun the very idea of their own mortality. “Darjeeling” is arguably Anderson’s most structurally interesting movie, one that’s filled with transfixing narrative detours (including a mid-movie flashback that’s tangentially of a piece with John Cassavetes’ “Husbands”) and even a soufflé-light, Paris-set prologue, “Hotel Chevalier.” Like all of Anderson’s films, “Darjeeling” is exceptionally well-acted: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman don’t exactly look like they come from the same bloodline, but the eerie specificity of their shared mannerisms will convince you of their unsteady fraternal bond. “Darjeeling” is also Anderson’s love letter to the Indian cinema of one of his creative heroes, Satyajit Ray, although, as was also the case with “Isle of Dogs,” there have been accusations of cultural tourism lobbed at the film since its release. Controversy aside, “The Darjeeling Limited” remains Anderson’s somber and poetic look at the limits of Western spirituality. Flaws and all, it feels like perhaps the most personal film he’ll ever make. It’s the rare Wes Anderson movie that draws blood.

“Fantastic Mr. Fox” (2009)
It says something that a filmmaker as seemingly married to his aesthetic as Anderson is could do everything possible to take himself out of his comfort zone, and still end up making a Wes Anderson movie. “Fantastic Mr. Fox” sees Anderson branching out into stop-motion animation and adapting source material that is explicitly intended for children, but the resulting film is 100% pure Anderson, and as distinctive as one of Mrs. Bean’s delectable nutmeg ginger apple snaps. Anderson’s sixth movie is a riotously witty whirligig yarn for kids and grown-ups alike, in which a tastefully curated fall color scheme touches every painstakingly handmade prop, and eloquent woodland critters dress in double-breasted blazers and “bandit hats” whilst cracking discernibly droll adult jokes about real estate, marital disillusion, and a strange game called Whackbat. This is all another way of saying that “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is very much within the director’s wheelhouse: it updates problematic author Roald Dahl’s seminal children’s story for family audiences, fashioning yet another brittle, wistful, unmistakably Andersonian seriocomic character study about an incorrigible (animal, in this case) patriarch who drags his helpless clan into a mess entirely of his own making. The denouement, when it arrives, is an unusually moving testament to one family’s continued survival. “Mr. Fox,” at times, feels both mildly slight and also a little too busy, and for our money, this is the first instance of Anderson letting feeling take a backseat to what many of his detractors have frequently accused him of, which is style for style’s sake. The end result is perhaps not the director’s most substantial work, but no Wes Anderson fanatic’s collection is complete without it.

“Moonrise Kingdom” (2012)
Wes Anderson is a director uniquely suited to tackle stories about young love, which makes “Moonrise Kingdom” feel like an ever-so-mild letdown when compared to his remarkable ‘96-2004 run. The film, a period romance rooted in the fairy-tale theatrics of Ken Loach’s “Black Jack,” is sincerely, consistently charming while, at the same time, being somewhat over-elaborate in its execution. As much as we hate to resort to an oft-overused descriptor, the term “precious” comes to mind. To his credit, Anderson occasionally leans full-tilt into the dizzying sensation of youthful infatuation that frequently overwhelms his protagonists, a pair of independent-minded adolescents who live on a woodsy island in New England (sorry, “New Penzance”). The pair fall in love and make a pact to run away together, thus inspiring a coterie of depressed adults to head off in search of them. One could all-too-easily make the argument that “Moonrise” is Anderson’s fussiest film by a country mile, and thus, his least persuasive from the standpoint of emotional engagement. Nevertheless “Moonrise” has plenty that will delight the director’s die-hards, including nifty allusions to the French New Wave, an enchanting soundtrack that makes clever use of Hank Williams, “Noye’s Fludde,” and vintage French pop, a wily Jason Schwartzman threatening to steal the entire movie as a lumberjack hustler named Cousin Ben, an unforgettable final shot, and bless her, Tilda Swinton as a villain simply named Social Services. In other words, “Moonrise Kingdom” has a lot of the things one typically goes to a Wes Anderson movie for: heart, visual pizzazz, a one-of-a-kind cinematic vision, and the opportunity to be whisked away into the director’s unmatched world of make-believe. Really, all that’s missing is a pulse.

“The Grand Budapest Hotel” (2014)
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” is the zenith of Wes Anderson’s formidable technique, and maybe the definitive word on what makes him one of our more essential cinematic authors. The sprawling tale of a once-luxuriant European spa resort that has fallen into disrepair, Anderson’s masterpiece utilizes a head-spinning Russian-doll narrative as the springboard to tell a poignant, hysterically funny bit of shaggy-dog revisionist history focused on a horny concierge, his devoted “lobby boy,” some thuggish fascists, a moneyed dowager, a coveted painting called ‘Boy With Apple,’ and something called The Society Of The Crossed Keys. “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is a lament for a vanished era that perhaps only existed in the minds of those who occupied it: a shrine to an age of glamor and splendor that’s nevertheless acutely attuned to the ugly, constantly-shifting tides of history, and how barbarity and fascism are constantly at war with enlightenment and intrinsic human decency. Anderson borrows from the best here, namely golden-age luminaries like Preston Sturges and Ernst Lubitsch, and yet he does so in his own unmistakably offbeat key. “The Grand Budapest Hotel” sees Anderson flirting with genres and styles in a zany, utterly liberated fashion, doffing his cap to Hitchcock’s “Torn Curtain,” vintage prison escape flicks, and 1930s wartime romances, to name but a few subgenres. Occasionally, Anderson will adjust the aspect ratio in accordance with the time periods in which the film unfolds; somehow, the effect never feels gimmicky. “Grand Budapest” is also an all-star Anderson family affair, featuring uproarious lead performances from Ralph Fiennes and Tony Revelori, not to mention stupendous work from Jude Law, F. Murray Abraham, Saiorse Ronan, Tilda Swinton, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, and basically everyone who’s ever been in a Wes Anderson movie.  As such, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is nothing less than Anderson’s awe-inspiring ode to the power of myth-making and friendship; to loosely quote one of the film’s characters, here, the director upholds an unshakeable sense of illusion here with something approximating “marvelous grace.”

“Isle of Dogs” (2018)
Wes Anderson’s pronounced interest in examining the pitfalls of authoritarian ideologies took root in “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and blossoms into something else entirely in “Isle of Dogs,” even if this scruffy dystopian escapade about a “boy pilot,” his lost pup, and a pack of “scary, indestructible alpha dogs” in need of redemption doesn’t quite reach the otherworldly heights of Anderson’s glittering 1930’s-set screwball romp. “Isle of Dogs” is Anderson’s second stop-motion animation effort, and the result is somehow even more impressively layered and intricately textured than “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” The film is consistently breathtaking in its recreation of a fictional, futuristic Japanese metropolis called Megasaki, one whose design is undeniably rooted in more of a 20^th century pop-art-influenced understanding of Japan than anything that could be called literal. Anderson’s fantastical whims take him to the furthest reaches of his own imagination in “Isle of Dogs,” and the depth of his team’s accomplishment here rivals the animated classics of Studio Ghibli and the legendary Hiyao Miyazaki. Some have also argued that Anderson’s whims are what got him into a spot of trouble with “Isle of Dogs,” as some critics voiced disapproval with what they perceived to be Anderson’s narrow, conspicuously white take on Japan as yet another one-dimensionally “exotic” foreign locale (Emily Yoshida tackled the topic with her characteristic insight in this piece for Vulture). In spite of the occasional cultural misstep, “Isle of Dogs” is nevertheless a beguiling oddity that showcases solidarity with the oppressed and marginalized of our world. The film’s touching affinity for outcasts, canine or otherwise, makes it very much a Wes Anderson movie.

“The French Dispatch” (2021)
Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” has been described by some as the ne plus ultra of Wes Anderson, and that take is not wrong. It’s maximalist Wes Anderson, the most Wes Anderson-y of Wes Anderson films and arguably like one of his animated movies coming to life. Combining many preoccupations of the filmmaker—New Yorker magazines, life in France as an ex-pat, and portmanteau storytelling— “The French Dispatch” is an anthology film, inspired, in part, by Vittorio De Sica‘s similarly structured picture “The Gold of Naples.” It tells the story of a fictional American émigré magazine based in a fictional small town in France and relives some of the fictional greatest hits stories of the publication with a framing device built around the journalists and editors that work there. One story centers on a deranged inmate’s famous painting (Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody and Lea Seydoux star), another tale focuses on a counter-culture student revolution based on the French student riots of the late 1960s (Timothée Chalamet and Frances McDormand lead it), and the finale story is a paean to foodies, cooking and thoughtful talk shows like “The Dick Cavett” show that mostly features Jeffrey Wright and Steven Park. Described as a love letter to journalists, it might be better described as a tribute to those that have dedicated their lives to bringing us interesting, comical, enriching, funny, human stories about life, people, and their idiosyncrasies, with a wistful, nostalgic soupcon for the magical qualities and loneliness that comes from living abroad, but still trying to retain an affectionate sense of home with you, wherever you go. – Rodrigo Perez

“The French Dispatch” will be released in theaters on October 22.