Wes Anderson must love TV dinners. Mainly the compartments, the way they keep the corn away from the chicken sticks, the apple cobbler away from the mashed potatoes with that single patty of unmelted butter.
Like those little dinners, his films are compartmentalized, like dioramas at a history museum. Pause one of his pictures and see for yourself: The characters freeze but their stories continue through their faces and their relation to the setting. The camera is the window looking into an elaborate world of sets and props. Each sequence is subdivided into cutaways to detailed compartments of story. And each frame reinforces the film’s overall tone. He’s one of the most visual directors to get behind a camera. Actually, he’s not a director; he’s an artist.
Across five wonderful pictures — Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited — Anderson has become one of the most important American directors making films. His works (he writes, directs and produces) are full of dysfunction, ’70s music, elaborate sets and locations, and comedy so quirky it turns the stomach of viewers expecting Ben Stiller/Adam Sandler laughs.
His newest film — The Darjeeling Limited, about three brothers reuniting during the exploration of India via railroad — doesn’t have so many cutaways or tangential vignettes, but the compartments are there as actual compartments on a train, the Darjeeling Limited. The picture will not be his most popular film, but it will be his most important simply because it shows his continued growth as an auteur, a word and theory he may have sparked back to life.
To celebrate his work, here are some images from his films. I’m including these frames and photos because I like them, but any image from any of his movies could have worked. They’re that unique, each and every one of them.
— Michael Clawson
(This piece originally ran Oct. 9, 2007, in Volume in the West Valley View.)
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