The Anderson Odyssey

[muckefuck]

We'd set aside this afternoon for film viewing, but NetFlix let us down; even though the Old Man dropped Los lunes al sol into the mail last Thursday morning, they claim not to have received it yet. So much for the Chinese sword-and-statecraft epic we were hoping to watch. monshu proposed pay-per-view and I instructed him to scroll through and find some candidates, but he pays so little attention to the entertainment press that the titles wouldn't've said anything to him even if they hadn't been weirdly telescoped.

The first one that spoke to me was Moonrise Kingdom, which I recall getting glowing reviews from nihilistic_kid, among others. It was a good choice, despite the technical failures. Cinematography of that calibre absolutely demands letterboxing, but we couldn't find any way to set that parametre. In fact, we couldn't find any way to control the picture at all after we'd selected it. Oh well; there are far worse things in this life than to be forced to rewatch a Wed Anderson film at some future date.

We both found it completely enchanting. monshu really appreciated some of the more stylised elements, like Anderson's penchant for filling the screen with elaborate tableaux and the almost affected nature of some of the dialogue. I loved the geeky attention to small details, such as the fictional children's books or the invented scouting organisation. We both thought the use of Britten was particularly effective and were extremely impressed by the work of the child actors.

I'm not sure how I feel about Willis as Capt. Sharp, but I couldn't think of anyone better than Norton for the role of Scoutmaster Ward. Having seen Bob Balaban play essentially the same character time and time again, I was wowed to place him in the role of narrator. Somehow I didn't even manage to recognise Tild Swinton. I knew I knew that face, but never expected her in such a relatively minor part.

My one real complaint is--surprise, surprise--the accents. I wasn't at all taken aback to discover that Anderson scouted up and down the entire Eastern Seaboard and as far inland as Michigan before deciding on the location. Everyone sounded Midwestern or at best Mid-Atlantic. More tellingly, there was none of that peculiar Yankee blend of familiarity and reserve in their interactions.

You also didn't have to be much of an amateur naturalist to see that the events depicted couldn't possibly have all taken place on a rocky island of the size shown on the (beautifully faked) maps. But I was more forgiving of this, as it become obvious that this was a romp through a fantasyland of exactly the sort envisioned by pre-teens and developed in the sort of books Suzy is shown as liking to read. (Apropos of Suzy, as a real-life lefty, I knew the minute her character claimed to be one, too, I'd catch the actress out before another half-hour had gone by and I did.)

In fact, it might not be too much of a stretch to say that I find the film more endearing on account of some of its little flaws. It just mirrors so well the kind of adolescent world it's attempting to reproduce, it adds another level to the meta that's there already. I think from here we'll move on to Fantastic Mr Fox, and if that goes over well with the Old Man, then what should I try next?

Comments

[oh-meow.livejournal.com]

My favourite two are the Life Aquatic and the Royal Tenenbaums.

The Life Aquatic is about a Jacques Costeau style mariner played by Bill Murray, hunting down a shark. The boat set is amazing, and it has a soundtrack of David Bowie songs in Brazilian Portuguese by Seu Jorge.

The Royal Tenenbaums is an ensemble comedy about an incredibly dysfunctional New York family of grown up child prodigies and their conman father.

The Darjelling Limited is crap, I guess because Wes Anderson is much better at making films about what he knows, rather than trying to take on India.