Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I did something last week that I almost never do.
I went to the movies alone.
Henchman Mongo was off to the House of Blues to see Tenacious D and Naked Trucker and Spinal Tap, a birthday celebration for him. My girlfriend was busy with her sister who just came in from Argentina. Harry Lime was busy stealing toys from various donations boxes around the city. Dr. Hfhurrhurr had a late cranial screw-top scheduled. Robie was out of town. It just seemed like the right time to go see something, and when I realized THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS was playing right around the corner, I didn't hesitate. That was the film for me.
I took advantage of the trip to do a little pre-Christmas shopping at the Virgin Megastore before heading upstairs to the Sunset 5. The theater was remarkably busy considering it was a 9:40 show. Every seat was taken, and I only got a good spot because I got there early and read a magazine. By the time the trailers finished and the film began, the completely packed auditorium was hushed, ready, a tangible sense of expectation settling in.
I can understand why. BOTTLE ROCKET was a great little announcement, and I understood immediately why James L. Brooks and L. Kit Carson had taken such a shine to Wes Anderson and the Wilson brothers, Luke and Owen. There was a natural charm and wit to their work, a strong sense of character, and their voices were original. I found BOTTLE ROCKET very funny upon first viewing, but it's the film's heart that keeps me going back to it on DVD. The relationship between Anthony (Luke Wilson) and Inez (Lumi Cavazos of LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE fame) is so sweet, so delicate, and so definitely the point of the film that it baffles me why you would put an image of Owen and Luke with guns on the poster. People didn't really discover BOTTLE ROCKET in its initial release, and that was a shame. It got Anderson the attention of the right people, though, because it won him the right to make RUSHMORE, a film I dearly love. As a long-suffering Bill Murray fan, always sure my idol would never get the respect he deserved, RUSHMORE felt like a vindication, proof of something I'd been saying for years. Jason Schwartzman was a discovery, a great character who looms larger the longer the film has to settle in my imagination. Max Fischer is a classic character of youth in rebellion, as iconic as Dustin Hoffman in THE GRADUATE or James Dean in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. After two films like that, it's no wonder people have high hopes and expectations for this new film, and it's no wonder some people walk away disappointed. They may have formed some idea of what to expect that the film doesn't live up to, or they may have wanted something other than what was made. For whatever reason, expectations seem to have confounded some reviewers on first glance, and the early word on TENENBAUMS has been mixed.
Me? I love the film.
I think it's a beautiful portrait of a family. No more, no less. It's not a film that reaches for some greater cross-cultural meaning. It's not a comedy. It's not easily summed up or defined. It is simply a series of sketches meant to capture something of the intangible madness of being a Tenenbaum.
So why this particular family? What makes them so interesting, or so worthy of discussion? Why would someone write a stylized fable about them, the kind that would live between the covers of the book we see at the very start of the film? The entire picture is narrated, read to us in the soothing tones of Alec Baldwin, ideal for this sort of assignment. This storybook tale of a family of geniuses, frustrated and interrupted by the details of their own lives, plays out with an even greater sense of heightened mise en scene than either of Anderson's previous films, and I felt that it worked. It transported me, took me to a particular version of New York, filtered through the worldview of these troubled, turbulent offspring of the one and only Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman). Director of photography Robert Yeoman and production designer David Wasco have both been with Anderson from the start, and the work the three of them do togther is quite lovely, quite striking. Every inch of the frame is working together to tell the story in ROYAL TENENBAUMS. Things on shelves. Pictures on walls. The way people's clothes fit them. The debris of everyday life that is stacked up around the edges of things. It all works together to create a pervasive and persuasive reality. Wasco seems to be a real secret weapon for filmmakers. His work on this and JACKIE BROWN and the underrated TOUCH and PULP FICTION and KILLING ZOE is exemplary and deserves to make him as valuable a commodity as Anderson is.
The cast here is worthy of praise across the board, all of them doing such a wonderful job of bringing to life the quirky creations of the script, written (as always) by Wes and Owen. I wish the IMDb had the listings for the young actors who play the Tenenbaums as children, since they do such an amazing job of setting the right mood for the movie in the extending opening introductory sequence. The official site doesn't list them either, a real shame. By the time Gwenyth Paltrow shows up as Margot, Luke Wilson shows up as Richie, and Ben Stiller shows up as Chas, we already know these characters. We know what to expect from them, and the joy of the movie is watching how those expectations are both met and confounded by this family. Gene Hackman's Royal is a great creation, full of piss and vinegar in the best way, a man who doesn't mind being a sonofabitch as long as no one thinks he's an asshole, and who understands the fine distinction. Almost as enjoyable is the work done by Anjelica Huston as his long-suffering wife Etheline. Her courtship with Henry Sherman (Danny Glover, light and funny and just right) is played with a very sweet grace, and we can see what it is that would draw someone to this woman, just as we can see how hard she's worked to maintain some sanity while riding herd over as complicated a bunch of kids as can be imagined.
Luke Wilson gets stuck in crap like BLUE STREAK and LEGALLY BLONDE too often. He's a better actor than that. He and Cameron Diaz almost manage to turn CHARLIE'S ANGELS into a genuinely effective romantic comedy during their charming screentime together. Seeing his work here as Richie Tenenbaum gives me faith that he will get his turn doing great work, that he will not be overlooked. He is a visual punchline (as is everyone at first glance), always clad in his tennis gear and these huge sunglasses that hide his eyes. It's not until late in the film when he is shorn of his beard and his long hair and his sunglasses and his headband that we get a good long look into his eyes, and when we do, we see a lifetime of pain and confusion there. His work is affecting and memorable, and he deserves to be rewarded for it with better offers and better opportunities. Gwenyth Paltrow reminds us here of why she is one of the most important actors in her age group. Since her debut in FLESH & BONE, she's managed to find a strange combination of vulnerability and ice in her best roles, and Margot gives her room to play. There are a number of questions that the film leaves unanswered about her by film's end, and that is a genuine weakness of the script, but the work she does suggests deep secrets, real mystery. She makes up for what isn't there, and she almost manages to make us forget that she's underwritten. Ben Stiller's role appears underwritten until late in the film, when one single line of dialogue manages to fill in everything we need to know about why he is and what he does. It's heartbreaking, and I was pleased to see Stiller do such good work. He's in perpetual danger of being overexposed and overworked and becoming a parody of himself, but then he turns around and does something like this, something that makes me respect him and his obvious talents all over again.
There's a lot of little pleasures along the way as the film almost casually plays out. There's no great sense of urgency to things. This isn't really what I would call a propulsive narrative. Instead, it's more like a number of still lifes, all laid on top of each other and thumbed through like a flip book cartoon. Kumar Pallana as Pagoda and Bill Murray as Raleigh St. Clair both have moments where they are allowed to shine. Grant Rosenmeyer and Jonah Meyerson make me smile in every scene they have with Hackman as Ari and Uzi, the sons of Stiller's Chas. The use of music by Anderson, working once again with Mark Mothersbaugh for score and Randall Poster, a brilliant music supervisor, is once again impeccable, managing to evoke real emotional connections for me with every single cue.
And in the end, if I love RUSHMORE a little bit more, where's the harm in that? Anderson, like the Coen Bros., seems to be creating his own genre, a corner of the filmmaking world where his creations simple are, free of the typical sort of hype and nonsense that goes with a commercial career. If Anderson can keep turning out one of his burnished little gems every few years, I certainly won't complain at all, and I would welcome each fresh opportunity to see what he's been up to.
Anderson and Wilson seem to be not only paying homage to the work of J.D. Salinger, but also to the very idea of what it is that defines family here. There are any number of extraneous characters who show up in this film that aren't actually Tenenbaums, but there's no doubt that they are part of the family, part of the forces at work in each member of the family, and it's remarkable how well Anderson is able to paint the connections that keep each of these people in orbit around one another. If anything moved me, it was the palpable sense that these people are bound together, really connected.
And as I sat in that theater last week, alone in the dark, I couldn't help but think about my own family, both real and extended. And as this holiday season continues to afford me little time to actually speak to each and every person I should, let me take this space here to say how proud and happy I am to know each and every one of you, and to have you in my life. I might have been alone at the movie, but I am far from alone in the world. Los Angeles, Austin, and Tampa all feel like home to me now, and that's because I am blessed by friendship, blessed by the family that I have chosen as much as by the family that I've been given. I wish peace and joy to Junior Mintz, Lynn Bracken, Mysterio, Tom Joad, Annette Kellerman, Quint, Robogeek, El Cosmico, Den Shewman, Nick Nunziata, Garth Franklin, Dr. Hfurrhurr, James Whale and his own lovely Bride, Smilin' Jack Ruby, John Robie and Gregor Samsa, Hercules the Strong and YT. Knowles... Harry Lime... Henchman Mongo... you guys go without saying. You're my brothers. There's Sean and Aaron and Brant and Mitch and all the great people who work with them and for them. This year, there's been Leon and Larry, and who knows who next year will bring? I am blessed with a beautiful girlfriend, who brings with her an entirely new group of friends who have welcomed me with open arms. And on the other side of the country, my parents and my sister and my nephew all welcome the New Year together. And if I didn't mention you here, it's not because you aren't part of my life, part of the bizarre set of circumstances that keep life at the Labs so interesting. It just means that I'm very lucky. Anyone who is so overloaded with friends that he forgets a few when naming them is blessed indeed.
Check out THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS as it finally opens wide across the country today. Take someone close to you or go alone. Either way, open yourself up to it, and you'll be rewarded with one of the most original pleasures of the year.
"Moriarty" out.
