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rfmcdonaldI watched my first Wes Anderson movie in July of 2002 with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vcutag, The Royal Tenenbaums. I rather liked that film, with its quirky story of a troubled family of burned-out child geniuses who burned out early brought together by a manipulative displaced paterfamilias. That film had a unique style, with emotionally deadened protagonists interacting confusedly to produce a worried, alienated, intellectual-minded hilarity visible only to the audience. One wouldn't be too badly wrong if one thought of it as intelligent sitcom humour without the laugh track. Having caught The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou Saturday evening at the Market Square Rainbow Theatre, I can say for a fact that this is Anderson's unique style. I can also say for a fact that The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou is a good film.
Zissou, played by Bill Murray, is a declining Cousteau-type figure. Once rich and famous for his films of adventures in the exploration of the aquatic world, he's now an increasingly impoverished joke. The death of his close friend and colleague, Esteban, in an attack by the mysterious jaguar shark pushes him to go on a quixotic hunt on his converted Second World War minesweeper (the Belafonte) after the creature. This film prominently features Angelica Huston and Owen Wilson, who also appeared in The Royal Tenenbaums, the former as his estranged rich wife Eleanor, the latter as Ned Plimpton, an endearingly hopeful Air Kentucky pilot who believes he may be Zissou's son. Cate Blanchett plays a pregnant and emotionally conflicted reporter seen by Zissou as, alternatively, a source of desperately needed publicity and a poisonous critic. Jeff Goldblum's debonair and successful Alistair Hennessey, a rival of Zissou in romance and in marine exploration, lurks in the background.
Anderson's humour has a dark tone to it, with death and terror (the protracted death of Ned's mother, the attacks of pirates, Zissou's griefs) featuring prominently in the plot. It is a bit of an alienating film, and frankly, I don't think that most people would qualify it as a date film. Even so, it's a worthwhile film, worthy for the strength of its actors and the intensity of its plot and the sly documentary-style cinematography. (The soundtrack, too, with its Portuguese-language covers of 1970s David Bowie hits by Seu Jorge (also an actor in the film), is also rather nice.)
vcutag, The Royal Tenenbaums. I rather liked that film, with its quirky story of a troubled family of burned-out child geniuses who burned out early brought together by a manipulative displaced paterfamilias. That film had a unique style, with emotionally deadened protagonists interacting confusedly to produce a worried, alienated, intellectual-minded hilarity visible only to the audience. One wouldn't be too badly wrong if one thought of it as intelligent sitcom humour without the laugh track. Having caught The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou Saturday evening at the Market Square Rainbow Theatre, I can say for a fact that this is Anderson's unique style. I can also say for a fact that The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou is a good film.Zissou, played by Bill Murray, is a declining Cousteau-type figure. Once rich and famous for his films of adventures in the exploration of the aquatic world, he's now an increasingly impoverished joke. The death of his close friend and colleague, Esteban, in an attack by the mysterious jaguar shark pushes him to go on a quixotic hunt on his converted Second World War minesweeper (the Belafonte) after the creature. This film prominently features Angelica Huston and Owen Wilson, who also appeared in The Royal Tenenbaums, the former as his estranged rich wife Eleanor, the latter as Ned Plimpton, an endearingly hopeful Air Kentucky pilot who believes he may be Zissou's son. Cate Blanchett plays a pregnant and emotionally conflicted reporter seen by Zissou as, alternatively, a source of desperately needed publicity and a poisonous critic. Jeff Goldblum's debonair and successful Alistair Hennessey, a rival of Zissou in romance and in marine exploration, lurks in the background.
Anderson's humour has a dark tone to it, with death and terror (the protracted death of Ned's mother, the attacks of pirates, Zissou's griefs) featuring prominently in the plot. It is a bit of an alienating film, and frankly, I don't think that most people would qualify it as a date film. Even so, it's a worthwhile film, worthy for the strength of its actors and the intensity of its plot and the sly documentary-style cinematography. (The soundtrack, too, with its Portuguese-language covers of 1970s David Bowie hits by Seu Jorge (also an actor in the film), is also rather nice.)
