Wes Anderson Overview

Consistently derided as quirky, Wes Anderson's career as a filmmaker has been enviable, lucky, charming and always evolving. What began with the simple, misshapen (but elegant) not-quite-caper film BOTTLE ROCKET, with its focus on friendships not crime, continues to grow and... [more]

Consistently derided as quirky, Wes Anderson's career as a filmmaker has been enviable, lucky, charming and always evolving. What began with the simple, misshapen (but elegant) not-quite-caper film BOTTLE ROCKET, with its focus on friendships not crime, continues to grow and to dream big and to encompass as much as disclose a whole new world of cinema in THE DARJEELING LIMITED. His films are geometrically planned, a series of angles on action and jokes, boundless in spirit and (surprising though it may sound) each film is, in fact, eager to go out and run in the world. His second film, RUSHMORE, established his name with its repurposing of THE GRADUATE's malaise into a real adolescent after real goals, with very unreal dreams and aspirations. Its modesty was praised. His third film, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, took a literary conceit and made it into a storybook film complete with living pop-up cut-away one-liners. Its maturity was praised. His fourth film, THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, made good on all of it by blending all kinds of fictive and imaginative elements with Anderson's keen ear for dialogue rhythms and genuine sadness. The film was panned as kitsch for kitsch's sake. However, THE LIFE AQUATIC has begun its resurgent positioning as, perhaps, Anderson's "great film" now that the hype and hub-bub have subsided. Now it's being seen less as a rich kid's playhouse than a smart guy's adventure through a liquid world where resolutions never settle, only drift away, punctuated by a joke (or a Bowie song). Or so we hope. [show less]