HopkinsCinemAddicts

On Producing: The Best and Worst Job (Andrea)

When we sent out crew calls for every job on our production back in October, almost every single candidate put down that their first choice position was producer. I couldn’t tell whether it was because they truly, deep down wanted to be a producer, or they just had no idea what the hell a producer was. Because you have to be truly crazy, in my opinion, to want to have the best and also worst job of working on a film production.

Producer is a job that is at once all encompassing and yet very vague. When I interned this past summer under a couple of producers for a television production company, they could spend hours on the phone in a therapy-like session with talent, or running submit a money order before the post office closed at the end of the day, or working on stories for days that could be dashed by executives in a second. Because of this, it’s difficult for me to define what a producer does because, in short, I believe that the producer does everything. And I mean everything. 

On a small short film such as this one, the producer is the one who hires crew, scouts locations, manages the budget, prepares craft services, averts major crises on and off-set––and every little thing in-between. That is why when all of these underclassmen applied for the job of producer on our film, I couldn’t imagine why they would want the job without ever having done it before. In my experience, a lot of people who believe they want to produce quickly end up hating it––it isn’t “creative” enough, too logistical, too hectic and busy and stressful. (We ended up choosing Will as our third producer, joining Tony and me. He is someone who was completely invaluable to us as well as damn good at his job.)

I love producing. I love having a hand in every little aspect of the film, from pre-production to production to post-production. But this film was the biggest test of my abilities. For one, the cast and crew were large. For just one weekend of shooting, we would have to manage forty people per day. Another reason was that the scope of the project was huge, too. We needed six locations (one of which was a funeral home), six shoot days (and so twelve meals), a large amount of props (and our production designers didn’t have cars to go get them)… and so on, and so on. The script was ambitious, and that was what I liked but also what scared me.

Here is just a sample of what I had to do as a producer on Bernard Died. (In the real world, you’d have producers such as a line producer, unit production manager, location manager, etc. to delegate these tasks to. This is a student film, so we didn’t.)

Locations: On their own, these were difficult. Three of our six shoot days had to take place at a funeral home. Buying a casket was also way out of our budget, so we also needed to get a funeral director to loan us one. I sent out a ton of emails to funeral homes in the Baltimore-area. In all, we visited three funeral homes, and the one we liked best was called Lassahn Funeral Home. The place was perfect, an old 1700s-style home converted into a funeral home, with pretty red wallpaper and a lot of charm. Due to the unpredictable nature of the business of funeral homes, we were terrified that Lasshan might kick us out of filming as late as the day before production. The last day of filming, there was supposed to be a viewing, but thankfully Lassahn just moved us into another chapel and let us keep filming while it was going on. We owe all of our success to Lasshan, honestly. 

Pictured: Will, in front of a sign at a church we were scouting.

The apartment location for Ray’s bedroom and bedroom was easy enough (I coerced my friend into letting us use his), and we borrowed an empty office in JHU’s Center for Social Concern for another location. But the fish store posed a bit of a problem. We needed to find somewhere non-corporate (they rarely let you film) but also with good lighting. We stumbled upon Tropical Fish, a store with a sketchy exterior in East Baltimore but with a beautiful interior. It was Corey’s favorite place to shoot by far. No lights were needed, and the place was cinematic on its own.

A sneak peek of the fish in the store, taken which location scouting.

Crew: The producer is also in charge of hiring all of the crew. We needed to fill a bunch of positions: 2nd AD (assistant director), script supervisor, AC (assistant camera), production designers, grips and tons of PAs (production assistants). Thankfully, Hopkins film students are the most helpful, and we were easily able to fill all of the roles. Most of our crew was made up of sophomores and freshmen.

The major problem was a sound mixer. We understood that sound was really important, but no one at Hopkins was qualified or understood how it worked. We put out calls to Peabody’s sound departments, but no luck. We ended up deciding to hire a mixer and a boom op, which killed our budget but was probably one of the best decisions we made. Eddie and Adriana were also a ton of fun to have on-set.

Scheduling: Although this was more of Will’s job, scheduling was a pain for me when it crossed with my casting for Uncle Elliott. Our actor, Jason, couldn’t be there for our first shoot day on January 17 when he was needed all three days, on the 18th and 19th too. We needed to come up with some solution so that Jason’s schedule could work with ours. Although it wasn’t the best solution, we had to cut Elliott’s character out of one scene entirely, and even in the edit, I’m still not sure if it was the best decision.

There were also littler restrictions: Dave had to leave by 5pm every single shooting day, and Salwa had to leave early on the day of her biggest scenes. Some crew couldn’t be there on certain days, and so we would have to adjust how we ran our sets. We also had to decide what crew we would want what days––a big mistake sometimes, since we let our grips go early one day and ended up an hour behind schedule. Will would be sending out call sheets a couple hours before we shot because sometimes, there were last-minute changes in the scenes we shot or our call times.

We ended up scheduling six shoot days: January 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, and 31. The days varied in their complication and how much we had to get done, but we could only work on weekends since we couldn’t pull Zach out of school on the weekdays.

In retrospect, scheduling was probably the easiest part of all of this.

Craft Services: This is the bane of my existence as a producer. It’s hard to conceptualize how much food will feed a cast and crew of forty plus, but I’ll give you a clue: it’s a lot. Feeding your cast and crew good food and on a regular basis means you will have a happy cast and crew. Coffee is also important. Lots and lots of coffee. 

The night of each shoot day was spent at Giant, buying chips and cookies and drinks and bagels and orange juice and more for the next day. We were lucky enough to get a discount on an Italian restaurant called Giovanna’s near our shooting location for lunch, and two places, Red Canoe and JHU-located Daily Grind, donated breakfast some days.

But after the first day of shooting, and the sheer amount of money we spent on food, we needed a different approach. Will, Kristen (our 2nd AD), and Taylor (PA) spent one night making cold cut sandwiches and pasta salad. Will, Kristen and I spent another night baking three trays of baked ziti. And finally, we resorted to Tony’s favorite pizzeria, Papa John’s, to pick up the slack on two of our shoot days because it was cheap and quick.

Will and I, in awe of our baked ziti.

Budgeting: As you can probably imagine based on my complaints about our sound and food, our budget grew out of control. I'm not good with numbers or money, and when you’ve never run a production this large before, it’s difficult to tell how your money will be spent. Amazingly, almost all of our Studio North grant went towards feeding our cast and crew. Thankfully, with the help of Eric Beatty in the Homewood Arts Programs, we were able to get some more money to help us out. Unfortunately, the rest of the cost will have to be covered out-of-pocket by Tony and me. (Details to come once the film is finished.) 

But the worst part of it all was the crisis management on-set. Stay tuned.

All the best,
Andrea

Time in Movies, Movies in Time (Ian)

 

Some years just aren’t good to moviegoers.  2004 birthed few movies worth mentioning (Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind, Kill Bill Vol. 2, and Mean Girls practically finish the list).  Conversely, some years are great to film--2007 for instance saw There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Michael Clayton, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly all grace the silver screen.

Fortunately, the stars aligned, and 2014 was a stellar year in film.  We got Boyhood, and Birdman, and Foxcatcher, and Whiplash, and Nightcrawler, AND The Babadook--the list goes on, but I’ll stop there.

Funny enough, the good years seem to come with a theme that stretches across their respective filmographies (coincidence? self-projection?).  2007 saw a type of rejuvenation of the “lonely man” archetype popularized by Paul Schrader’s “Night Worker” series of films.  Upon reflection, 2014 saw many of its films measure their ability to be “revolutionary” in hours, and minutes, and seconds; they pushed cinematic boundaries by manipulating how films portray time.

Boyhood seems like the most obvious example of a film representing time in a “new” way, and its deceiving because of it.  The film has received widespread acclaim for its portrayal of twelve years in a family’s life, filmed across twelve years real-time.  Certainly there is technically no other film like it, simply because no other film was produced over a twelve-year period.  And while it is interesting to see Boyhood’s Mason and co. age twelve years throughout the span of three hours (and in the process to relive moments in time like the book release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows unstaged), beneath the glamour of the movie’s unprecedented production schedule, it’s time trick is just that--a trick.  Obviously the movie examines time, but not uniquely, like it wants you to believe; rather, it examines time like anyone else would--like everyone else has to.

Alejandro G. Inarritu’s Birdman stands at the opposite end of the spectrum, presenting time in a highly formalistic way.  Whereas time passes in Boyhood it flows in Birdman, making it the truly unique interpretation of the fourth dimension (despite what the former would have you believe).  The camera floats continuously not just through space, but time as well, trimming away the “fat” of the narrative and conflating scenes of “artists” producing “art” into a pressure-cooker that eventually reaches its breaking point and bursts into surrealism and absurdity.

Somewhere in the middle lies the lesser-seen Locke, directed by Steven Knight and starring Tom Hardy.  The film’s narrative takes place across one single, 84 minute car ride, with the camera never leaving the car.  Locke is the only passenger, meaning he is the only character ever on screen, and speaks to other characters only via his car’s speaker phone.  By the end of Locke’s hour-and-a-half drive into London he has successfully annihilated his professional and personal lives.  While the premise isn’t exactly “cinematic”, by staying with Locke in-real time the film lets the viewer witness every second of the man’s disintegration.

Way back in the third paragraph I mentioned that the “theme” I draw from a given year’s filmography may be self-projected rather than widely felt, but that issue becomes irrelevant the more I think about it.  After all, studying the films in 2014 through the lens of time has been fruitful, if only for my sake.  Even if it’s “uniqueness” is ultimately glib, by making a spectacle of the objectively mundane maturation process, Boyhood makes everyone’s past seem special, or somehow larger-than-life; a treat to be savored, rather than a given to be endured.  Meanwhile, the blurring of time and space in Birdman layers spectacle on spectacle until eventually absurdity replaces reality--not a bad representation of life in a world with increasingly bleaker political and social climates that make it ever-harder to understand.  Locke emphasizes that no moment should be wasted, because in every moment lies the potential for life-changing events.

Birdman manipulated time to make art look absurd; 2014, however, used time to make films that were great.  Tit for tat, the films produced in 2014 cement it as one of the richest years recent history.  Let’s hope for an equally profound (and thematic) 2015.

 

On Casting: Why Smiling Matters (Andrea)

There are many directors who love the casting process. I am not one of them.

I know from the first time that an actor speaks whether he or she will fit the role, and it’s rare that I can be convinced to change my mind. The headshots and resumes are pointless to me, because I can remember the faces of those I liked, and I forget the ones I didn’t––but sometimes it’s a little trickier than that. Someone who looks the part can have an awful reading, or someone who reads perfectly can have a hard-to-work-with personality or schedule––all of which are deal-breakers. Although you do eventually end up with your cast, it is a bit like a puzzle. This is because you need your cast to not only act, but also to work together. And it can be hard to jam all those pieces together.

Going into casting Bernard Died, our main problem was that we had to cast a family. This meant that once we found our dream actor for the character of Ray, it would decide everything else about the rest of the cast––the race, look, likability. Tony and I put out calls for all ages and races to see what we got. We had two casting dates: October 4 and October 25, with callbacks on November 1. It was a cold read, which meant that we gave the script pages to the actors when they got to the audition. In all, we had 66 auditions, and 15 people were called back. We recorded our auditions so we could re-watch them later (also: where all the stills in this post come from!), and set up an email account (BernardDiedC[email protected]) to communicate with the actors who RSVP'd.

The graphic we used in our casting calls, featuring Tony's real-life goldfish.

Out of the 66, many were bad, American Idol-style. One kid was too scared to audition and ended up crying in the corner of the room. Another had a laminated crab claw-shaped resume. Women as old as thirty came in to audition for a 15-year-old’s part. Another kid repetitively emailed us asking whether we were also casting for Teen Beach Movie 2. Really, nothing was off-limits.

But still there were many auditions that weren’t bad––that were actually really good. And those are the people we cast. Here’s a breakdown of how we ended up casting each of our characters, the good and the bad.

Ray Goby: As the main character of the film, Ray was the most important, casting-wise. We decided that whomever we casted for Ray would determine the rest of the family––race, hair color, everything. The fourth little boy that we saw on the morning of our first open call was Zach. He was dressed in an adorable button-down checkered shirt, with his hair combed to the side. When we explained that Ray’s character was somber and serious, his mom said, “You’re not like that, are you, Zackie?” and he shook his head and started to laugh. His happy personality, along with a good reading, convinced us that he could be Ray.

Just to be safe, we called back two other boys alongside Zach to read for us. One of the little boys looked the part, but his voice was deep and shy––and didn’t smile at us once. The other kid, we quickly learned, would be miserable to work with. He got up in the middle of the callback and starting running around the room, drawing on the chalkboards and “mooing” like a cow. He wouldn’t listen to even his father, who was yelling at him to come sit down. Unfortunately, Zach never showed up that day, and Tony and I started panicking that we hadn’t found our Ray yet.

The next day, I got a call from Zach’s mom saying that they were at the audition but nobody was there. It turned out that they had misread the date in my email. I ran down to the Mattin Center and auditioned Zach, and I am so glad that I did. He was everything we were looking for. He also smiled a lot.

Zach, in his hastily-arranged callback.

Mom: I remembered Kara from her emails leading up to the audition. She was courteous, used proper grammar (which is rarer in casting than you think it would be), and asked questions about her potential character so she could come prepared. She struck me as a mother when she walked in the room and, as I soon learned, she had a young son in real life. Kara gave a terrific reading––but what really impressed me was her attitude. She was the calmest and kindest person in callbacks, just like we pictured our Mom character.

Kara, in her first audition. She was always smiling.

Uncle Nick: Todd was one of the first men that we saw in the morning of our first audition, and Tony and I looked to each other after his reading and said, “That’s Uncle Nick.” He was clearly a seasoned actor, but he warned us that his schedule may not allow him to film with us––he was in a play for the rest of 2014 and wouldn’t be free until January. He was one of the reasons that we rearranged our shooting schedule, pushing everything back to January in the hopes that he would be able to act. He did.

Uncle Reish and Priya: These characters were a challenge. Reish and Priya needed to be related and, as written, they were Indian. After our auditions, we had only seen one Indian girl for Priya and none for Reish. On the second date of auditions, Jose walked in––another person who had been very invested in our project since he saw our call for actors––and we knew he was Reish after his reading. However, he was Hispanic, and we had only seen one Hispanic girl for Priya’s role––and when I offered her the part, she never got back to me. We couldn’t lose Jose just because of Priya’s character. Last minute, Tony found the roommate of one of his Hopkins friends named Fatima, who we never auditioned for the sake of time but turned out to be an excellent actress. (Also, the names of the characters were ultimately changed to Uncle Diego and Mariana.)

Jose, with his relaxed leather jacket and beanie. His attitude was very chill.

Aunt Lis and Uncle Phil: Although Lis’ character was a principal in the script and Phil was more secondary, what really convinced us that Salwa and Dave came together as a pair was their callback. We had all five family members in the room together, and the two invented their whole back-story for us as we got the camera rolling––about their wedding night, honeymoon, and martial issues. It was hilarious, with so much personality. Salwa’s monologue in her private callback also convinced us that she was easily the best candidate for Lis that we had seen all day.

The family in callbacks: Todd, Dave, Salwa, Kara and Jose.

Grandma: Martha was a SAG-actress that I had picked out from our email exchanges from the start––courteous and invested in the script. She gave a very strong initial audition, and during our callbacks, she also worked well with our young Rays––which was a big factor for us, since Grandma’s character needed to have a good connection with the lead. In reality, we were torn between her and another actress, but when I gave the other actress direction, she butchered the performance. By default, the part went to Martha, and I’m glad that it did.

Martha, giving an animated first reading.

Uncle Elliott: Casting this character was a bit of a nightmare. After going through auditions and callbacks, we still hadn’t seen anyone we would like to consider for Elliott’s role. It was getting close to production in January when we casted another SAG-actor. The Tuesday before the first shoot day on Saturday, he was called in for acting on the TV show TURN on our most important shoot day, so I had to fire him. I spoke with another actor on Wednesday, who promised me he could fill the role, but I woke up to an email on Thursday saying he would also have to cancel. In a last-ditch effort, I called up a Hopkins friend named Jason who was flying back from Los Angeles on our first shoot day, and he agreed to play the part. We rearranged our shooting schedule a bit to fit him in, and he ended up being one of the best casting choices we made––even though also one of the most stressful.

It may seem like I loved every actor and had no regrets in my casting decisions––because it’s true. They learned from each other, taught me things about directing, formed friendships, and were a lot of fun to work with on-set––always surprising me with their kindness, patience and ability. Most of all, they really did become a big family at the end, just like their characters.

So, I guess I’m glad I sat through 66 auditions to get to the couple that mattered.

All the luck in casting,
Andrea

A Study in Sherlock: Investigating Literature’s Most Widely Adapted Character (Helena C.)

Sherlock Holmes is one of the most widely adapted characters of all time. More than seventy-five actors--two of the most recent adaptations star the likes of Robert Downey Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch--have played Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional sleuth. The popularity of the “consulting detective” never seems to die down. The source material--four novels and fifty-six short stories--has been reimagined into over 200 films. I will be looking in depth at two particular adaptations of Holmes--Sherlock Holmes (2009) and the BBC's Sherlock.

What is it about this lanky eccentric genius that is so enduringly appealing that we feel the need to return to the character twice in the space of eight months (four times in the last five years)? Sherlock Holmes is not arrogant, he simply knows that he is better than you. He is not put off by the most gruesome pictures of violence. His intellect is incomparable, beyond those of Scotland Yard and the most formidable villains.

Sherlock Holmes might as well be superhuman, and I suppose with the trend of the superhero movie, I should not be surprised with simultaneous rise of this extraordinary detective. But the recent portrayals of the adventures of the eponymous protagonist seem to go farther than the source material. Yes, Sherlock Holmes is supposed to be smarter than us, this fact in and of itself has not changed, but perhaps the representations of it have. That is to say, there is something almost magical and “beyond” about the detective now, and we cannot help but stop and stare in fascination.

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For example, let’s take a look at Guy Ritchie’s 2009 feature starring Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock and Jude Law as his partner-in-crime, Dr. Watson. A particular moment that catches my attention is right before a sensational fight scene when Sherlock says, “this mustn’t register on an emotional level.” Immediately following, we get a carefully designed slow-motion rendering of how he intends to incapacitate his opponent. This breaking of the fourth-dimension, only possible through cinema, gives this character a divine quality, or perhaps on account of Downey Jr.’s apathetically matter-of-fact and precise delivery “mechanical” is a better term.

Furthermore, the villain in this adaptation, Lord Blackwood is the leader of this strange magical cult and is literally believed to have supernatural powers until the very end, when Holmes heroically reveals the technical tricks of science that are behind the supposed magic. This is a picture of superhuman intellect against sorcery, a problem that stems from outside the realm of reality defeated by character that seems to come from a similarly mystical place.

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In the BBC’s Sherlock, a similar elevation of Sherlock’s mental ability occurs, and if anything, Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal is even more stoic and emotionless than Downey Jr.’s. In the very first episode, Sherlock deduces that the murder of a woman is not a single incident, but rather the work of a serial killer, and he says, “We got ourselves a serial killer. Love those, there’s always something to look forward to.” Not only does this line illustrate the character’s inappropriate response to an extreme act of violence, but it also shows that his main interest is not in saving lives or even necessarily catching the criminal, it’s about solving the puzzle. In this show, Holmes is a calculation machine, so his opponents should be too, otherwise it would be too easy for him.

The way the show presents Holmes’s deductions to the audience visually is equally mystifying. The deductions that Sherlock makes are presented to the audience on screen in clean white text, with extreme close-ups of the details that lead him to such deductions. For example, in the first episode when Sherlock explains how he knew so much about Watson when they first met, there is a flashback. Only this time, the camera slowly pans around the two character’s shaking hands, closing in on details such as Watson's tan, haircut, his phone, showcasing the mechanical nature of Sherlock’s skills of observation and deduction. There is again, a kind of slowing of time. Immediately following Sherlock's inappropriately personal observations Watson is not angry, but rather in awe of Holmes's display of superhuman ability.

 

The Guinness Book of Records crowned Sherlock Holmes the most portrayed literary human character in film & TV, but in light of these particular portrayals, “human” seems to be a misnomer. It is possible that his trend of robotic portrayals can be attributed to technological advancements in forensic science and cinematography since the days of Basil Rathbone’s or Peter Cushing’s portrayals of Sherlock Holmes; however, I think it is more indicative of a change in our own culture. Perhaps a culture obsessed with being saved, one that is uncomfortable in the face of its unsustainability.

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One notable similarity between the two aforementioned adaptations is that the only moments in which Holmes becomes more human are those in which we see his interplay with Watson, played by Jude Law and Martin Freeman, respectively. It is in these exchanges that Holmes is humanized. Watson's caring nature a perfect foil to Holmes's coldness. Their witty banter and intimacy make Sherlock more relatable and likable. With this humanization in mind, I would like to consider two other recent adaptations of Sherlock that veer away from the cold calculation machine characterization, and opt for a more human approach to the character.

On the subject of Watson, The most recently released adaptation, the CBS television series Elementary, gives us an interesting take on the character of Watson, with Lucy Liu, not only a woman, but an Asian American woman, as Holmes’s sober companion.  She isn't a sidekick but his equal, and is invested less in any given mystery than in Holmes himself. Jonny Lee Miller’s Holmes is still aloof and a bit mechanical, but he seems to want to change, and the audience understands this through his close relationship with Watson. In a particular scene in the first episode, after Holmes commits a social faux-pas he reveals to Watson that he is embarrassed by how poorly he handled the situation. This is a representation of Holmes that is more human, more capable of error and regret.

Another novel approach to the character can be seen this year, with the upcoming Mr. Holmes, directed by Bill Condon, starring Ian McKellen as Holmes. In this story our hero is older, 93, troubled with old age and Alzheimer’s disease. This kind of vulnerability is very difficult to imagine in light of recent adaptations and will probably work to demystify the character to an extent far greater than Elementary.

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No matter the nature of the representation, Sherlock Holmes is a fascinating character and the cases are gritty and engaging. Whether mechanical superhero, drug addict trying to stay sober, or old man on the verge of senescence, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character will continue to fascinate.  He is reshaped by our present realities, but is still the bizarre and brilliant detective we love.  

The Wonderful Worlds of Wes Anderson (Madison)

The first film I ever fell in love with was Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom. I was sixteen the summer it premiered, and watched it in a small-town movie theater in upstate New York with my cousin. The theater had been built in 1926 and hadn't grown much since then; it was small, with a screen the size of two king-sized sheets and seats upholstered in red velvet. The movie was shown on 35mm film. This was the best possible place to be introduced to a director, producer, and screenwriter with as many small quirks and fascinations as Wes Anderson.

 

Those who are familiar with Anderson's work will understand my feeling that his films are as exquisitely crafted and delicious as the confections he features in his 2014 film, The Grand Budapest Hotel. They are sweet, beautiful, and complicated; such that you enjoy them the first time you see them and then crave them again and again. 

 

In preparing for this post, I've tried to watch all of the feature length films Anderson has written and directed (with the exception of Bottle Rocket, his first film from 1996.) The list is as follows: Rushmore (1998), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Although ranking these offerings seems as unfair as trying to pick favorites among a group of best friends, I want, here, to rate Wes Anderson's films from “Must Be Watched” to “See it if You’re a Fan.”

But before I do, let’s take a moment to talk about what makes Anderson’s films so incredible and distinctive.  Although Wes Anderson often works with collaborators and cowriters, he has written, directed, and produced every single work I’ve included in this post; the final product, then, always has a couple of features that smack of Wes (warning, spoilers ahead!)

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Anderson enjoys examining transient spaces: in particular, he seems to have a fascination with trains and hotels. In Fantastic Mr. Fox, Ash and Kristofferson bond over a toy train; in The Darjeeling Limited, Jack Whitman often wears a Hotel Chevalier robe when he’s aboard the train (a two-for-one!); in The Royal Tenenbaums, Royal Tenenbaum lives in a hotel for several years and eventually becomes its elevator attendant; Bill Murray’s character in Rushmore is similarly exiled to a hotel when his marriage dissolves.

 

Settings such as these are metaphorically fraught: does the train break down? Does the hotel make it through the war intact? Can this man pay for his room, and will someone help him if he can’t? The answers to these questions have as much to do with the internal state of a character as with any literal corresponding event.

 

When you put broken people in settings that aren’t quite anywhere, you put them in a space to move, either towards resolution or destruction. These settings, then, not only reflect the unresolved nature of Anderson’s characters (who are often sad, lonely adults striving for connection, be it with family or lovers), but also push them to extremes. Darjeeling Limited, for example, goes one step beyond trying to reunite three estranged brothers; Wes Anderson does not ask, what would happen if they met up for lunch? He asks, what would happen if they all lived in one small room on a train, in a country where they did not speak the language, for several weeks? Spaces like this, trains and hotel rooms, accelerate the plot, in that they naturally lead to something else: no character that lives in a hotel simply stays there and enjoys their visit; no train embarks without a destination. These spaces are close and temporary, a powder keg that the unstable character wanders into holding a lit match.  

In the vein of explosions, I’d like to point out another facet of Anderson’s brilliance as a storyteller: Anderson, for all of the beauty and levity his work presents, never lets the viewer forget what is at stake, what is at risk, and what is in danger of being lost. His films often feature an animal companion; typically, these animals don’t live to see the second half of the film.

 

Remember Snoopy, the khaki scouts’ dog, shot through the neck in Moonrise Kingdom; Deputy Kovac’s beloved Persian cat thrown out a window in The Grand Budapest Hotel; poor Buckley in The Royal Tenenbaums, struck dead by an intoxicated Eli Cash. And if Wes chooses not to sacrifice an animal on screen, he populates his stories with dead mothers and husbands (as in Rushmore), or kills off a character (such as Ned Plimpton in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou or the cider obsessed rat in Fantastic Mr. Fox.)

Although what we are seeing on screen may be bright, filled with primary colors and quirky furniture sets, there is a darkness lurking very near to the surface. The viewer is not spared the gory realities, particularly in Anderson’s latest work: we see Snoopy bloodied on an arrow in Moonrise Kingdom, and in The Grand Budapest Hotel are treated to a view of a woman’s severed head. These gruesome moments remind us that in these films everything is at stake. The chance to reunite with a family member, to preserve a dying world of elegance, or to be with the person you love is not only that; it is a chance to live, and to make living worth something. Above all, these films are about lost people trying to come together and connect; the fear of death and of dying alone or forgotten drives these characters forward and towards each other. Forging and testing relationships, then, does have life and death consequences.

Anderson often makes the decision to emphasize the physicality of his characters, for similar reasons. When we see Peter’s long pale legs sticking out of his boxers in Darjeeling, or a flash of Laura Bishop’s breasts as she washes her hair in Moonrise Kingdom we are reminded that these characters are vulnerable and mortal.

 

Of course, Anderson does not rely solely on nudity to help the viewer see a character as a body: the subdued performances of many of his characters (the straight faced Suzy Bishop, for example) and the minimal style of dialogue focuses our attention on the actors as people with bodies; we see their clothes, their hair, their heavy eye makeup as clues to their interiors. Everything that we see tells us about the character. Wes Anderson is nothing if not an expert at visual storytelling.

This brings me to what most people associate with Mr. Anderson’s films: bright, beautiful colors and exquisite set design. He fills his worlds with fantastic, quirky objects (the mounted head of a javelina, a pair of antique binoculars, a pendant with two blue keys printed on it) so that his stories become rich visual experiences. He plays with balance, using close up camera shots to establish symmetry; but then, you notice, the character he has focused on has one black eye, and the balance that was so carefully established is violated. Anderson gives us a tight shot of a girl’s face as she reads a book aloud, and then zooms out until the scene is a diorama with improbable paper dolls in place of the actors. One never quite knows what to expect when watching Anderson’s films; one only knows that it will be beautiful and unusual, and that one will want their wedding to look exactly like it. 

 

Another vital part of this visual experience is the quiet focus on scene and setting; each film is set in a different world, and Anderson makes sure to show to viewer every inch of it. We see the pink mountains of Zubrowka, the expansive forests of New Penzance, the multi-storied Tenenbaum house on Archer Avenue; the setting is so vital to the film that it comes close to being a character itself. These places are so believable, while at the same time being ever so slightly off, that one feels as if the worlds of Anderson’s films are just like ours, except that there, the whimsical and improbable can and will happen. The faux historical aspects of these places help us believe in the worlds just as we suspend our disbelief over what happens in them.

I will quickly mention (as I am running out of room) the meta-fictive aspect of many of Anderson’s films: often there is a narrator, a play within the film, or a sectioning of the film into parts or chapters. We are reminded, in watching them, of our favorite books, the ones we read over and over as children until the pages were stained with thumbprints and the corners had been torn.

 

As I’ve reached my 1500 word limit, I must present to you my ranking of Anderson’s films, and leave the discussion of music in his film for another time. Here it is, then, a list of Anderson’s films in order from “Must Be Watched” to “See it if You’re a Fan”:

1. The Royal Tenenbaums

2. Moonrise Kingdom

3. The Grand Budapest Hotel

4. Fantastic Mr. Fox

5. The Darjeeling Limited

6. Rushmore

7. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

***

“For my dearest darling, treasured, cherished [Wes], whom I worship. With respect, adoration, admiration, kisses, gratitude, best wishes, and love from [M] to [W].”

Zero’s letter, slightly changed, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)