Saturday, December 8, 2007
I keep meaning to go see Beowulf in 3-D over in Georgetown, but no one ever wants to go with me. I kind of had my girlfriend agreeing to see it on Saturday, but we got caught up helping with the Christmas decorations and before you knew it, it was too late to go.
I scanned the paper for another movie, and was a little surprised to see that The Darjeeling Limited was still playing up the street. It came out a while ago, and wasn't exactly a blockbuster hit.
I had not bothered to see it, mainly because of how much I didn't like The Life Aquatic. Wes Anderson has a distinct and amusing style, but to a fault. As much as I loved Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, it was becoming clear that he was just making the same movie over and over again. The Life Aquatic seemed almost like a parody of his style, with the goofy characters and story even more over-exaggerated than usual, and then randomly having a character die in the middle of all the goofiness to let you know that it's, like, serious, man. Oh and then a guy sings David Bowie songs in French for no fucking reason. OMG it's sooooo quirky!
It was so disappointing that I actually went back and saw it again, figuring that there must have been something wrong with me and not the movie. The 2nd viewing just confirmed my initial reaction.
Any shit, this was all just a long preamble to get to the part where I am happy to say that I liked The Darjeeling Limited. It's not one of Anderson's best, and it is basically the same movie he's already made 4 other times, but it's a satisfying experience. Maybe it's just a cover song, but it's a good rendition.
Like Aquatic, this one is more colorful and energetic than his earlier movies, but here he keeps the zaniness modulated to a perfect, non-distracting level. And unlike Aquatic, most of the humor actually seems to derive from the personalities of the characters instead of just being a bunch of arbitrary lunacy. Darjeeling stays mainly focused on its three leads, and knows that it can rely on their interactions to create most of the entertainment and drama.
Before, I complained about the way that Aquatic randomly killed off a character just so there would be some drama. For a minute, it seems like something similar is happening in Darjeeling and I was growing disappointed in how the movie seemed to be creating false drama and expecting me to be moved. Then, however, the movie flashes back a year earlier to the funeral of the main characters' father, and you realize how this is stirring up all sorts of confused emotions and memories with the characters. And then it really does become a little moving.
Hopefully, this means that Anderson has regained his footing. At the very least, Darjeeling is a step in the right direction. Unlike this time, I will actually be looking forward to his next movie.
10 comments:
You know what's weird? I kinda liked RUSHMORE, but was indifferent to ROYAL TENNENBAUMS (which at the time sounded to me like Anderson screeching the word "QUIRK!!" into a loudspeaker over and over). I also found both DARJEEING and MR FOX to be cloying and too convinced of their own preciousness. But weirdly, I loved LIFE AQUATIC. I think I'm the only one ever who did.
I think a large part of my enjoyment of the movie comes from my belief that the story is coming from the head of Murray's needy, egomaniacal Zissou character. The plot is over-the-top becaue he needs his life to have this kind of ovewrought melodrama -- its how he needs to see himself to feel any sense of personal worth. So I don't consider the story to have happened in a literal sense; its more like Zissou's way of imagining himself back to relevance (possibly, there are real events going on which are being wildly interpreted by Zissou into what we end up seeing). That's why the film seems so much more crazy and surreal than Anderson's other films, I think. Or, maybe they just went too far and I'm giving them too much credit by overanalyzing. One or the other.
I also went into the film a fan of Brazilian singer Seu Jorge (who sings the Bowie songs in Portugeuse) so I actually liked his work better than most of Anderson's indie soundtracks (also, a great use of the Stooges "Search and Destroy"). And I love Bud Cort, who rarely gets any work and seldom any as funny as his weird banker character therein.
As for DARJEELING, I just felt like the brothers' issues and dynamics felt a little concoted and disingenuous. It does have its charms, though, especially a small role for the great Irrfan Khan.
See, you're the second fan of LIFE AQUATIC I know with an interesting justification of the film's flamboyance. My friend Patrick had devised an argument based around the fact that he saw Zissou as some sort of child-like figure, and that the movie was accurate to a child's view of the world, what with bright colors and loud noises, etc etc.
I don't really buy it, I don't think the movie ever indicates at any point that what we're seeing is Zissou's subjective experience (except maybe that part where the pirates hold them captive and he breaks free and fights everyone), and it seems like we see moments outside of him that he would have no knowledge of. But I would be happy if someone could point to a scene or moment or shot that proves otherwise.
My suspicion is that Anderson and Baumbach were going for cartoonish, madcap antics juxtaposed against more realistic melancholy, but just didn't pull it off and the result was awkward. I don't see it as a deliberate attempt to get into Zissou's head.
But, again, prove me wrong.
Oh also, do you have a blog? If you don't, you should. You're a much better writer than I am and I'd love to respond to one of YOUR ideas some time.
Yeah, I think your friend's comparison of Zissou to a child is pretty much the same direction I'm going in. He's sort of a Spike Jonze Wild Thing in that he's this fragile, needy guy constantly in need of affirmation who unfortunately has adult powers and responsibilities which are just foreign to his nature. He needs his life to be painted with these broad, melodramatic strokes of adventure and romance, similar, as your friend points out, to a child's story.
There's a couple clues (I think) that the story is meant to be subjective. For one, I think it relevant that the film has the awkward "with Steve Zissou" subtitle (like his documentaries in the film do), both highlighting that character and perhaps even suggesting that what we're watching may be his new film.
For another, there's some suggestion in the film that his other documentaries may not have been entirely factual -- so much so that no one really even believes his partner has died on the new one. So Zissou is already identified as an unreliable source, and we can see that he has this great need to shape reality into a kind of fictional narrative that suits his sense of self.
Third, while it is weird that a story from Zissou's perspective would have sections he's not a part of, they're few and far between (in fact, Murray is on-screen nearly the entire movie) the rare times when he's not, the characters are still mostly reacting to him, and, as many critics point out, the other characters all have oddly nebulous personalities which never quite let us understand them. I think Zissou is egomaniacal enough to imagine other people are thinking about him as much as he is, and I also think Zissou the filmmaker has a need to find/create narrative, even if his understanding of humans isn't good enough to really communicate to us exactly what's happening (for instance, between Cate Blanchett and Owen Wilson) or find actual meaning in it.
Finally, I think the best argument for interpreting the thing as less than a literal narrative is the animation by Henry Selick, which is surreal enough to suggest that all is not quite what it seems. The fact that he's a documentary maker who encounters nothing objectively "real" under water speaks a great deal to the way the film considers the way we build unique, separate realities.
Anyway, there's no question that they're in this hyperstylized world which leans precariously towards artifice; the only question is whether it belongs to Anderson or Zissou. Lots of critics picked up on the film's weird cadence (New Yorker reviewer Anthony Lane puts it with his usual eloquence: "You sense that some stretches of action in “The Life Aquatic” are being lightly held within quotation marks") but dismissed it as part of Anderson's Indy Hipster milieu. To me, though, there's an extravagance to the artifice on display here which is absent from his other films, and yet suits Zissou's character so well one if forced to either conclude Anderson and Co indulged in a rather shamefully transparent and clumsy wish fulfillment for their character, or, perhaps, they're not the ones directly telling the story.
In all fairness, if it is Zissou, I can't tell you exactly what literally is happening. Is it all in his head? Is it his interpretation of real events? Is this his film, a world he really can control? Or is it just the story merely a reflection of Zissou's character? If there's information in there that would give a specific answer, I missed it. But I tend to think identifying specifically where the narrative is generated is less important than understanding that its completely dependent on the character of Zissou and his need to cultivate his own comfortable world (in that regard, its very much like one of my favorite films, CONFESSIONS OF DANGEROUS MIND).
So, um. Sorry about the novel. I don't think the movie is a classic or anything but I do think its an interesting one. Its one of those rare cases where your interpretation of what it's going for is going to hugely impact what you see as strengths and weaknesses. Like, if you consider TRANSFORMERS to be an action movie, its a wretched failure. But if you consider it an intentional slap across the face of all that is good and decent in the world, its a stunning success.
Anyway, my point is don't drink a bottle of red wine on Friday night or you'll wake up Saturday morning with a long babbling defense of an old Wes Anderson movie, is what I'm saying.
Joseph, thank you for the thoughtful reply. I can see where you're coming from, but I still don't buy it. If it's all Zissou's fantasy, then why is he such a mopey asshole in it? Why would everyone else recognize what a mopey asshole he is and hate him? The whole story is about him getting taken down a peg or two and eventually learning from his mistakes and trying to reconnect with his friends and family, finding some sort of redemption, etc... I mean, if his head is supposed to be up his own ass for the entire movie then you'd think he'd be a BIGGER asshole by the end, one who doesn't even realize he NEEDS redemption.
And, you know, at the end when he presumably becomes a better person, the story is still told in the same over-the-top manner, what with the beautiful jaguar shark and everything.
Again, I just think that Anderson was trying to be more visually ambition and whatnot with the film and it didn't really pan out. I think DARJEELING and FOX struck a much better balance of pairing quirky comedy, ambitious visuals and heart-on-his-sleeve sentiment.
I guess my answer to that is that althugh Zissou is egomaniacal in the extreme, he's also deeply insecure and probably deep down even more down on himself than everyone else is. The film IS about him learning how to be less of an asshole; I just contend that the only way he can learn this lesson is through the filter of his own melodramatic, histrionic world. His self imporvement, like everything else in his life, has to be painted in these grand operatic strokes, to mix a metaphor.
On the other hand, although I see a lot of evidence for this interpretation, the fact that there's just nothing else in Anderson's filmography remotely like this in terms of metaphysical skullduggery makes me stop short of being certain this was his intention. It's quite possible Anderson just tried to surreal it up Hal Ashby style (he even got Bud Cort in there) just to be cute and otherwise made a rather dull and opaque film. Sometimes people do make unintentionally excellent films -- and I do have a tendency to overalalyze sometimes. But if you ever get roped into watching LIFE AQUATIC again, Id suggest you try and give it a shot under using the ol' metaphysical glasses. Its certainly more enjoyable that way, even if its not what Anderson thought he was doing (which to my mind, would be curiously revealing in itself).
Oh yeah, you asked if I had my own blog, sorry to say that Im too lazy. But I'm always up for a discussion on other people's playground! If you were at all interested, I'd happily submit a thought or two to this blog ever now and then and feel quite honored to do so.
Joseph,
First let me preface this by telling you that you are fucking awesome. You turned some random post I made over two years ago into one of the biggest debates on my blog. That rules.
In the spirit of friendship, let me make a concession to your point: I believe its very possible that the visual design and the tone of the film could be argued as reflecting aspects of Zissou's personality.
I would just stop well short of calling the film some sort of subjective experience through his eyes. I think looking at the film that way amounts to adding a layer of narrative that just isn't present. There are plenty of movies that DO show a subjective experience or unreliable narrator, but sometimes in analysis I think people can use it as a crutch to explain things that are inconsistent in a work they like.
I can't find the link now, but after your initial comments I read an interview with Anderson where he was talking about how he was trying to take the deadpan elements of his other films and apply them to a fantastical surrounding, as a way to make the mundane aspects even funnier. That's essentially how I read the film: there's this colorful world full of fantastic creatures all around Zissou, but he's too much of a miserable shit to notice it.
Well hell, curse you Wes Anderson for not having intentionally done the one thing I thought made your film interesting.
I still maintain the film CAN be watched that way, but you're right that there's no overt evidence to suggest that the narrative is subjective (other than its fantstical stylization and the other minor things I mentioned) and Anderson's explanation for his artistic choices definitely takes the legs out from under my theory. At least we got some good discussion out of it!
Can we at least agree that TOP GUN is actually the story of a man's struggle with his own ambiguous sexuality?
A filmmaker's opinion of their own work is always important, but I don't consider it to be the final word. Auteur theory be damned; sometimes directors don't understand their own films. Like I said before, I don't feel a strong argument can be made that the film is supposed to take place inside Zissou's mind, at least not literally. I think we'd need more of a smoking gun for that. But maybe a stronger argument could be made that the style of the film is reflective of how Zissou sees himself/the world, whether that was Anderson's intention or not.
I need to get my buddy Patrick to opine on this. He's a big fan and almost had me convinced it was a good movie (until I saw it again). I like Anderson generally, and I like things about this movie, but overall find it his least successful.
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