This essay was written by Aaron Weiss for a Cinema Criticism course at the University of Central Florida in Spring 2007.
The Royal Tenenbaums' bookish nature.The quirky and humorous film style of Wes Anderson is seen in all of the director’s films. His works are primarily similar in their motifs, directing style, cinematography and uses many of the same crew and talents throughout all his films. His 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums was Anderson’s third full-length feature and his highest grossing film , continues the unique narrative style to an accumulation of his previous works and leaves room for continued experimentation in future works.
Containing a battery of critically acclaimed stars including Luke and Owen Wilson (the former credited as a co-writer), Angelica Huston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Danny Glover, Bill Murray and Gene Hackman; Tenenbaums certainly had wide appeal during its theatrical release, however this film continues to stand on its own as a technical achievement both as a film and the work of an auteur. What is Wes Anderson intention behind The Royal Tenenbaums in comparison to his other works?
A distinct narrative style is found throughout all of Wes Anderson’s films, beginning with Rushmore (1998), he used unique narration form by superimposing titles to describe either a short clip or location to add information necessary for the audience. This narration was used extensively in The Royal Tenenbaums to portray the film as if it were being revealed like a book. The immediate opening shows a fictitious book entitled The Royal Tenenbaums being checked out from a library. It is then opened to the first page and Alex Baldwin’s voice-over narration begins. With all these elements in palace Wes Anderson succeeds in expressing the desperation and hopes of the characters within the film and does so with a film narrative that acts as a novel. While the film’s focus of character changes throughout, the major hero is Royal himself, reuniting his family. The film closes on his funeral provoking the idea that this fictitious book is more of a memoir from Royal. 2004 brought us The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, a blatant but free-standing homage to Jacques-Yves Cousteau. The film is more in the form of a documentary but continues to the use the same titling techniques. Anderson has experimented with many narrative styles and has done so successfully.
The character conflict in all of Wes Anderson’s films is a motif that is attractive since most of these struggles are easily relatable to by the audience. The actors in The Royal Tenenbaums are well known and respected talents and certainly bring their gifts to this film. Where these faces are certainly recognizable, they obtain the characters they portray with ease and their celebrity personalities become invisible. Nearly all the characters have fallen from their peak prodigy/celebrity status and have retreated to express their frustrations in unproductive ways. Redemption as state of depression is found in all four of Anderson’s feature films; however Tenenbaums seems to surround the audience with this theme. Royal’s continual bias relationships with his children shown to the audience as a preface in the opening, reveals their cruel upbringing, allowing the viewer to feel empathy for these quirky and flawed characters. All the characters by the end of the film have risen above their flaws and accept their lives. Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and Life Aquatic also share this same theme.
