Wes Anderson's Unbridled Genius Needs a Bridle

Mark Albracht, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Jun 29, 2008 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

Assuming you know nothing of film director Wes Anderson, to grasp whether you'd be a fan of his or not, you don't actually need to see any of his films. All you need is to watch the following two-minute commercial for American Express.

Wes Anderson hocks American Express.

And, in fact, you do not even need to watch the whole ad, as distilling of his work as it is -- from the sweeping camera movements panning past elaborate sets, to the intricate choreography of otherwise incidental extras, to the intellectual repartee of the many droll eccentrics he's brought to life. To know instantly whether or not you're sensibilities mesh with Wes Anderson's you need merely gauge your reaction to his request for a .357 with a bayonette, followed by the prompt "I don't see why not" and a near-instantaneous sketch-up of the weapon.

If those 14 seconds gave you so much as a smirk, then Wes Anderson's your kind of celluloid comic. It's his way of plucking random ideas and setting them in that fog somewhere between plausible and ridiculous which prompts the biggest laughs from his work.

I guffawed at least the first five times I saw the commercial.

In just a dozen years, Anderson has produced a career's-worth of filmic jokes equally effective. From "Oh, are they?" in "Rushmore" and the acerbic banter of the three Whitman brothers in "The Darjeeling Limited" to the quiet capture of character ideosynchracies throughout his cannon, Anderson has established a cinematic brand as easily recognizable as those of any of the great film directors of the last forty years.

Even so, you'd be hard-pressed to find Anderson's latest effort -- "The Darjeeling Limited" -- in many a critic's top ten list for 2007. This would not be so bad if it weren't that Darjeeling makes for two disappointing outings in a row. "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" was a bigger miss with fans and critics than was Darjeeling, but Anderson's initial burst from the gate with "Bottle Rocket", "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums" (his best film) increasingly seems a fading memory.

There's a moment in Darjeeling when the Whitmans played by Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman and Adrian Brody spot three Indian boys trying to cross a river using a raft and a pulley. Anderson does an erratic zoom-in on Wilson in a style made popular in a lot of 1970s kung fu movies. (Anderson used the same technique with Ben Stiller's curl-headed sons in Tennenbaums) The effect is intentionally comical as it places a melodramatic emphasis on an image that really needs no emphasis. In this case it's Wilson observing the three boys.

Wilson then utters the line, "Look at these assholes". Another intentionally comical moment because the boys, despite the obvious peril of their river-crossing, are not doing anything in particular to warrant being called "assholes". Anderson then launches into a series of staccato edits as the pulley breaks, sending Wilson, Schwartzman and Brody off on a desperate attempt to save the boys.

I mention this scene because it encapsulates both what is potentially great about Anderson's filmmaking and what is currently problematic about it. Here we get this expertly crafted sequence with a heightened sense of danger. Schwatzman and Wilson end up saving two of the boys, but Brody is unsuccessful with his own. The next twenty minutes of the film find the Whitman Brothers as extended guests in the dead boy's village as Anderson shows us -- in elegant detail and intricate choreography -- the town's preparation for the funeral.

Cut away from the rest of the film, one could imagine this sequence as something of a cinematic gem. Unfortunately, the context of the whole story sours it. Anderson fails to bring any emotional value to the scenes. The Indian boys are throw away characters.

What if, instead of a random encounter, these boys had meant something to the brothers in a more tangible way? What if more of the film had taken place in the village instead of on the train and the brothers had interacted with the boys to some meaningful effect prior to the accident that kills one of them?

Clearly, that's not the story Anderson and his cowriters (Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola) wanted to tell. But, in my opinion, a deeper stack of story layers is what Anderson's earlier films had and what Darjeeling and The Life Aquatic lack. The result is a group of wonderful, almost self-contained vignettes which don't add up to a completely satisfying whole.

Instead, the death scene produces an unintentional irony as Brody hands the drowned child off to the boy's father played by actor Irfan Khan. Of the movies in the last two years which center on fateful train rides through India, Darjeeling plays second fiddle to "The Namesake", a 2006 movie in which Irfan Khan is the sole survivor of a train derailment.

In that movie, when Khan tells his son of the significance of being named "Gogol", the viewer is dealt an almost unbelievable sense of devastation. A feeling which colors otherwise simple lines later in the movie to a heartbreaking degree.

Contrast the emotions here. We see the Whitman brothers try and (in one case) fail to save the lives of innocents and, yet, we feel no real sense of tragedy. The Namesake's "Gogol", on the other hand, responds stoically to a callous remark at a cocktail party and the viewer is nearly reduced to tears.

I'm not suggesting Wes Anderson douse his future efforts in sentimentality. His wry cynicism and stand-offish intellectualism are key ingredients to his brand of humor. Starting Darjeeling, for example, with a 14-minute short film -- complete with end credits -- is a hilarious idea. And well-executed. Anderson should always remain that quirky.

But if he can manage to sit down and pen a story with real emotion, something that goes beyond even Rushmore and Tenenbaums to the level of The Namesake, then, I think, Anderson will finally transcend into the realm of the truly great flimmakers.

Next up for Anderson is a film called "The Fantastic Mr. Fox". The director's sixth outing will be an animated production and is sure to once again eschew the bounds of convention. But I'm hoping to see Anderson's enormous creativity reigned in some. We all know the kind of mileage he can get riding a wild mustang around an open pasture. But let's see what he can do when he takes a thoroughbred out on a proper race track.

Could be a thing of beauty.

Published by Mark Albracht

Mark is a professional screenwriter and filmmaker and Yahoo! Contributor Network's intrepid college football historian and illustrator. You can watch some of his film handiwork at Babelgum.com -- http://www.... View profile

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Wes Anderson's Unbridled Genius Needs a Bridle

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