Does this look real?
Posted on | January 3, 2005 at 6:49 pm | 2 Comments
I’ve seen Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and now The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, and yet I still don’t know what to think of director Wes Anderson as a filmmaker. I’m pretty sure I either enjoy his movies more than I admire them, or admire them more than I enjoy them, but I don’t know which. I do know that after having seen any of his movies, I don’t feel I’ve wasted my time, yet I don’t have any desire to ever see that movie again. Maybe it’s all just too stylized or something. The deadpan dialog, the fake sets, the odd mixture of comedy and drama – it just takes me too much out of the movie and makes me realize I’m watching a movie. (And this is coming from someone who likes Kevin Smith movies.) I chuckle here and there, but I don’t laugh much. The performances are good (I really enjoyed Bill Murray and couldn’t imagine anyone else in the role), yet I still thought of them strictly as performances instead of as living, breathing characters. There’s a plot development in the second act of Life Aquatic (without saying too much, it involves pirates) that further caused me to be taken out of the movie’s universe in a jarring way, especially with the way it was resolved. The movie did have some cool animation though.
This gets a pretty good score of one on the Nod-O-Meter, but I’m not sure if that should be taken as a recommendation or not. If you’ve seen any of Anderson’s other movies, then you will probably feel the same way about this one as you did about the others, since his style has not changed much.
Latre.
Comments
2 Responses to “Does this look real?”
January 3rd, 2005 @ 10:13 pm
I’ve seen only Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums of Anderson’s films…but I think you’ve got a pretty good handle on what they’re about. They do jump right in that old authenticity/artifice argument. If this were about music, we’d rejoin the debate about the Magnetic Fields… Basically, there’s actually authentic art (rare today, and arguably not really “art” which strongly implies artifice – but some guy blowing into a conch shell all by himself for the sheer joy of the noise it makes might fit the bill); art that attempts to convey authenticity (not that there’s no authenticity behind it…just that Take 52 or Performance 7,352 is probably not when the singer is genuinely heartbroken over the poor treatment he received from his ex); and art that foregrounds its artifice: Anderson for one, and ye olde Magnetic Fields again. Problem is that lots of people think foregrounding artifice (and often, irony) means that either there’s no emotional content (i.e., what people often mean by “authentic”) there, or that it’s being raked over the coals. (I typed “raked over the colas” which is hereby the title of the next mix CD I make…) That overlooks that irony can *be* an emotion, and that people are complex enough to simultaneously play at a role, inhabit it emotionally, and recognize its absurdity all at once. Am I a sappy fool for being emotionally moved by, say, the Magnetic Fields’ “It’s Only Time” – or for that matter, by “Quiet Talks and Summer Walks” by the Bonzo Dog Band? Or would I be more of a fool if I thought either song was just a put-on, an arch joke? (I’d argue, mostly, the second – but perhaps I’ll take the fifth on this one, and then drink it.)
January 3rd, 2005 @ 10:16 pm
I’m never quite sure if Anderson is letting us in on the joke or trying to pull one over on us, which is probably part of my problem with him.