By Bob Clark
Of the scant collection of American indie filmmakers to rise in the mid-to-late 90’s and remain active into the next decade or more, Wes Anderson probably ranks as one of the most influential of cinematic voices, and in a way that in many ways reaches far beyond the realm of mere moviemaking. Since his 1996 debut Bottle Rocket, he’s steadily developed his own particular and immediately identifiable set of creative mannerisms, juggling both the visual aesthetics of the medium and all manner of idiosyncratic narrative and music choices that make his directorial voice both uniquely his and at the same time easily to imitate, if not quite outright copy. Channel surf for a long enough time on American television and you’re bound to find at least half a dozen commercials airing that take their cues from his particular brand of hipster-chic vision– carefully composed shots of bright primaries and long tableaux, unusual characters and situations that comment on their theatricality, and retro song cues just obscure enough to make you feel cool for recognizing them, if only in the broad strokes. Anderson has directed his fair share of these commercials himself, but even beyond his hand you can see advertisers flocking to pattern their campaigns after his distinctive blend of filmmaking, caught somewhere between the French New Wave and Charles Schultz.
In the same way it’s easy to see his influence over the better part of a new generation of filmmakers working a particular kind of indie/studio character pieces straining to make quirky-character pieces just marketable enough for mainstream art-house audiences, but devoid of anything in the way of actual substance– more commercialized than actual commercials themselves, somehow. For all the waves of imitators, however, Anderson’s been able to keep practicing his style in a way that’s genuine, even for the ways in which it’s become all too easy to commodify, and over the years he’s been able to better hone his craft and up his scale in each succeeding project. Depending on how much of that heavily controlled voice you can stand, he may have reached his zenith or passed it on any number of his more recent films– The Royal Tenenbaums is probably where his branded style reached the mainstream to audiences and marketing teams alike, and since then critics have probably complained the least about Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom, where the medium of animation and subsequently the cast of children help cushion the sometimes suffocating artificiality of his diorama-filmmaking. If you wanted to look at his style, though, and try to decode why it is the way it is and where it comes from, you could do a lot worse than watching the sophomore effort of Rushmore again, and not bother to read between the lines.
The story’s a likable piece of coming-of-age by the numbers stuff, a mishmash of all manner of disparate pieces– Harold and Maude‘s scatterbrain romance and musical stylings without the morbidity or revolting December/January romance; J.D. Salinger’s adolescent angst and wit shaved of Catcher in the Rye‘s suicidal misanthropy or Franny & Zoey‘s inexplicable mysticism; and perhaps most oddly, all kinds of action-packed cop movies, especially those from Michael Mann, thanks to the shoutouts in casting and dialogue to Manhunter and Heat (one can almost see Anderson, with his perfectly commercial visual craft, being drafted into an awful SNL spoof version of a Miami Vice film and selling out like David Gordon Green in his wretched stoner-comedies, if not for the saving grace of Mann doing the adaptation himself). It’s an almost perfect blend of elements for what makes up a precocious American teenage boy in the waning days of the 20th century, and Jason Shwartzman captures just that type of pretentious potential as Max Fischer, a preppy from the wrong side of the tracks and the lowest-scoring overachiever in his prestigious school’s history. He’s the type of kid who puts all of his effort into every extra-curricular activity he can get his hands on– everything from beekeeping to writing and staging elaborate plays that rival Broadway scale productions– but doesn’t save anything for his actual classes.
His desperate crush on Olivia William’s comely young first grade teacher and the love-triangle it forms with the disillusioned, middle-aged businessman he befriends as played by Bill Murray form the crux of the story, but even then they’re almost secondary in importance next to the way that Fischer’s personality is put on display throughout the whole of the film. Since its debut, Rushmore has often been compared to Alexander Payne’s Election and its central character of the extra-curricular activities addict Tracy Flick, but there’s a telling difference between the ways that Anderson and Payne render their overachievers. Flick, as played by Reese Witherspoon, becomes something rather frightening as time goes on in the film, the kind of singleminded goal-oriented type-A personality who uses everyone around her to her purposes and thinks nothing of hurting or backstabbing to get ahead (and, inevitably, winds up being subject to just the same kind of backstabbing herself). There’s a lot of that in Fischer, to be sure, but there isn’t quite the same kind of absolute focus in his energies. Throughout the movie whenever any of the adults ask him what his goals are in life, he always seems to have a different answer– a double-major in mathematics and business at Oxford or La Sorbonne one minute, a diplomat or senator the next– yet he always winds up returning to the theatre, the one place where all of his different over-the-top ambitions can be written and played out exactly the way he wants.
More importantly, Anderson subtly shows how Fischer keeps building a trusted team of friends and allies wherever he goes, winning over fellow students at his collegiate prep-school or the public high he later falls into without ever making a big deal of it. He becomes a center of gravity that pulls others into his world, instead of pushing them out of it in order to demonstrate his power, like Flick. The more those around him are drawn into his influence, the more he winds up enabling them to pursue their own ambitions. Yes, there’s a wildly unrealistic zeal to most of Fischer’s antics, like the range of his club memberships, the scale of his productions or the scope of his campaign to woo his crush (yes, we’ve all run petitions to save Latin classes or tried to bankroll an aquarium for the ones we love) but that’s only fitting for the unusual combination of film, theater and comic-strips that fuels Anderson’s style throughout the film. It’s usually easiest for film critics to see the ample amounts of Truffaut and Godard in the way that Anderson tracks and shoots in long wide-angle 2.35:1 and colors his scenes in a palate of primaries borrowed from Coutard, but there’s just as much of Schultz’s Peanuts in the way that he choreographs the action and coverage of his set-pieces, playing things straight to the viewer for the most part in long stagey compositions. Schwartzman’s performance also echoes a lot of Schultz’s neurotic mannerisms– at times he seems a combination of Charlie Brown’s anxieties and Snoopy’s winning delusions of grandeur.
Of course, Anderson makes the connection plain with small details like Fischer’s barbershop father where Peanuts-special music seems to play on a loop, but for the most part it’s there in the way he plays things to the camera, standing in for the audience (most obvious during the film’s opening yearbook photo-montage). Most of the movie is composed in big stage-like circumstances throughout, both in the obvious productions that Fischer puts on and in more subtle instances like classrooms and lecture-hall speeches, giving big and small moments alike the air of a life arranged self-consciously for public drama. This would soon become the backbone of Anderson’s style as a director, taken to bigger and bigger extremes on each film, but what makes Rushmore stand out somewhat is both the fact that we can see that style really begin to develop in earnest here, and that it isn’t quite there yet. As much as he stages and shoots things as grand diorama presentations, with long-takes and carefully arranged compositions everywhere, he also relies just as heavily on more active editing and use of montage than he does in later films, and through that we have a greater variety of coverage. The stagiest stuff sticks out, but not in a way that feels unnatural to the reality of the movie– from The Royal Tenenbaums on, one gets the sense that Anderson is trying to shoot every frame like a scene from one of Max Fischer’s plays, and the results can be as trying as they are impressive.
Here, however, there’s something closer to a feeling that the world of the film doesn’t just cease to exist beyond the edges of the frame. Rushmore isn’t Wes Anderson’s best film, or his most real (that remains Bottle Rocket, though The Darjeeling Limited comes close), but at times it feels like an ideal combination of the two. All of the larger-than-life moments of manufactured reality feel as though they’re originating from some character’s hopes, dreams and motivations, rather than stemming externally from the director as they sometimes feel in succeeding films. Max is the one trying to remake reality in his vision, rather than Anderson, in Rushmore, and it winds up being one of the canniest expressions of adolescence in both angst and youthful optimism, for how active it is in trying to reshape a hostile world, the way children of all ages tend to do. “You both deserve each other”, Olivia Williams’ teacher says late in the film, at the height of a petty war of romantic rivalry being waged in her honor, “you’re both little children”. Aren’t we all?
How Rushmore made the Top 100:
Steve Mullen (Weeping Sam) No. 10
Jon Warner No. 14
J.D. France No. 24
Bob Clark No. 25
Dennis Polifroni No. 44
Tony d’Ambra No. 44
R.D. Finch No. 59
Click on names for archives
Writers/Founders
Fantastic Bob. You gave this a far more elaborate and extensive treatment than I would have given it and it’s a great read. I agree with a lot of things you said here. References of course to the French New Wave are easy, but to Peanuts….now that’s some digging and an original thought I hadn’t come up with before. I think it shouldn’t be forgotten how FUNNY this film is. I mean it is deadpan perfect in ways that only Schwartzman and Murray could pull off, carrying on the tradition of Keaton. The two of them in this film are truly epic and two sides of the same coin. Are there any more perfect voices for Anderson’s world than these two? Many people feel that Anderson’s films are twee and cutesy and rather empty. Oh how wrong they are. All of that artifice and all of that “pretentiousness” is only a way to make the melancholy that much more funny. Without the surface distractions, the films would play far darker than they are and wouldn’t be quite right. These characters are generally balancing on the edge of despair….and his films are filled with people trying to find catharsis somehow. It’s amazing that Anderson’s able to tread that line so well. I find his films to be incredibly moving and incredibly funny.
I do think though that Rushmore is his best film. Bottle Rocket is missing something, and what it’s missing is that attention to detail….the minutiae and the set design and the compositions. None of that is there in earnest. There are seeds of it but it’s not there completely. With Rushmore, the actual compositions, and sets are even funny. This is what reminds me of Tati actually.
But it’s not just Anderson’s best film….it’s also my favorite comedy of the last 15 years…..hands down. I think we will see throughout this countdown that there will be few films more recent than this one on this list is my guess.
As a final thought….I have a friend at work who is as devoted to Anderson as I am. His great claim to fame is that he saw Rushmore on opening day……twice.
Yeah, the insight on how the aesthetic dresses up the melancholia is spot on. It’s not terribly hard to see through in the films, of course– Max lives next to the cemetary where his mom is buried; suicide is a creepily prescient theme in “The Royal Tenenbaums”; death is everywhere in “Life Acquatic” and “Darjeeling Limited”… well, really in all his stuff.
Oh, and the “Peanuts” thing isn’t terribly deep, as far as digging. Anderson plays music from the christmas special in the barbershop here, and instantly recognizable Vince Girauldi in “Royal Tenenbaums”. Maybe the bit with Max and Charlie Brown both having barbers for fathers (Schultz too, I think) is stronger, but all that shows is I know too damn much about “Peanuts”.
Good call on the Tati intricacy– one wonders if that’ll be an avenue he might channel more, in the future.
No you’re right….the Peanuts thing is there, it’s just for someone like who feels like I already know everything about his films, it’s nice to appreciate something more, which you’ve done here. Yeah Anderson’s tendency to control every single thing in the frame is becoming more Tati-like over time. I thought Moonrise Kingdom was incredibly intricate and used all sorts of codes and modes of communication to tell the story.
Yeah, he uses all the intricacy in the frame well, but it doesn’t drive gags so much as it does express the feelings and themes of the story obliquely. He’s not going for the Tati motivation of Rube Goldberg clowning (a fine motivation). Most of his humor is verbal. The visuals more often than not express the melancholy, as you put it. Things are so finely detailed, the fetishistic recreation becomes poignant, and sad– wounded people creating simulacras of their own lives as they’re living them.
“All of the larger-than-life moments of manufactured reality feel as though they’re originating from some character’s hopes, dreams and motivations, rather than stemming externally from the director as they sometimes feel in succeeding films. Max is the one trying to remake reality in his vision, rather than Anderson, in Rushmore, and it winds up being one of the canniest expressions of adolescence in both angst and youthful optimism, for how active it is in trying to reshape a hostile world, the way children of all ages tend to do.”
Those lines actually sang to me. I have been championing this film as one of comedy’s high water marks from the 1990’s and alot more than part of it has to do with the extensions that Anderson chooses to make out of the world he’s creating here. Frankly, there is not another comedy like it. Rushmore floats on a cloud of fantasy but it’s precisely that fantasy that keeps it grounded and true to itself. The allusion that Bob makes to Charles Schultz and his PEANUTS is spot on and I’ve often felt the influence of those psychoanlytical comic strips on much of Anderson’s filmic canon.
The film also houses some of the very best comic performances in recent comedy history and Jason Schwartzman’s creation in Max Fischer is one of the most maddeningly memorable. I don’t know if I like this kid or despise him but I’ll defend the performance to my death saying that every move, inflection and verbal flourish is as original as anything seen in the finest dramatic actors of the time. Where Bob didn’t venture, and I am so glad I can bring it to light, is the supporting turn by Bill Murray. His very best performance, Murray’s Leo Bloom is a man drowning in his own despair and the laziness that keeps him from doing anything to reverse it. He’s a schlub of a guy looking for any way out of the mundane aspects of a life he’s created and grasping at anything that makes it easier for him as he crawls into the transition for the turn around. Murray plays it like a grown man that has never truly grown up, or at least recalls his youth as something that slipped through his fingers before he really had a chance to enjoy it, and the performance perfectly illustrates the kind of last minute flailing that one does when there seems to be no way out of a predicament that will force us to see ourselves for the fools we really are. Murray was a piece of genius casting and there is no hint, at all, of his zanier and more animated creations that have come before it in films like GHOSTBUSTERS, STRIPES and MEATBALLS. Here is Murray fleshing out every idiosyncratic nuance and tic and bringing us a real person rather than the characiatures he was most well know for at the time. It’s a performance of great skill, perfect comedic timing and quiet introspection. I never understood how Murray got over-looked at Academy Award time when the nominations for BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR were read off.
Yeah looking back on it, Murray was also wonderful in Groundhog Day, which actually contains some future bearing as far as his performances go, on Rushmore.
I assume you mean “Murray’s Herman Blume”? Though I like the Freudian slip of calling him Leo Bloom, particularly to Max Fischer’s Stephen Dedalus. Should we start calling Olivia Williams “Molly” and see how many times she can say “Yes” in a row?
Funny. Your ‘Portrait of the Artist’ title must have thrown Dennis onto Joyce.
Don’t tell anyone, but I haven’t seen ‘Rushmore’.
I’m so glad I spent time writing out this comment of praise.
Personally, I think it’s the best film of the past 20 years, and like the rest of Anderson’s work, gets better and deeper every time I watch it again. Citing Peanuts is always welcome, and quoting Harold Lloyd and silent Ozu doesn’t hurt…
Yes this is clearly one of the most beautifully-written and trenchant essays yet written in this comedy countdown that has nearly reached the 40% point. I do like this film quite a bit, but perhaps not enough to vote it on my own ballot. This, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS and MOONRISE KINGDOM are my three favor Andersons.
Even though you do briefly touch on it I think that a profound influence on Anderson are the films of Hal Ashby, in particular HAROLD & MAUDE, which seems particularly apparent with RUSHMORE. I swear, there are some shots (like the burning of leaves in autumn) that could have come right out of an Ashby film. And doesn’t he use a Cat Stevens song in RUSHMORE? Yet another nod to Ashby. But the film just has an Ashby feel to it – a bitter sweet poignancy and kind of melancholic feel that many of Ashby’s films embrace.
Good call on the Salinger influence, which I felt was touched upon briefly here and BOTTLE ROCKET with young kids acting wise beyond the years. He really saved his Salinger tribute for THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS with an expressed homage to the Glass family of geniuses with the Tenenbaum clan.
J.D. Yes that’s true of the Harold and Maude stuff etc. I think Anderson is influenced by that type of film. Actually Anderson’s films are rife with influences and references. Part of the fun IMO. However, I do always feel like the sum is greater than all the parts….that’s it’s not just an homage or copycat. We’re all mentioning different influences, but I don’t think it ever devolves into pure mimicry.
Agreed. Anderson takes all of these influences, absorbs them and makes them his own.
I was thirteen years old when this film came out. I remember seeing the previews on TV and being oddly drawn to it. I went to see it, alone, even though I had never really expressed any kind of interest in films like this previously. To this day, I maintain that Wes Anderson is the reason I care about film. It probably would have happened someplace else down the road, but RUSHMORE really hit. I feel eternally in the bag for Anderson, and even kept flying his flags during the LIFE AQUATIC/DARJEELING LIMITED period. Great essay.
I think this and Tenenbaums are Anderson’s best films, and kind of veer back & forth between which one I prefer. It’s also a tremendously funny self-portrait of Anderson’s own artistic tendencies, a kind of humor & perspective about his techniques he seems to have lost the more he indulged them (maybe it’s also co-writer Owen Wilson tweaking him a bit?). There’s a kind of beating heart, which Jon describes as the motivating factor in all of Anderson’s work, which is strongest here – somehow Max’s egotistic delusions of grandeur seem touchingly fragile.
I’d love to see Tenenbaums on this list but – unless I already missed it – I don’t think it’s forthcoming. Pity, that one might make me laugh even harder than this one, and it is a comedy countdown after all.