Previously, from the Oeuvre
Seen:
The Royal Tenenbaums, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Not Seen:
Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, Isle of Dogs, The French Dispatch
What's the Deal
Look, I recognize Anderson's a wizard at framing a tableau, but there's only so much twee that I can take, ESPECIALLY if it's all White people, all the time. There's enough out there for me to watch, obvs, that it's easy enough to rule out a whole pool of films that I know are Not For Me.
That said, knowing this antipathy, Jeff gave me all of Anderson's films on DVD for my birthday once. I trust he enjoyed the entirety of the Fast and Furious movies I gave him in response. So yeah, I have all these movies already, so I GUESS I will watch. (Though I confess I have streamed them here, for ease of use--I pause more readily when I stream, and I don't when I watch on discs. Go fig.)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, 11 December 2021, streamed via Amazon Prime
The eponymous Steve Zissou is an oceanographer and a mysterious shark–he thinks--ate one of his crew. At a screening of his, uh, documentary, he tells an international audience that he is going to hunt down the probably-a-shark and kill it for vengeance.
"I said I wanted to say hello,
I didn't say I wanted you to touch me."
Ned Plimpton, a pilot, pops up at the premiere and says Steve is his father. Steve is pretty chill about it, or maybe not? "You caught me with one foot off the merry-go-round." Meanwhile, it seems pretty clear Steve's team is running low on funding and goodwill.
Y'all, I would totally live on the boat, though. The observation hole! The masseuse! The dolphins!
There's something emptily endearing about how Steve and Ned glomp onto each other so completely--especially since they've apparently known about each other, but never bothered to meet until now. Steve almost immediately shares all his feelings with Ned, while Ned almost automatically starts working for Steve.
*Pele singing "Rebel Rebel" in Portuguese*
Owen Wilson is attempting a Kentucky accent and I'm, like, 65% sure he's got it wrong. Cate Blanchett shows up to be pregnant and to critique their jellyfish identification. Anderson does so many staccato cuts in these scenes–they go too quickly to really count as smash cuts–and I kind of like it. In combination with the fastidious set design and the deadpan delivery of almost all of the lines, it fosters this sense that, like, we almost got the joke, but not quite.
I think we're supposed to see Steve's occasional homophobic slurs as a quirky flaw? If so, it's a miss. Anyway, in combination with Ned's inheritance (MY DUDE) and some funding predicated on not killing the shark ("I'll fight it but I'll let it live"), the next film is a go.
Bobby Ogata, pretty bad at imparting frogman skills
So, like, Anne-Marie Sakowitz is Zissou's supervisor, but did the call sheet include "must be cool with filming topless most of the time"? Oh, and there's a love triangle between Ned, Steve, and
Vikram Ray, cameraman
Filming this thing on the water must have been nuts. How did they keep their floating sets so static on the waves? And I am almost curious enough to look up how they managed the dolphins.
They steal some equipment from another oceanographer. They're attacked by pirates. Oh, okay, the pirates are Filipino. They speak Tagalog and everything. Represent?
Hey, Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds is here! Hey, Spencer! Why aren't you out catching serial killers?
I'm really charmed how they have a boat set that's basically a dollhouse. It allows for the most whimsical version of a long tracking shot that I've ever seen. There's one scene where we can see Cate Blanchett peek through a window and it's so community theatre that I could squee.
They eventually rescue the two dudes kidnapped by the pirates. Oh hey, we get to see the pirates again. One nice touch: Bill, one of the dudes that was kidnapped, stops Steve from killing this kid in cold blood. "That's Cedric," Bill explains. "He's my friend." I wanna know that story.
They find the jaguar shark, but they don't kill it. They ran out of dynamite, anyway.
Moonrise Kingdom, 11 December 2021, streamed via HBO Max
1965, New Penzance. Supposedly built upon "Chickchaw territory," but every time I tried to get more information on that, I got the Chickasaw Nation or Choctaw Nation. Did dude just portmanteau an indigenous people in order to do something quirky with summer camp traditions? Because the traditional lands of both tribes are definitely not off the coast of New England. (Also, later, there's a kid wearing a war bonnet so fuuuuuuuuuck you, Wes Anderson.)
At Camp Ivanhoe, young camper Sam has run away. When his foster family is notified, they say they "can't invite him back at this time," like, um, I'm not sure that's how guardianship works, dudes. I mean, certainly a summer camp director is not the person you inform.
They do a search but, like, they stop when it gets dark? That's…that's not how you search for missing children. It turns out, however, Sam is meeting up with a local girl, Suzy. They met a year previous and apparently planned to abscond in the duration.
They decide to make a go for it in the wilderness because they're stupid 12-year-olds in love. This is one of those times where the narrative click is dependent on the viewer's nostalgia for being a pre-teen in love and, guys, that is a thing I do not possess.
Sam helps Suzy pierce her ears and I spent the next seven minutes curled up in the fetal position screaming. Otherwise, they're surprisingly competent at living in the wild. For ten days or less, anyway. I like that Suzy reads aloud every night, though it ends up being shades of Wendy and the Lost Boys.
When confronting a bunch of scouts, Suzy manages to wound one of them with scissors (STAB-MAIDEN), but also the camp dog gets shot. THEY KILLED SNOOPY. Later, the search party finds the kids canoodling in a tent on a beach.
There are shenanigans. Also, there is this one scene, which Murray and McDormand frickin' destroy:
The camp director ends up fostering Sam, which means that he doesn't have to break up with Suzy. The end.
Panagle, played by Andreas Sheikh,
possibly of Arabic descent
Guys, aside from Panagle, I did not see any other non-White people in this movie. Like, not even in the background. Is New Penzance a sundown town or something? Lordy.
Fantastic Mr Fox, 11 December 2021, streamed via Disney+
It's an animated movie about animals, but I should note that it seems like the only non-White voice actor is Juman Malouf, who is of Lebanese descent and also Wes Anderson's partner, so.
Agnes, as voiced by Juman Malouf
I've actually never read Fantastic Mr Fox, but it seems just as silly and subversive as all Roald Dahl books. And who doesn't get a kick out of human-like animals randomly acting like animals?
I'm not, like, an aficionado of stop-motion animation, but I dig how it's done here. You can almost feel the bristly fur on Our Heroes and the contrast between that and the chunky clay of buildings and furniture is a nice haptic contrast.
I don't know why, but I didn't expect this to be a "former criminal misses the good ol' days." The existential crises of criminals and teenagers are always a good time.
Plus, Foxy seems like a generally competent thief. "They aren't very smart, but they're incredibly paranoid, so always kill a chicken with one bite." HEIST HEIST HEIST.
I don't know why, but the slightly-off editing feels more stark when it's not with people. Like, it draws attention to the artifice of the medium. On the other hand, we get to zoom in on details that don't work as well with humans--a twitchy ear, a match put out. Plus the utter horror of the ceiling of your home being torn up.
All the human bits creeped me out too much to watch. Humans are THE WORST, anyway. I know their murderous intentions are necessary for the plot, but I could have watched twice as much stuff with the boys and been happy.
"We look good."
"Yeah, we do."
Whyyyyyyy would you use cider to flush out a burrow? That's such a waste of cider!
"I love you, Felicity."
"I love you, too. But I shouldn't have married you."
I legit said, "OH DAMN," out loud.
It's when the humans were able to read the letter from the animals that my suspension of disbelief broke. Then the animals, like, set an entire town on fire. WHAT THE HELL. I want to say this escalated quickly, but the humans' first move was to completely destroy the Fox home, so no, I get it. BURN IT DOWN, MY ANIMAL FRIENDS.
The Bottom Line
I mean, it's impossible to deny they're well-crafted films, but good lord, these are movies that are actively NOT meant for me.
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