I rented this delightful film after seeing it on The Onion's Sixteen Films That May Have Influenced Wes [Anderson's] Style list. I felt somewhat smug in being able to boast having seen a couple more than the person here!
Needless to say I hadn't seen all of them, and this was the first one to peak my interest. Made in 1964 it seems to anticipate a lot of the social change that was just around the corner, but whilst being wholeheartedly NOT a film with a message. It's a light, comic film (it stars Peter Sellers after all) about adolescent crushes.
Two girls at a prestigious New York school fall in love with Sellers' hilarious avant-garde composer (who needs prompting by his lugubrious conductor for the next note) and begin to compose an imaginary love affair, complete with love letters and trips to foreign locations. Punning on his name, they sit outside his apartment with Chinese hats on and bow, hands clasped every time they catch sight of him. Orient is seriously perturbed by these pesky kids because he is in the process of trying to entice an extremely nervous married woman into his apartment for all sorts of shenanigans. (It will not spoil the film to say that when he does finally get her inside, it produces a very funny scene).
What struck me about this film was its streak of progressive social politics. The sad, dreamy Gil lives with her divorced mother and her "old friend" and fellow divorcee. All three bond with Gil's impulsive (and quite possibly unhinged) new friend Val over their shared experiences of psychiatrists. It boasts an understanding of adolescent love and female friendship very few films made today exhibit, a tolerance of pre-pubescent imaginary love affairs as the harmless playacting they are and a realisation of their importance in maturity: Gil's mother and friend get quite teary remembering their own first crushes, and Gil's mother notes drily "now the real trouble starts" before a cut to the girls a couple of years later applying makeup and talking about boys at school.
The performances of the two newcomers Tippy Walker as Val and Merrie Spaeth's Gil are superbly natural, wonderfully ignorant of the camera. They are not the children so often seen in movies, pale, over-sentimentalised, exagerrated versions. Their friendship blossoms before your very eyes and the sadness that underpins their relationship perfectly judged: never over-bearing but always in your mind. Sellers' performance is as always entirely manic, yet wholly hilarious.
And in case you were wondering, it is SO Wes Anderson. Beautiful photography (New York in the crisp, clear sunlight of an autumn day), adrift young offspring of rich families, an undercurrent of sadness and broken homes, eccentric adults. This really is a wonderful film.
Showing posts with label Wes Anderson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wes Anderson. Show all posts
Monday, 10 December 2007
Tuesday, 27 November 2007
The Darjeeling Limited
Well I've seen it twice in three days so I obviously like it. I knew deep down I would. I did however share the suspicion of others that Wes Anderson's style would have become trying by now. That was the reaction of the people I saw it with, but as emphatically NOT my reaction as was possible. This film is so much more mature, more emotionally effecting than his others. As Dave at work said, "if you've got a brother, it's pretty much got you". That combined with all the signature stylistic flourishes that made us love Anderson in the first place makes The Darjeeling Limited perhaps his most successful film.
From the first moments of the preceding short film Hotel Chevalier we know we are to expect more from this film. That the end of a love affair is played out through Anderson's trademark slowmos and 60s pop heightens the emotion. As Natalie Portman's unnamed "ex-girlfriend" turns to Jason Schwartzman's lost Jack and says "what the fuck is going on?" the sense of frustration and sadness is unmistakable. Jack's emotionless stare is equally effecting.
The film proper benefits massively from Adrien Brody's prescence as the reluctant father-to-be Peter. Brody's ability to convey great worry in the slightest tremble of a lip or a forced smile works perfectly with Schwartzman's lost puppy dog eyes and Owen Wilson's repression of grief behind obsessive itinerary-making as Francis. That they look nothing like each other is of no consequence. These guys are the Whitman brothers, and they really are trying to make better lives for themselves however pathetically misguided they may be. Their desire is etched in the way Francis gets them to agree on making this a spirital quest, a life-changing experience. Of course finding oneself to a timetable typed up and laminated by a man called Brendan suffering from alopecia is unlikely to succeed. But their determination is touching. There is no sense of that "poor little rich kid" element that some people - unfairly - try to put onto Anderson.
The real difference is the sequence in a country village. Arriving at the village after only managing to save two of three drowing brothers they are welcomed, comforted and thanked in a nearly dialogue-less set of scenes that mark - in my opinion - a real step up for Anderson. The slowmos stop, the music stops, dialogue stops. Everything quietens down. Their spiritual quest seems to be bearing fruit. They begin to trust each other. They value each other.
I don't want to appear to be denigrating those classic Anderson traits of the slowmo and pop soundtrack. I went straight home and downloaded them! Whilst some people may have found them tiresome in this film, I felt they were used smartly and that they are taken out in the saddest moments of the film heightens their effect. They always come at moments the viewer needs for contemplation.
This film looks and sounds great and the acting comes from a finely-judged balance of humour and sadness. Of course it may be a touch sentimental, a little over-romantic but to accuse Anderson of un-realism is like accusing David Lynch of weirdness. As my friend Al said on coming out of the film, "it's a film I want to live in".
As a footnote, my lecturers warned against writing about things you love. I am afraid I have not heeded their advice on this occasion. Apologies. In depth reviewing will follow.
From the first moments of the preceding short film Hotel Chevalier we know we are to expect more from this film. That the end of a love affair is played out through Anderson's trademark slowmos and 60s pop heightens the emotion. As Natalie Portman's unnamed "ex-girlfriend" turns to Jason Schwartzman's lost Jack and says "what the fuck is going on?" the sense of frustration and sadness is unmistakable. Jack's emotionless stare is equally effecting.
The film proper benefits massively from Adrien Brody's prescence as the reluctant father-to-be Peter. Brody's ability to convey great worry in the slightest tremble of a lip or a forced smile works perfectly with Schwartzman's lost puppy dog eyes and Owen Wilson's repression of grief behind obsessive itinerary-making as Francis. That they look nothing like each other is of no consequence. These guys are the Whitman brothers, and they really are trying to make better lives for themselves however pathetically misguided they may be. Their desire is etched in the way Francis gets them to agree on making this a spirital quest, a life-changing experience. Of course finding oneself to a timetable typed up and laminated by a man called Brendan suffering from alopecia is unlikely to succeed. But their determination is touching. There is no sense of that "poor little rich kid" element that some people - unfairly - try to put onto Anderson.
The real difference is the sequence in a country village. Arriving at the village after only managing to save two of three drowing brothers they are welcomed, comforted and thanked in a nearly dialogue-less set of scenes that mark - in my opinion - a real step up for Anderson. The slowmos stop, the music stops, dialogue stops. Everything quietens down. Their spiritual quest seems to be bearing fruit. They begin to trust each other. They value each other.
I don't want to appear to be denigrating those classic Anderson traits of the slowmo and pop soundtrack. I went straight home and downloaded them! Whilst some people may have found them tiresome in this film, I felt they were used smartly and that they are taken out in the saddest moments of the film heightens their effect. They always come at moments the viewer needs for contemplation.
This film looks and sounds great and the acting comes from a finely-judged balance of humour and sadness. Of course it may be a touch sentimental, a little over-romantic but to accuse Anderson of un-realism is like accusing David Lynch of weirdness. As my friend Al said on coming out of the film, "it's a film I want to live in".
As a footnote, my lecturers warned against writing about things you love. I am afraid I have not heeded their advice on this occasion. Apologies. In depth reviewing will follow.
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