Consider this another one of my It’s about time you weighted in with an opinion, old man! reports.
My wife and I watched Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket last night. To our amazement, it didn’t suck! In fact, it was really good. As is always the case with his films, the hip soundtrack almost drowned out the movie itself at times, but for once the action going on in the movie itself was worth watching. In contrast, years ago, when I suffered through the next two films he would make – you know which ones I mean – and some cool song came on to possibly put me out of my misery of watching a bunch of spoiled rich kids crying over the fact that their toy soldier collection was knocked out of place by the maid, I’d briefly dig the song I was hearing and then get more pissed that Anderson spent even more time shoving his toy soldier collection down my throat.
Bottle Rocket, unlike those next two films by Anderson, is simply funny and charmingly self-aware. There was a brief scene in which one of the Wilson brothers took time during a heist to rearrange a toy soldier that had been knocked out of place. Perfect! Part of the backstory was that Luke Wilson’s character had had a nervous breakdown. In his next two movies, Anderson would have harped on this, had Wilson sitting by his Close-and-Play, endlessly spinning a Leonard Cohen song. In Bottle Rocket, this fact is just a device to make the more handsome, serious, and less flexible (in acting terms) of the two Wilson brothers a little more credible regarding his choice of friends. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Surely I’m the last Townsperson to get around to seeing this film.
I like all his stuff and LOVE The Royal Tenenbaums. I think he’s one of the most original filmmakers in a long time, since Jarmusch.
I haven’t seen this, but last week I was in the theater seeing Eastern Promises (recommended btw), where they showed the trailer for the new one, Darjeeling Limited. Speaking of hip, I was amazed to hear the opening chords of perhaps the greatest Kinks song ever, This Time Tomorrow, which is prominently featured (which is odd to have a song specifically about air travel in a train movie). Later in the trailer they played the Dave song Strangers and one other from Lola, so I guess somehow that album is heavily featured in this soundtrack.
I liked Rushmore ok, but I haven’t been able to force myself to see any of this guy’s other movies. The Bill Murray submarine thing has been on my DVR for months.
Bottle Rocket is great. I own it on DVD. I like most of his movies but Bottle Rocket is one of his best.
After waiting for a year or two after it came out to see “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” (waiting because I saw the previews and thought I wouldn’t like it), I have to say it is one of his best. Lots of folks don’t like it/get it, but I think Murray is amazing in it. For me, who grew up watching all the Jacques Cousteau specials on TV – it was great.
Funny, I just saw BOTTLE ROCKET for the first time a couple of weeks ago. It’s the least contrived of his movies, less dependent on set design and soundtrack. Seeing the Owen Wilson character pretending to be upbeat when he meets his fate at the end reminded me of some of the weird chipper sociopaths I’ve know in the past, people who will smile and say everything is going excellently when one look in their eyes reveals the truth. To me it felt like the only emotionally honest moment in his entire filmography.
I’m not saying he’s not talented, I’m just not very interested in the type of films he makes, full of self-conscious distracting “style” and too aloof to deliver non-ironic emotion.
Funny that Eugene Levy should mention Jarmush, that’s my same beef with him. I also enjoyed his work for a film or two before I tired of his act. I’d like both those guys to make a film where I wasn’t constantly reminded that they were behind the camera on every shot.
Dbuskirk, your general support means a lot. I’ll remember this the next time we disagree on something.
I went from loving Jarmusch’s first two films to quickly writing him off altogether (excluding his fishing show) to welcoming him in back into my life – with a warning – thanks to Ghost Dog. That last movie he did was fun, and it turned me onto those Ethiopian musicians I started buying stuff by a couple of months ago. I’m still waiting for Jarmusch’s old cinematographer, Tom DiCillo, to get back on his feet and pick up with his more soulful take on that style of film making.
mod, good show! generally i agree with you. i love bottle rocket. i figure ‘rushmore’ is held together on the strength of bill murray’s sublime performance (better than ‘lost in translation’, where he plays a similarly disenfranchised character who is brought back to life by a younger woman), some adolescent energy channeled in the right direction, and a few memorable lines. i’m not a jason schwartzman fan in the least. have you ever seen his audition for this film? it’s on the dvd, and it’s terrible. so are most of his other performances cringe inducing stuff that would end the careers of most actors. schwartzman’s anderson / coppala connections have gotten him a ton of undeserved work. in ‘rushmore’, however, it looks as though anderson’s found the formula for dealing with with schwartzman’s on camera ineptitude; have him UNDERact every last line, because, as his audition makes clear, letting this kid do what he thinks is “acting” is a disaster.
but i think your “toy soldier” rant is a little unfair where the ‘royal tenenbaums’ is concerned. what a great tragic farce that film is. if we loathe the rich kids in this film as you seem to, it’s because anderson has done such a great job of exposing the triviality of what seems to trouble them so profoundly. and at the center of it all, is royal himself, gene hackman, effortlessly not giving a shit about them, because he sees what we see. still, he loves them. each character is filled with subtle, but extreme paradoxes.
and by the way, people think hackman strolled through that movie, but do we have any idea how HARD it is to appear so nonchalant / effortless on camera? and just around the edges of hackman’s performance is the sadness he’s trying to avoid. i thought his performance in ‘tenenbaums’ was wonderfully subtle, and completely overlooked by critics. that movie’s wonderful stuff.
also, i think luke wilson is the more flexible of the two brothers. owen can only seem to play the affable goof, regardless of the backdrop he’s given: starsky and hutch or zoolander? owen plays the affable goof. steve zissou’s prodigy? affable goof. brother on a personal quest in “darjeeling limited”? hey, guess what? owen’s got a new angle for this character: he’ll play the affable goof that wored so well in that “cousin dupree” chick-flick comedy.
luke, on the other hand, may have a more wooden affect in his serious roles, but he has done comedy and serious films without insisting on rehashing the same persona over and over again.
Somehow his investigation of trivial people renders his a trivial as well. I guess some people can insert themselves into those cartoony characters but I can not. Odd, because I feel such empathy for Elmer Fudd every time Bugs shoots him.
saturn, insightful comments on Royal Tenenbaums. Yet, I still think its a ltdown after Rushmore. Rushmore seemed to flow effortlessly, while RT appeared overly compartmentalized (perhaps due to the multiple subplots). Indeed, Andersen reveals a real weakness here: he seems to have no idea of how to connect scenes, something that gets more pronounced in his successive films.
Post-Rushmore, the films all seem forced. I agree, saturn, that he does a good job of exposing the trivialities of his characters (in those scenes there is a genuine tension that engages me), but this strength is offset by his inability to depict the quirks of his characters as no more than stylistic affectations.
I’ve never had an issue with films that appear “forced” or “contrived” or “compartmentalized” or…
I don’t need a film to be “effortless”. That’s how I might judge a traditional Hollywood film but when I approach film as art (Jarmusch, Anderson, Lynch…) I enjoy seeing what and how they constructed things. I could watch Dead Man with the dialog extracted and only Neil Young’s soundtrack and thoroughly enjoy it.
In addition to sets and soundtrack, Anderson’s use of dialog is very visual to me. It reminds me of the scene in Yellow Submarine where the two sea creatures blast images over each other’s heads.
First, when I refer to the flow, I’m referring to rhythm, the pacing of the scenes. I don’t mean that transitions have to be seemless, as in traditional Hollywood films.
More and more I get the feeling that Anderson has lost his belief in what he’s doing and resorts to tricks to keep us interested. He’s almost as bad as Tarantino in that respect.
I kinda stayed out of this conversation, mainly since I don’t really understand really intense Wes Anderson antipathy, much as I don’t quite understand ardent Wilco antipathy. Sure, Anderson has a distinct style that may have calcified into schtick, but he’s hardly the first filmmaker to fall into this trap. I wholly love Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, and quite like Royal Tennenbaums, especially for Gene Hackman’s performance, which is like something out of a Randy Newman song, the way Royal walks the line between consummate bullshitting and corroded self-loathing.
Also, I have this unformed theory that Rushmore had this delayed effect in redrawing the lines of what was cool. This might seem like a nightmare for some of you, but for those of us who remember the dominance of Limp Bizkit et al during this time, it’s something of a relief. So maybe the hipsters who came in Max Fischer’s wake are insufferable. Has it ever been any other way throughout history?
Good question you raise, Oats.
I’m sure you’ve read the stories of how Anderson, Schwartzman, and the Lesser Coppala wrote this film, right? “Wes actually carried a typewriter with him as we traveled through India,” Schwartzman might say, “We were determined to writer the movie while on our trip, and we incorporated real-life events from our trip into the script! We’d actually act out the parts as we wrote them.” I’ve read/heard a dozen variations on this take since the movie’s been out, and each time I find it more telling. Schwartzman (or Adrian Brody) will go on to note that the Owen Wilson character is “a lot like Wes.” Could these guys be any more impressed with themselves? I’m not saying that great art can’t come out of a trust fund and a fun trip with friends, but these guys are such navel gazers that the lint has got to run thin sooner than later.
I’d like to read an expanded version of this theory, esp. since unlike every other Wes Anderson film I’ve seen (and I’ve seen all of them except for The Darjeeling Limited, which I hope to see soon), I really loved Rushmore. Regardless, I thought the tipping point in that regard was the ascension of The Strokes, The White Stripes, etc. several years later. Do you think these are related to Rushmore somehow?
Afterwards, I saw The Royal Tennenbaums in the theater and rented Bottle Rocket and though neither were bad, I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. In the former movie, I couldn’t really relate to the characters for reasons cited above, much like my feelings on Lost in Translation (a better movie than TRT)and in particular, Bill Murray’s character. Regardless, neither one of them were as bad as The Life Aquatic. Man oh man did I dislike thaht one. I will say this much, though. His great choice of music (esp. in The Life Aquatic) makes his films much more watchable than they would be otherwise.
I’m not sure I see your point, Mr. Mod. So Anderson et al are precious and self-impressed. How is that different from other filmmakers, say, The Coen Brothers or Woody Allen, even?
Berylant, my theory is still unformed but it kind of revolves around the idea that Rushmore and Belle and Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister had a subterranean effect on pop culture. Not only did they subtly indicate that Fred Durst’s days in the spotlight were numbered, but they also highlighted/revitalized a kind of ’60s worship, one more to do with The Kinks and Truffaut than the usual boomer-friendly Woodstock cliches. I think the White Stripes/Strokes epoch you mention is related but slightly different. My thing is related to the now-popular, fairly inaccurate accusation that indie rock now is too white, fey and/or toothless. The tipping point you mentioned has more to do with the brief “Rock is Back” phase of the early ’00s.
Well, let’s get past the fact that the Coen Brothers and Woody Allen have each produced scads of movies I love – then we’re in a pointless battle of taste. Where they differ greatly is that the Coens and Allen have never sold their movies as “Hey, look how cool we are, mixing our lives of leisure with our art! It’s like, real, you know?” These directors are committed to creating artifice, not filming their MySpace page.
Woody Allen constantly denies that his movies in any way reflect his real life, no matter how laughable that notion is. The Coens are wrapped up in film genre. Who knows what’s really personal in their films, and who cares?
It’s not like I don’t enjoy plenty of artists who are very open about the personal content of their works, but I simply can’t stand the point of view of the two Anderson movies upon which I have built my Wes Anderson Antipathy: Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. Maybe it all comes down to what I feel is Anderson’s terrible storytelling abilities in each of these films. I don’t mean in terms of plot, because I rarely know what the plot is. I mean in terms of creating a world with some balance and dynamics. I don’t know of or accept a world in which every person is an equally self-obsessed screw-up – and nothing more than that. Maybe I’ve missed much in these films.
My answer to your question, Oats, would be none, really. Which is a shame, because Anderson disn’t start off that way–Rushmore makes you feel for and with the characters. The best scene is where the character played by Bill Murray sees Max Fischer’s dad working in the barbershop, and it gives him a realization of what the kid’s kife is really like. The expression on Murray’s face says it all.
Anderson’s recent films, like Allen and the Coen brothers, seem unable to focus on anything serious without some sort of smirk or ironic gesture (often in Allen’s films, a wisecrack, usually by Allen, gives us a safe distance away from the issues a character is facing). Like, for example, I thought the Life Aquatic might be getting into some interesting family dynamics, and then, the pirates come and make us forget all about that serious stuff.
Even in most comedies (absent slapstick or braod farce) what makes the scenes work is our connection with the characters. That’s what made Peter Sellers great: he could take a crazy character and allow you to identify with him.
Again, when I watch Anderson, I feel like the sets should come with little signs to tell us how we should react. It’s almost impossible for me to have an honest response to one of the scenes in his later movies.
Another film that endorses the hipster is High Fidelity. That it is set in a record store allows for a record number of reference to obsure, rare, or cult artforms that allows the viewer to revel in his/her knowlege of the obscure and non-mainstream.
Correction: I meant to write “the kid’s life” in the first paragraph.
I SUMMON TOWNSMAN MWALL…
… to give us a status report on his evacuation status. You all right over there?
Hey thanks, man. I appreciate your concern and yeah, I’m fine. I live only about 500 feet from the ocean, and fires have never historically reached that far. They eat up the brush in the hills about 15 miles inland though.
That said, my university is closed today and tomorrow, so I missed a 12-hour day today but will have to make up a fair amount of that work later in the week. Plus many nearby roads are closed and we’ve been told to stay home if we can, so I’m more or less in lockdown, and the wind is high and hot hot hot. I’m just sitting around watching the reports.
But obviously that’s nothing compared to the people who have been injured or lost their homes. Quite a few neighborhoods have been significantly burned. It’s not good.
And it’s really pretty creepy. Here I am in an ocean-side village on a hot sunny day, surrounded (to some extent) on the inland side by a burning Ring of Fire, with billows of red smoke drifting by me on occasion. Just gotta keep watching those reports and wait it out.
Well, I’m a Rushmore fan. I’m hip enough to admit how unhip I am in owning and enjoying the pointedly obscu-hip soundtrack CD. I like everyone in that movie. It seems the point that everyone screws up, but everyone in the film has some sort of human integrity, and every character learns something they weren’t aware of at the beginning. Not all to the good, but it’s dynamic. Can Schwartzman act his way out of a paper bag? I don’t know. Fortunately I haven’t seen him on screen in a paper bag yet. I thought he was perfectly uncomfortable and shameless in that film. The fights between the various kids seemed perfect portrayals of that kind of tension. Who can’t identify with your friend in seventh grade getting mad because you hit o his mom? It’s the Norman Rockwell of our times!
Tannenbaums was less engaging, because the dissolute wealthy are baffling and completely unentertaining to me. (And also because the characters seemed driven by things not portrayed in the film.) Same thing happened with Woody Allen, when he started writing about what he *now* knows, which is superficial wealthy people. I, too, find something in Bottle Rockets that isn’t in the other films. But Rushmore is still excellent, to me.
Hey mwall, my university is closed too! In my case it’s because we had six inches of rain right before morning rush hour, a couple more inches scattered through the day, and we seem to getting 3 or 4 more inches as I type. They just canceled night classes, so I still have to go to work in the morning. And they’re promising us a cold front afterwards, with temps in the 50s! Brrrrrrr…..
If only we could average out our two locations — you’d get some more rain, and we’d get more fire. Ok, we don’t really need fire, but you can borrow some of our rain.
Feast or famine, to put it mildly, eh Steve? Feast or famine.
I like your theory because If You’re Feeling Sinister was a pretty important album for me during this time period. Although it came out in 1997, I didn’t hear it until about a year later and it just completely took me aback as it brought back memories of hearing The Smiths for the first time in high school. It was such a great antidote to post-grunge and nu-metal and all of that nonsense. I didn’t really get into The Kinks or Love until a few years later, but that album certainly spawned my interest in those groups, though I’d already had that Kinks Greatest Hits CD that Rhino put out in the early ’90s. As for B&S, I was really disappointed by their subsequent output until 2003’s Dear Catastrophe Waitress, as great a comeback album as I’ve ever heard.
With that said, Fred Durst’s reign was sadly just beginning during this time. Their first album came out in ’97 and from what I remember, their biggest albums were in ’99 and ’01. After The Strokes/White Stripes/Hives/Vines thing hit, that was when their reign ended, though I don’t necessarily think there was a direct connection (it was definitely a factor, though).
What I’m curious about, though, is how you see the Rushmore/Belle and Sebastian-era relating to the later Strokes/White Stripes one and specifically the connection between the two. I have my own quarter-formed theories about that, but I’m curious to read yours.