The Films of Wes Anderson

Critical Essays on an Indiewood Icon

P. Kunze, P. Kunze

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137403124
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Dirección y producción cinematográfica

Wes Anderson's films can be divisive, but he is widely recognized as the inspiration forseveral recent trends in indie films. Using both practical and theoretical lenses, the contributors address and explain the recurring stylistic techniques, motifs, and themes that dominate Anderson's films and have had such an impact on current filmmaking.

Part I

1

The Short Films of Wes Anderson

Nicole Richter

Wes Anderson’s feature-length filmmaking has largely been met with critical acclaim, with widespread consensus among critics that, at the very least, Anderson is a modern-day auteur with a distinct directorial style.¹ Critical studies of Anderson’s work range from large-authorship analyses, like Mark Browning’s 2011 book-length work, Wes Anderson: Why His Movies Matter, Tod Lippy’s “Wes Anderson,” or Devin Orgeron’s director study, to scholarship about more specific themes in Anderson’s filmmaking, such as Cynthia Felando’s work on women and aging, James MacDowell’s essay on tone and quirky sensibility, or Joshua Gooch’s discussion of fatherhood. While these works each have something important to offer readers, what is missing from the current scholarship surrounding Anderson is an analysis of his short films.

Criticism about Anderson’s work is heavily skewed toward his feature filmmaking. At first glance this may seem appropriate, but even a cursory numerical accounting of Anderson’s films shows a blind spot in Anderson scholarship. To date Anderson has directed seven feature films and three (arguably four) short films. This problem with scholarship is not unique in relation to Anderson’s work, specifically, but rather reflects a critical bias against the short film in general. Richard Raskin, in his pioneering book, The Art of the Short Fiction Film, argues that short fiction films have “received little attention within the university community with regard to teaching and research . . . At many film schools today, students are implicitly encouraged to think of [them] . . . as though they were miniature feature films, rather than as works belonging to an art form in its own right” (1). In his analysis of the short-fiction form, “The Art of Reduction,” Matthias Brütsch agrees with Raskin, explaining that, although short films are popular, “film studies has displayed a persistent lack of interest for the short format,” which is often marginalized because short films are thought of “only as an exercise for beginners, as a ‘calling card’ that may help on the path towards making ‘real,’ i.e. feature films” (1).

Consistent with the continual lack of attention paid to the short-film genre by critics, Anderson’s short films—Bottle Rocket (1994), Hotel Chevalier (2007), Cousin Ben Troop Screening with Jason Schwartzman (2012), and Moonrise Kingdom Animated Short (2012)—have had relatively little written about them. Anderson’s continued engagement with the short-film format points to his alternative perspective on the form. His choice to release his features films alongside related shorts separates him from traditional approaches to filmmaking. An analysis of Anderson’s short films expands our understanding of his worldview because his short-film work approaches narrative and pacing differently than his feature work.

Based on Raskin’s criteria, I argue that Hotel Chevalier belongs in the pantheon of the history of great short films—alongside Jean Rouch’s Gare du Nord (1964), Jean-Luc Godard’s Montparnasse et Levallois (1965), Tom Tykwer’s Faubourg Saint-Denis (2006), and Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes (1986). Hotel Chevalier stands alone on its own merits and is as successful as, if not more than, the feature it was released as a prologue to, The Darjeeling Limited (2007). In applying Raskin’s conceptual short-film model to Anderson’s shorts, I attempt to explain how Anderson’s storytelling in the short film differs from his feature-length presentations. The format of the short film allows stories to be told differently, and Anderson’s Hotel Chevalier breaks new ground in narrative possibilities, while Bottle Rocket is only partially successful as a short. The two shorts released with Moonrise Kingdom are consistent with Anderson’s feature-filmmaking approach whereby “the concept of ‘story’ and ‘storytelling’ is self-consciously foregrounded in Anderson’s work” (Thomas 104). However, it is with Hotel Chevalier that we come to know Anderson more intimately as a filmmaker, as the emotional core of his art comes through with full force.

While most academics writing about Anderson’s work avoid a discussion of his short films altogether, there are a few critics who at least give passing acknowledgment to his shorts. Joseph Aisenberg assesses Anderson’s career as a whole, with only two passing references to Hotel Chevalier and no references to Bottle Rocket. Aisenberg references Hotel Chevalier as “the short film pre-ambulating Darjeeling,” and later in the article he mentions his disgust at the thinness of Natalie Portman’s body in the short. This terse reference to Hotel Chevalier can hardly be called a review of the film. In Aisenberg’s study, the film exists, but it does not deserve space for serious analysis in his assessment of the director. Mark Browning commits several pages of his book Wes Anderson: Why His Movies Matter to analysis of Anderson’s short film Bottle Rocket (1994). Browning’s main arguments about the 16 mm short revolve around a comparison between the short and the feature film based on it. Browning does little more than explain what is lacking in the short that makes its way into the feature. Browning’s criticism is inevitable, of course, since the short is a short and not a feature. Browning, however, does observe, “Although radically shorter than the feature, there is a tenser dynamic at work here between the three leading roles” (3).

Browning’s analysis of Hotel Chevalier is slightly more detailed than his review of Bottle Rocket, but it reinforces the marginalization of short film. Browning calls Hotel Chevalier “an appetizer, a short before the main feature” that has “the feel of a very extravagant DVD extra or trailer for the longer film” (76). Claiming the short is “dispensable,” Browning questions whether it just “seems self-indulgent” (76). It is more useful to approach the film as a self-contained text that bears a relationship to The Darjeeling Limited but functions independently of it. Browning frames the short as a teaser to the longer film, implying the feature film is of primary importance and the short unnecessary, since The Darjeeling Limited can be viewed on its own terms. Seeing this short as self-indulgent misses the point—Anderson has released two films that should be valued on the same level (length should not determine quality), and viewers are able to access two films for the price of one.

The dynamics of storytelling in the short-fiction-film form are substantially different than those in the feature film. In the feature film, the two most common approaches to narrative are the three-act structure and the monomyth. Syd Field, the most well-known advocate of the three-act structure in screenwriting, argues that screenplays can be divided into three parts: setup, confrontation, and resolution. Other screenwriters use Joseph Campbell’s narrative pattern of the monomyth, or “The Hero’s Journey,” which is broken down into 17 distinct stages the hero goes through on his or her journey. Neither theoretical approach to the study of narrative applies adequately to narrative dynamics in the short fiction form. Recognizing that while “such models may be useful in working with feature films, the greater freedom of the short fiction film requires a more flexible approach” (2), Richard Raskin proposes a conceptual framework for the short film, consisting of seven parameters that, when balanced, exploit the storytelling potential of the short-film format. The parameters are as follows:

1. Character-Focus vs. Character-Interaction
2. Causality vs. Choice
3. Consistency vs. Surprise
4. Image vs. Sound
5. Character vs. Object and Décor
6. Simplicity vs. Depth
7. Economy vs. Wholeness

While each parameter need not be present in every successful short, balance in two or three areas is likely to make a great short.

Bottle Rocket

Bottle Rocket (1994) premiered as a 13-minute short at Sundance, and it made quite an impression on producer James L. Brooks, who commented:

When I first saw the thirteen-minute video I was dazzled—the language and rhythms of the piece made it clear Wes and Owen were genuine voices. The possession of a real voice is always a marvel, an almost religious thing. When you have one, it not only means you see things from a slightly different perspective than the billions of other ants on the hill, but that you also necessarily possess such equally rare qualities as integrity and humility.

The strength of the film lies in the fact that it does establish Anderson as a unique voice in filmmaking through its witty screenwriting and strange characterization, and it introduces audiences to the ironic tone and offbeat mood of an Anderson film. The short makes strong use of the fifth of Raskin’s parameters (character versus object and décor), most notably in a close-up shot of a carefully arranged marching band on the dresser of a room that is being stolen from and the close-ups of various significant objects in Dignan’s escape plan.

The film, while containing many thematic and stylistic aspects that Anderson returns to in his feature filmmaking, does not make use of the strengths of the short-film format. Instead, it functions like a screen test for the feature of the same name that Anderson goes on to make. The short is unbalanced in several ways, most notably in character focus versus character interaction. There is no character focus in the short since the film presents two characters, Dignan (Owen Wilson) and Anthony (Luke ­Wilson), to us simultaneously, emphasizing character interaction instead. The empathetic attachment to characters found in Hotel Chevalier, for example, is not present. The feature film makes more of an impact since it centers on Dignan as the main character. The conversation that takes place between Dignan, Anthony, and Bob (Robert Musgrave) in the diner is reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes. Coffee and Cigarettes succeeds in being a great short film because it is simplified down to one conversation between Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright. In the short-film form, there is less time to develop complexity, and this lack of development is why Bottle Rocket feels more like a shortened version of a feature than a short film in its own right. Character development is limited because so much of the short is focused on the action of the robbery that no single strength breaks through the complexity of the narrative. Anderson was thinking of the feature film while making the short, and the script was feature length before the short was even made. Anderson explains, “That short was supposed to be just an installment of the feature” (Murray 2008). Early in his career, Anderson privileged feature filmmaking, seeing the short as secondary. He overcomes this problematic way of thinking by the time he begins working on Hotel Chevalier and exploits the inherent strengths of the short-film format to explore the emotional complexity of love.

Narrative Construction in Hotel Chevalier

Several critics have discussed their disappointment with The Darjeeling Limited. Aisenberg argues that The Darjeeling Limited “remains abstractedly adrift throughout, a special feature of almost all of Anderson’s films, I suppose, but here lacking any zest.” Browning claims that Anderson’s attempt to make a movie about India can “only be viewed as a failure” (87). While I agree that The Darjeeling Limited is one of Anderson’s weaker films (but still a strong film when evaluated on its own), Hotel Chevalier was a revelation; it is a superior film to The Darjeeling Limited and provides an ideal opportunity to discuss the strengths of the short form over the feature. It also demonstrates why Anderson continues to work in the short form, despite being a successful feature director. Hotel Chevalier is usually described as a prologue to The Darjeeling Limited, and while it certainly is this, it is so much more. To understand it merely as a prologue, positions it as a precursor to the “real story” as told in the feature. Anderson financed the film himself and originally intended for it to be a standalone piece, but he had trouble figuring out how to release the film to audiences. Anderson explains in an interview with the Boston Phoenix, “When it was all done, I didn’t want to incorporate the short into the movie. But I couldn’t decide how I wanted it to go. I wanted to play the short in front of the movie, but not always. Sometimes I preferred to watch the movie without the short. It became a puzzle to me. So in the end I decided that I would like to have the movie open in America without the short, but I would like people to have access to it if they want to see it first.” The difficulty ­Anderson had with placing the short speaks to the structural exclusion of the short film from channels of distribution. In essence, Hotel Chevalier and The ­Darjeeling Limited are two separate films, each deserving their own audience response. Anderson’s decision to release them separately emphasizes the idea that Hotel Chevalier is a narrative universe in and of itself.

Hotel Chevalier’s strength as a short film lies in its narrative construction, which utilizes several of the parameters present in Raskin’s model. The parameters most present in the short are character-focus versus character-interaction, character versus, object and...