Miscellaneous Movie Musings: Part XLII

As the title suggests, so forth.

Why must Eon always burn the other cheek?

I was initially hostile to complaints about the new Bond film featuring ‘yet another’ scarred villain, until I realised the defence was complete nonsense. Facially scarred villains have not been nearly such a Bond staple as Eon would make out. Dr No has no hands certainly, but it is not until we meet Largo in the fourth film that we meet a character with a maimed visage. Blofeld is scarred in You Only Live Twice, but then he is not scarred in the next two movies. Hook hands, third nipples, megalomania, all these are present and correct, but scarred villains really cease to be a thing with Bond … until Goldeneye. And thereafter the quotient of scarred villains gets completely out of control: Sean Bean, Robert Carlyle, Rick Yune, Mads Mikkelsen, Javier Bardem, Christoph Waltz, Rami Malek. It seems almost as if the new generation at Eon was so worried about living up to the legacy that they became fixated on one element of the past and magnified it out of all proportion as some way of proving their rights to the property.

Wes Anderson, you are locked in a prison of your own devise

It was dispiriting but unsurprising to read an interview with Robert Yeoman in which he talked about how a warehouse had to be used to shoot both The Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dispatch because Wes Anderson’s camera movements had become so outre that real locations could no longer accommodate them. For years Paul Fennessy and I have had a flight of fancy which finds Wes and Jason Schwartzman or Roman Coppola or Owen Wilson seated at a diner in Austin; furiously scribbling dialogue and scene ideas in yellow legal pads, and beaming at each other happily, until a shadow crosses Wes’ face, and he asks in horror and disappointment, “But wait, can we do that as a tracking shot or a series of whip-pans?” Because if not, well, there’s no place for it in the cathedral of conventions that Wes Anderson has imprisoned himself within. Now it seems the reality of physical space itself has to be shot down in order to shoot the Wes Anderson way. I think this may be why since The Darjeeling Limited I have responded more positively to his animations (Fantastic Mr Fox, Isle of Dogs) than to his live-action efforts (Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The French Dispatch). The necessity for artificiality to achieve the necessary artificial camera moves grates less when all concerned are made of felt. In his own demented way you could say the presence of live human beings not to mention the built human environment is now getting in the way of the Wes Anderson aesthetic.

Miscellaneous Movie Musings: Part XXVIII

As the title suggests, so forth.

Alas, Max Von Sydow

Another great has left the stage. 13 years younger than Kirk Douglas, Von Sydow was still working in high-profile productions. Indeed he worked for so many decades that one could say there are multiple Von Sydow personae. There is the Bergman art-house God that my mother remembered from The Virgin Spring, beating himself with sticks to build himself up for his vengeful rampage. There is the priest from The Exorcist and assassin from Three Days of the Condor which properly established him with American audiences after his underwhelming Hollywood debut The Greatest Story Ever Told. Then there was the first von Sydow I encountered, unrecognisable as Ming the Merciless in the gloriously silly Flash Gordon. He was already very old when I came across him as another villain, this time in Minority Report. And then I started coming across him in the art house as a tremendous supporting player in Intacto and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It is astonishing to think that while Kirk Douglas thru ill health and bad luck had his last important roles in the early 1980s Von Sydow was still working in his 90s and goes out with cameos in The Force Awakens and his role as the Three-Eyed Raven in Game of Thrones as recent reminders of his potency.

The Desplat Factor

I have, of late, been trying to distil down the elements needed to reproduce the essential Wes-ness of a Wes Anderson film. Some are practical for guerrilla film-makers, others less so. Colour coded costumes, hand-crafted sets of increasingly outrageous artificiality, whip-pans, tracking shots, overhead shots, especially of handwritten notes, and the laying out inventories, droll narration … Bill Murray. And, one might add, a score by Alexandre Desplat. Which itself may or may not be connected to the increasingly outrageous artificiality of Wes Anderson’s cinemascapes. Certainly I still regard The Darjeeling Limited as the highpoint of his work, and it was after that film, which used pre-existing music, that he replaced Mark Mothersbaugh, the composer for his first four films, with Desplat for his next four films. I rather liked Desplat’s largely percussive score for Isle of Dogs, but was not particularly taken at the time by either his Moonrise Kingdom or The Grand Budapest Hotel work. Although the latter is growing on me as I soak it in. I think my objections circle a certain childishness at the core of the Desplat/Anderson enterprise. The score for Fantastic Mr Fox had a childlike quality, which was entirely appropriate to the material. But The Grand Budapest Hotel, a film I thought soured in dialogue and action by an unexpectedly mean spirit, seemed to be given the same treatment. And in both cases they shared their approach with Moonrise Kingdom where, in thrall to the featured music of Benjamin Britten (especially his Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra) Mr Desplat’s orchestration was explained in ‘The Heroic Weather-Conditions of the Universe Part 7’. Ralph Vaughan Williams held that a composer lacking confidence in their themes could be depended upon to orchestrate all hell out of them. Desplat’s work for Anderson though is a horse of a different colour. The orchestration is sparse but determinedly eccentric, with featured unusual instrument after featured unusual instrument [“Not to speak of the glockenspiel” “The glockenspiel?” “I asked you not to speak of it”]. And this complicated curating of harps, flutes, piccolos, pizzicato strings, electric guitars, ukuleles, classical guitars, dangling blocks, sixteen bass baritone singers, balalaikas, celestes, banjos, tubular bells, cymbals, timpani, vibraphones, xylophones, triangles, clarinets, French horns, tenor saxophones, trombones, tubas, trumpets, organs, snare drums, bassoons, pianos, and, yes, glockenspiels, is far more important than his simple melodies: timbres are more important than themes. In a sense that’s a musical reflection by Desplat of style being more important to Anderson than substance. Has Anderson fallen into the same trap of Tarantino, of losing touch with basic reality and human emotions in favour of constructing his own Neverland ranch? We shall see later this year…

No Time to Die Edit

Now that the release of No Time to Die has been pushed to November it might be an idea for Cary Fukunaga to go back into the editing suite and make some cuts. The already ramping up publicity push had unwisely seen Lashana Lynch brag about how 007 got put in his place for sexual harassment in this movie. Coming just weeks after Birds of Prey bombed after a publicity campaign that couldn’t stop talking about everyday sexism, male gaze, and misogyny, you have to ask the question staff most feared hearing from President Obama – ‘Who thought this was a good idea?’ The trailer had already seen my tepid interest evaporate. Craig looks as past it physically as Roger Moore in A View to a Kill, but without even the lingering interest in the role. The moment where the security guard has no idea who Bond is clearly is meant to be hilarious and subversive, and yet it makes no sense; MI6 would remember. Think of the scene at the start of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation where a similar character realises who Ethan Hunt is, “I’ve heard the stories. They can’t all be true…” Lashana Lynch’s dialogue and smirks in the trailer quickly pegged her character as insufferable and, once again, made you yearn for any Craig-era Bond girl to measure up to Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd. But the idea that No Time to Die will see Bond, and by implication the audience, receiving an endless series of lectures makes one think again on the reasons for delaying it. Quite simply, this film cannot fail or it sinks MGM. But… even if everyone is primed to go back into packed cinemas in November, will anybody bother if the cast and crew of the film keep telling them it’s not a rollicking adventure but a vitally necessary lecture on their implicit biases? The evidence of Birds of Prey, Charlie’s Angels, Terminator: Dark Fate, and Ghostbusters (2016) suggests not. Films that wish to lecture a pre-existing audience must reckon with that audience not showing up, and the supposedly untapped new audience of people on Twitter that like and retweet that pre-existing audience getting owned will also not show up, they never do. Which means of course that no one shows up. And then goodbye MGM. Time to edit?

From the Archives: The Darjeeling Limited

From the pre-Talking Movies archives.

Three estranged brothers travel thru India on a spiritual journey, a year after their father’s death. But it quickly becomes less conciliatory than hoped for.

This is a Wes Anderson movie for people who hate Wes Anderson movies. The trademark whip-pans are present and correct but here the story doesn’t feel constrained by them. The tracking shots between rooms through walls that blighted The Life Aquatic by sheer overuse are quite charming here. Hell, even Bill Murray, who runs for and misses the titular train in the hilarious opening sequence, uses more facial expressions in his cameo than in the entirety of The Life Aquatic. It is a truly wonderful moment when we go into slow-motion as Murray hopelessly sprints for the train and a very distinctive nose emerges beside him as Adrien Brody overtakes him, catching the train at the last possible second. Watching the impossibly gangly Brody run in slow-motion is almost reason enough to see this film.

Brody steals the acting honours, as you might expect. As Peter, a man unsure if he’s really ready to have a child (because of his own troubled upbringing), haunted by the death of his father a year previous, and extremely wary of his older brother, he is nuanced and engaging. Surprisingly Owen Wilson (swathed in bandages throughout) is close behind him as the domineering older brother Francis, whose attempts at reconciliation on this spiritual pilgrimage are thwarted by his own controlling personality which has made detailed itineraries for them all. Jason Schwartzman is in the film. Why? He and his cousin co-wrote it. As the youngest brother, the failed author Jack, he is the weak link of the film but not even his blankness can detract from The Darjeeling Limited’s truly magical quirkiness.

The spiritual journey thru India inevitably goes wrong and, amidst much sibling bickering, the trio are thrown off the train. Anderson at this point casts in the stuff of real drama to the mix, with a revealing extended flashback to the funeral of the brothers’ father a year earlier, and the result is surprisingly affecting. Anjelica Huston’s subsequent cameo as their mother is quite magnificently fitting and leads to an enigmatic tracking shot of imaginary connections between characters in the film that is wonderfully sweet and sums up the charm of the whole enterprise as the brothers do finally arrive at a sort of spiritual epiphany and reconciliation with each other as a result of all their mishaps. It’s a pity Anderson prefaces this film with his execrable short Hotel Chevalier, which will be screened before this in all cinemas. You do not need to see it to enjoy The Darjeeling Limited. It is a cheap exploitation flick whose sole purpose is to showcase Natalie Portman’s first and last nude scene as she was horrified to find that for months the only part of the short film that was leaked onto the internet was her nude scenes. The Darjeeling Limited itself is endearing and substantial, get a ticket.

3/5

Wes Anderson @ the Lighthouse

Wes Anderson has a new movie arriving soon, so the Lighthouse will spend the month of March presenting a full retrospective, finishing with a massive Wes Anderson party on opening night of Isle of Dogs on 30^th March.

Tickets : https://lighthousecinema.ie/EVENTS/fantastic-mr-anderson

Bottle Rocket

March 5^th 3pm & 8.45pm

Based on his short black & white film of the same name, Bottle Rocket was the world’s first introduction to the colourful world of Wes Anderson and his frequent collaborators the Brothers Wilson. Bottle Rocket is a crime caper and a road movie about three friends who embark on a (mis)adventure in the world of crime, with James Caan playing what we would now recognise as the Bill Murray role.

 

Rushmore

March 9^th 10.45pm

March 10^th 3pm

The film that got Wes Anderson noticed internationally, Rushmore follows Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), a student obsessed with his school, Rushmore Academy, but less for its academia than for extracurricular events. Rushmore features the first of many superb supporting performance for Anderson from Bill Murray. Here he is a wealthy industrialist who becomes a friend and love rival to Max for the affections of teacher Miss Cross (Olivia Williams). Anderson’s aesthetic started to develop its mature style in this icon of 90s indie cinema.

 

The Royal Tenenbaums 35mm

March 13^th 3pm & 8.30pm

March 16^th 10.45pm

March 18^th 3pm

Arguably Anderson’s masterpiece, The Royal Tenenbaums is an elegantly told story about a family of child geniuses who grow up to be, in their own ways, disappointing. It earned Anderson the first of his three Oscar nominations for best original screenplay, although more than a few reviewers thought JD Salinger’s stories of the Family Glass were an inspiration. Anderson’s trademark camerawork; all whip-pans and tracking shots; stylised production design, and autumnal colour palette do not swamp the deeply flawed characters brought to life by an ensemble cast led by a combative Gene Hackman.

 

The Darjeeling Limited 35mm

March 14^th 3pm & 8.30pm

March 17^th 3pm

Anderson made a notable comeback after The Life Aquatic‘s treading water with The Darjeeling Limited. The film follows three American brothers (Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody) as they try to reconnect with each other on an epic train journey through India. Darjeeling is a gorgeous film, making use of an extensive colour palette based on the Indian setting, and where could Anderson’s propensity for elaborate tracking shots find a better home than the carriages of a train. More impressive was the emotional maturity in tackling weighty themes of grief, abandonment, and romantic and filial resentment.

 

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou

March 21^st 3pm & 8.30pm

March 23^rd 10.45pm

4 films in and Wes Anderson experienced the cinematic equivalent of difficult 2nd album syndrome. Expectations were high for the adventures of a rag-tag bunch of seafarers led by Bill Murray. But, despite a soundtrack that uses Bowie innovatively, and some wonderful comedy from Willem Dafoe, this ramshackle Moby Dick; Zissou aims to track down and exact revenge upon a mythical shark who killed Zissou’s partner; is to Wes Anderson’s oeuvre as Dune is to David Lynch.

 

Moonrise Kingdom

March 24^th 3.30pm

March 28^th 3pm & 8.45pm

Anderson’s films have all had a certain nostalgia for a past that never actually happened outside the pages of the New Yorker. And Bob Balaban’s fantastical narrator here brings us a tale of young love set to the music of Benjamin Britten on a New England island in 1969 just before a major storm is about to hit, the least of the forces of law and order’s worries as they attempt to apprehend two runaway underage teenagers with amorous intent. Moonrise Kingdom features a wonderful turn by Ed Norton and a devastating existential riddle on the goodness of dogs.

 

The Grand Budapest Hotel: Prosecco and Patisserie

March 24^th 12.00pm event, 1pm film

Andrew Marr quoted a joke that if you put a few Viennese people together for long enough they will do two things: found a University, and start a patisserie. The Lighthouse are thus appropriately hosting a very special “prosecco and patisserie” afternoon screening of The Grand Budapest Hotel on Saturday 24th March. Your ticket will include a glass of prosecco or a Grand Budapest-themed cocktail, along with beautiful patisserie treats inspired by the film, and a ticket to a screening of The Grand Budapest Hotel at 1pm.

 

Fantastic Mr Fox

March 25^th 3pm

Behold Anderson’s first foray into the world of stop-motion animation. Based on Roald Dahl’s short novel about a fox whose main thrill in life is baiting three farmers who live nearby, Anderson injects more of himself into the story than one would have thought possible. George Clooney voices Mr Fox, who, despite his love for his wife and teenage son, can’t quite bring himself to move on from his glory days of chicken-killing and settle into domestic life. There is a tremendous tracking shot to the strains of the Beach Boys as well as a peerless critique of songwriting by Michael Gambon’s antagonist.

 

The Grand Budapest Hotel

March 29^th 3pm & 8.30pm

Anderson’s most recent film The Grand Budapest Hotel is a curio: it tells the story of an old writer remembering when he was a young writer who met an old man who told him a story about when he was a young man and knew the hero of this film, Ralph Fiennes’s M. Gustave. An uneven tale, Anderson showcases an unexpected flair for sinister suspense, but there is a sourness to the comedy that is unexpected, and not really a showcase as promised for the world of Stefan Zweig.

Wes Anderson Party + Isle of Dogs

29th March Party – 9pm, Isle of Dogs Screening – 00.00am

The Lighthouse will be hosting a Wes Anderson Fancy Dress Party on 29th March. Don’t miss your chance to share a cocktail with fellow fans and walk amongst a plethora of Tenenbaums, Zissous, Lobby Boys (and girls!), and maybe even some fantastic Mr Foxes, topped off at midnight with the first chance to see his new film, Isle of Dogs, Anderson’s second foray into stop-motion animation with an all-star voice cast on hand to bring to life a boy’s quest to find his lost dog on a polluted Japanese island.

 

***Season artwork at the Lighthouse is by Steve McCarthy is a Dublin based designer and illustrator. His style is bold, colourful, and a mix of practical and digital techniques that he describes as feeling most comfortable somewhere between the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine and Dumbo’s pink elephants. In 2016 he won best illustration at the Irish design awards, and in 2017 his second children’s book ‘A Sailor went to sea’ won the Bord Gais children’s book of the year. He also worked as a background designer for the Oscar-nominated animated feature Song of the Sea.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson’s second period film in a row is a considerable contrast to the charmingly nostalgic Moonrise Kingdom, and that’s not necessarily a good thing…

To begin at the beginning, a young woman visits the grave of a writer. Wait, no, that writer (Tom Wilkinson) before he died recorded a talk about the background of his most famous novel. Hang on, when he was a young writer (Jude Law), [now we’re getting somewhere] he stayed in the Grand Budapest Hotel. There he met ineffectual concierge M. Jean (Jason Schwartzman). Wait, no, M. Jean didn’t matter, what mattered was that the young writer met Mr Moustafa (F Murray Abraham), who told him about the glory days of the hotel in the 1930s. Back then, [finally, real progress!] Moustafa was known as Zero (Tony Revolori), and he was the lobby-boy to legendary concierge M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes). Gustave was completely devoted to rich, widowed, amorous guests such as Mademe D (Tilda Swinton, after she wrecked the picture in her attic.) So much so that when she unexpectedly died after leaving the hotel he was summoned by her staff Serge X (Mathieu Amalric) and Clotilde (Lea Seydoux), to hear her lawyer Kovacs (Jeff Goldblum) read the will – which left a priceless painting to Gustave, much to the fury of Mademe D’s son Dmitri (Adrien Brody), and as he had the scary thug Jopling (Willem Dafoe) on retainer that meant Gustave was well-advised to run for his life, despite the protestations of policeman Henckels (Edward Norton); who remembered Gustave’s abundant kindness to him as a boy. And after that, reader, things really got complicated.

Anderson’s film is bursting at the seams from sheer busyness, and the film thus lacks emotional depth even as it boasts under-used actors (Harvey Keitel, Saoirse Ronan), a deliberately unnecessary Chinese box of narratives, and a sequence in which Anderson tests how many times the same gag can be made in succession; even by Bill Murray and Bob Balaban; before an audience grows restive. His regular production designer Adam Stockhausen’s archly mannered sets are the most artificially coloured he has rendered for Anderson to date. Think about that.

Anderson showcases an unexpected flair for blackly comic suspense but there’s an odd and draining mean-spiritedness to this film’s gruesomeness. Fiennes’ dialogue makes no sense for the setting, lurching as it does from a gentlemen quoting poetry to an R-rated Oddball from Kelly’s Heroes, but it does make for some spectacular laughs. Anderson is apparently honouring the terrifyingly obscure author Stefan Zweig, and the worst thing I can say about this film is that after seeing such loving homage I have no desire to read Zweig’s work.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is an impeccably mounted film, but it unavoidably disappoints because it doesn’t come close to The Darjeeling Limited for depth or Moonrise Kingdom for whimsy.

3/5