I think the thing that helps a lot to kind of grasp Anderson's whole deal if you're new to his movies is to kind of keep in mind that he's never being pretentious for the sake of it. He's extremely sincere almost to a fault and is really, really good at blowing up small emotional contexts and deconstructing them to explore them in depth and the way he does that is by abstracting the aesthetics of his worlds and using them to emphasize the story beats he wants to focus on. He's never pretending, he's just got an extremely weird way of seeing the world and the people he makes movies about and that can come off kind of cold and artificial at first glance, but it's genuinely the opposite.
I forget if I saw Royal Tenenbaums or Bottle Rocket first, but starting with the latter (as a viewer or feature director) acts as a real good thesis for his creative viewpoint. It's a seemingly-grounded & warm film about weirdos, with his thematic quirks on display more than what becomes his iconic stylistic flourishes, the diorama-esque setpieces. But! The cinematography does have this feeling of magic and lushness even in simple settings. There is a sense of mystery, and distance, in the sense of not disturbing that mystique.
Ah, hell, why not spitball this.
As a filmmaker, he's very internal, and --in a way that feels really familiar to me as a neurodivergent sensibility-- Showing by explicitly over-Telling and Showing. Like, here's this very precise, intricate, holistic performance that both shows and obscures deeper emotional beats; society demands neurotypical emoting, okay, here's that structure of drama, but via buttoned down acting, and theatrical, sometimes fantastical imagery! Balancing sensory inputs.
Of his films, I've seen... The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, Rushmore, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Grand Budapest Hotel, and Moonrise Kingdom. So, 7/11 of his current releases. Not seen any in a couple years, so this is working from memory of vibes.
Margot Tenenbaum's whole deal, in retrospect, (again, ages since I've seen it) reads like autistic masking or flat affect.
[...]I find that all of his artifice distances me from his characters, makes them feel like paper dolls instead of people. Actors in his movies feel too precise and restrained for me to actually fall in love with their characters, because they still feel like they're actors the entire time. And this makes any attempts at universality or the human condition feel oppressively shallow rather than deep, a single person's thoughts and experience translated to film through puppetry. [...]
But it hits different for me. I am not asserting Anderson's films are deliberately coded as neurodivergent or representative thereof, but the meticulous form helps me connect to the characters' emotions more readily. There are different aspects to suspension of disbelief, and there is a quality to Anderson's magical realism that speaks to the ways I have parsed the real world.
At least for acting choices, what Straightzi (and I'm not calling you out, it's just well articulated!) perceives as woodenness or archness conveying/resulting from inauthenticity or shallowness, I perceive as the kind of low-key or micro expressions that are subtle enough to be picked up ("intuitively" or after conscious training) when not confronted with outsized, often overstimulating emotional cues. For me, it's nuance. Some of these characters are additionally repressed or traumatized, but there's also a glibness that comes from attempting to fit into society by being "Me, but More" -- a bit of lampshading. Your more ritualized and bombastic performances. For me, that is a familiar experience, because masking as neurotypical is literally acting on a daily basis. And the best acting comes from a place of truth. (Masking being both unconscious and deliberate, and, afaik, universal to some degree.)
So for me, that explains the differing expressions characters in his movies tend to fall into while confusing neurotypical expectations -- everyone is consciously trying to perform "normal" and still somehow off-putting, or, consciously fighting or ignorant of that socialization and being perceived as somewhat alien. Being "too much" or "not enough" is common feedback for ND folk.
With that perspective, his stylistic choices, the almost camp level of detail, is of a piece -- this is all constructed, that's never in doubt. But it's emotive authenticity from a place of minimalist or highly codified acting; externalizing the internal sense of wonder and imagination and expansive emotional landscape, translated into lush and complicated visuals.
The Coffee Table is out on Amazon VOD and uhhhhhhhhhhhh. Damn...
Saw a friend on social compare it to When Evil Lurks, and it's not anywhere near that relentless or bloody. But damn does it get dark, and damn does it linger in that darkness for over half the film successfully
Don't even know how to begin broaching talking about it outside of that or spoilers. Certainly don't know if I can even recommend it (definitely not to parents), this is the first time I'm wondering if I should give something a star rating on my Letterboxd or not
Well now I'm going crazy trying to find a full spoiler synopsis and I CANNOT find one and it's driving me crazy.
Wanna share the details? I get the general ideas but I want the specifics!
Alright @DemonStacey (ating you both so it’s easy to find and because it’s been hours since my post, I was taking a nap sorry)
Very real spoilers for The Coffee Table, an incredibly dark horror comedy where the comedy is in the first like 20 minutes and the horror is in the rest
This Spanish couple that has had…numerous issues and arguments and are pretty implied to be on their last straw together before they break it off, open the film with seemingly a reprieve from that: a baby is born
The dad, questioning everything including if he was ready to be responsible for it, and why he couldn’t choose anything in the house (including the name or the color of the kid’s room), finally gets to make one decision he feels is truly his: that their house should have a coffee table
The wife and the sleazy salesman then get into a five minute argument during the sales pitch where she gets that he’s clearly lying about this being a fucking ugly table, painted to look more expensive than it is, and is flabbergasted that the final point of the sale is a guarantee that the table’s unbreakable
When they’re home the husband gets into a brief argument with a neighbor’s 13 year old kid, who has a crush on him and wants the wife to know about it because she thinks he’s obviously gonna leave his wife And his new child for her instead. She gives him a deadline he doesn’t take seriously to bring this up to the wife, or she’ll do it herself while walking her little dog as an excuse to show up solo
The wife continues the argument about the table after that, saying it still looks like shit and it must feel like shit, given he can’t get it together. Turns out five screws were needed to properly it, only four came in the box. The salesman is called, and apologizes and says he’ll be right over with one more screw. The wife is annoyed even more, says she’s going to the grocery store to get some stuff for the dinner they’re going to have with the husband’s brother and his girlfriend, emphasizes that she’s going alone, and slams the door. Which wakes the baby
The baby’s crying. The camera, at a distance in the hallway, shows the husband going back and forth rocking and saying sweet things to the baby in a desperate attempt to restore order at least to him
And then. It happens. A trip is lightly heard on the soundtrack, and a deafening impact is felt very shortly after: glass is shattered and goes everywhere, along with something else that rolls under the armchair
The camera pans back in eventually. Blood everywhere. Table destroyed. He’s a mess with glass in his arms, face and chest. The baby is quiet, unseen and unheard, with a noticeable amount of the blood from the edge of the glass; you never see the full kid again, but you know: during the fall the baby’s head got a clean cut through the edge, beheading it instantly and sending that portion under the armchair
And everyone will be coming over soon
The remaining sixty or sixty five minutes are him failing to come to grips with this in his own mind, contemplating suicide, and avoiding anyone else finding out why the baby can’t be seen or heard by them either, not just us the audience. The final five minutes/scene is everyone but the salesman finding out, including the neighbor’s dog
My first Wes Anderson movie was Royal Tenenbaums, and it immediately clicked with me in the same way that JD Salinger's Franny and Zooey did. They both evoke a certain kind of 'mildly affected characters but in a loveable way' to me, perhaps? I haven't ever tried to sit down and hash it out explicitly before. I guess I would say if you like Salinger's work (that isn't Catcher, because I didn't really vibe with that, but ymmv) I feel like a lot of Wes Anderson's work hits me in that same spot. Of course they're all a little affected and overdramatic, but that's what makes them loveable to me as a person who was raised to be as non-confrontational as possible, to mask all the ways in which I'm different.
So I guess what I'm saying does fit a bit with what pooka is saying... for me it's more the idea that they were allowed to - in some ways, in some situations - embrace all the little things that are 'too much'. Royal's family doesn't hate him for being weird, but they do call out that he's an asshole, and that that's a separate thing. Mister Fox is accepted for his off beat ways but not for putting others in danger. Ash struggles to be accepted because he hates his quirks and tries to copy others instead. Even Eli Cash's eventual break down is because he is struggling to force being one of the Tenenbaums without realizing that you can have quirks without being an asshole (and that he already was one, if not in name). Wes Anderson often seems to hit on that line/difference between being authentically yourself and being a self-centered asshole.
That photo reminds me that I once found myself in a bar with Owen Wilson and was sort of an ass talking about how much better Luke Wilson is as an actor than he is probably in earshot. Feel bad about that.
Yeah The Coffee Table is fuckin' ROUGH. Just the anxiety and the stress I felt from The Invitation (The dinner party one, not the vampire one) cranked up like a million percent. Somewhere in between Haneke and Östlund in the 'why are you actually watching this' vibe.
All that being said the soundtrack was 10/10, kind of a diamond in the rough there.
The Coffee Table is out on Amazon VOD and uhhhhhhhhhhhh. Damn...
Saw a friend on social compare it to When Evil Lurks, and it's not anywhere near that relentless or bloody. But damn does it get dark, and damn does it linger in that darkness for over half the film successfully
Don't even know how to begin broaching talking about it outside of that or spoilers. Certainly don't know if I can even recommend it (definitely not to parents), this is the first time I'm wondering if I should give something a star rating on my Letterboxd or not
Well now I'm going crazy trying to find a full spoiler synopsis and I CANNOT find one and it's driving me crazy.
Wanna share the details? I get the general ideas but I want the specifics!
Alright DemonStacey (ating you both so it’s easy to find and because it’s been hours since my post, I was taking a nap sorry)
Very real spoilers for The Coffee Table, an incredibly dark horror comedy where the comedy is in the first like 20 minutes and the horror is in the rest
This Spanish couple that has had…numerous issues and arguments and are pretty implied to be on their last straw together before they break it off, open the film with seemingly a reprieve from that: a baby is born
The dad, questioning everything including if he was ready to be responsible for it, and why he couldn’t choose anything in the house (including the name or the color of the kid’s room), finally gets to make one decision he feels is truly his: that their house should have a coffee table
The wife and the sleazy salesman then get into a five minute argument during the sales pitch where she gets that he’s clearly lying about this being a fucking ugly table, painted to look more expensive than it is, and is flabbergasted that the final point of the sale is a guarantee that the table’s unbreakable
When they’re home the husband gets into a brief argument with a neighbor’s 13 year old kid, who has a crush on him and wants the wife to know about it because she thinks he’s obviously gonna leave his wife And his new child for her instead. She gives him a deadline he doesn’t take seriously to bring this up to the wife, or she’ll do it herself while walking her little dog as an excuse to show up solo
The wife continues the argument about the table after that, saying it still looks like shit and it must feel like shit, given he can’t get it together. Turns out five screws were needed to properly it, only four came in the box. The salesman is called, and apologizes and says he’ll be right over with one more screw. The wife is annoyed even more, says she’s going to the grocery store to get some stuff for the dinner they’re going to have with the husband’s brother and his girlfriend, emphasizes that she’s going alone, and slams the door. Which wakes the baby
The baby’s crying. The camera, at a distance in the hallway, shows the husband going back and forth rocking and saying sweet things to the baby in a desperate attempt to restore order at least to him
And then. It happens. A trip is lightly heard on the soundtrack, and a deafening impact is felt very shortly after: glass is shattered and goes everywhere, along with something else that rolls under the armchair
The camera pans back in eventually. Blood everywhere. Table destroyed. He’s a mess with glass in his arms, face and chest. The baby is quiet, unseen and unheard, with a noticeable amount of the blood from the edge of the glass; you never see the full kid again, but you know: during the fall the baby’s head got a clean cut through the edge, beheading it instantly and sending that portion under the armchair
And everyone will be coming over soon
The remaining sixty or sixty five minutes are him failing to come to grips with this in his own mind, contemplating suicide, and avoiding anyone else finding out why the baby can’t be seen or heard by them either, not just us the audience. The final five minutes/scene is everyone but the salesman finding out, including the neighbor’s dog
Well I guess not surprisingly that is very dead dove don't eat haha.
But thank you for saving my sanity and actually breaking it down!
Caught The People’s Joker for the second time last night and it continues to rule.
Definitely worth seeing again if you caught it during its festival/secret screening run. There were a few extra scenes and some editing changes that were cool to see.
+2
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited May 5
Saw Mars Express today, really enjoyed it, very Asimov-esque French animated sci fi movie about robits
I thought the Fall Guy was too long and not as clever as it thinks it is but it's still a very fun movie.
Some really great practical stunts and Gosling and Blunt are so good together. Seriously, the movie works because theyre great together and you actually want them to be together.
my most embarassingly specific character flaw is that I genuinely cannot remember the difference between the directors Paul W. S. Anderson (Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon, etc), and Wes Anderson (Fantastic Mister Fox, Grand Budapest Hotel, Isle of Dogs).
for the longest time I thought they were the same guy with, just, really inconsistent quality. but even now, gun to my head, I couldn't tell you which guy is which without looking it up
my most embarassingly specific character flaw is that I genuinely cannot remember the difference between the directors Paul W. S. Anderson (Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon, etc), and Wes Anderson (Fantastic Mister Fox, Grand Budapest Hotel, Isle of Dogs).
for the longest time I thought they were the same guy with, just, really inconsistent quality. but even now, gun to my head, I couldn't tell you which guy is which without looking it up
Posts
Ah, hell, why not spitball this.
As a filmmaker, he's very internal, and --in a way that feels really familiar to me as a neurodivergent sensibility-- Showing by explicitly over-Telling and Showing. Like, here's this very precise, intricate, holistic performance that both shows and obscures deeper emotional beats; society demands neurotypical emoting, okay, here's that structure of drama, but via buttoned down acting, and theatrical, sometimes fantastical imagery! Balancing sensory inputs.
Of his films, I've seen... The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, Rushmore, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Grand Budapest Hotel, and Moonrise Kingdom. So, 7/11 of his current releases. Not seen any in a couple years, so this is working from memory of vibes.
So I understand this reaction: But it hits different for me. I am not asserting Anderson's films are deliberately coded as neurodivergent or representative thereof, but the meticulous form helps me connect to the characters' emotions more readily. There are different aspects to suspension of disbelief, and there is a quality to Anderson's magical realism that speaks to the ways I have parsed the real world.
At least for acting choices, what Straightzi (and I'm not calling you out, it's just well articulated!) perceives as woodenness or archness conveying/resulting from inauthenticity or shallowness, I perceive as the kind of low-key or micro expressions that are subtle enough to be picked up ("intuitively" or after conscious training) when not confronted with outsized, often overstimulating emotional cues. For me, it's nuance. Some of these characters are additionally repressed or traumatized, but there's also a glibness that comes from attempting to fit into society by being "Me, but More" -- a bit of lampshading. Your more ritualized and bombastic performances. For me, that is a familiar experience, because masking as neurotypical is literally acting on a daily basis. And the best acting comes from a place of truth. (Masking being both unconscious and deliberate, and, afaik, universal to some degree.)
So for me, that explains the differing expressions characters in his movies tend to fall into while confusing neurotypical expectations -- everyone is consciously trying to perform "normal" and still somehow off-putting, or, consciously fighting or ignorant of that socialization and being perceived as somewhat alien. Being "too much" or "not enough" is common feedback for ND folk.
With that perspective, his stylistic choices, the almost camp level of detail, is of a piece -- this is all constructed, that's never in doubt. But it's emotive authenticity from a place of minimalist or highly codified acting; externalizing the internal sense of wonder and imagination and expansive emotional landscape, translated into lush and complicated visuals.
Alright @DemonStacey (ating you both so it’s easy to find and because it’s been hours since my post, I was taking a nap sorry)
Very real spoilers for The Coffee Table, an incredibly dark horror comedy where the comedy is in the first like 20 minutes and the horror is in the rest
The dad, questioning everything including if he was ready to be responsible for it, and why he couldn’t choose anything in the house (including the name or the color of the kid’s room), finally gets to make one decision he feels is truly his: that their house should have a coffee table
The wife and the sleazy salesman then get into a five minute argument during the sales pitch where she gets that he’s clearly lying about this being a fucking ugly table, painted to look more expensive than it is, and is flabbergasted that the final point of the sale is a guarantee that the table’s unbreakable
When they’re home the husband gets into a brief argument with a neighbor’s 13 year old kid, who has a crush on him and wants the wife to know about it because she thinks he’s obviously gonna leave his wife And his new child for her instead. She gives him a deadline he doesn’t take seriously to bring this up to the wife, or she’ll do it herself while walking her little dog as an excuse to show up solo
The wife continues the argument about the table after that, saying it still looks like shit and it must feel like shit, given he can’t get it together. Turns out five screws were needed to properly it, only four came in the box. The salesman is called, and apologizes and says he’ll be right over with one more screw. The wife is annoyed even more, says she’s going to the grocery store to get some stuff for the dinner they’re going to have with the husband’s brother and his girlfriend, emphasizes that she’s going alone, and slams the door. Which wakes the baby
The baby’s crying. The camera, at a distance in the hallway, shows the husband going back and forth rocking and saying sweet things to the baby in a desperate attempt to restore order at least to him
And then. It happens. A trip is lightly heard on the soundtrack, and a deafening impact is felt very shortly after: glass is shattered and goes everywhere, along with something else that rolls under the armchair
The camera pans back in eventually. Blood everywhere. Table destroyed. He’s a mess with glass in his arms, face and chest. The baby is quiet, unseen and unheard, with a noticeable amount of the blood from the edge of the glass; you never see the full kid again, but you know: during the fall the baby’s head got a clean cut through the edge, beheading it instantly and sending that portion under the armchair
And everyone will be coming over soon
The remaining sixty or sixty five minutes are him failing to come to grips with this in his own mind, contemplating suicide, and avoiding anyone else finding out why the baby can’t be seen or heard by them either, not just us the audience. The final five minutes/scene is everyone but the salesman finding out, including the neighbor’s dog
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Had to double check the page to make sure my mind wasn’t lying to me after waking up
how is horror third on the tags
Steam
I might have posted this before, but I kind of love this photo and the wes anderson discussion reminded me I had saved it.
It's Wes and Owen Wilson leaving James L Brooks' office after selling Bottle Rocket. Photo by Owen Wilson's mom, Laura.
So I guess what I'm saying does fit a bit with what pooka is saying... for me it's more the idea that they were allowed to - in some ways, in some situations - embrace all the little things that are 'too much'. Royal's family doesn't hate him for being weird, but they do call out that he's an asshole, and that that's a separate thing. Mister Fox is accepted for his off beat ways but not for putting others in danger. Ash struggles to be accepted because he hates his quirks and tries to copy others instead. Even Eli Cash's eventual break down is because he is struggling to force being one of the Tenenbaums without realizing that you can have quirks without being an asshole (and that he already was one, if not in name). Wes Anderson often seems to hit on that line/difference between being authentically yourself and being a self-centered asshole.
Luke is the superior brother though.
All that being said the soundtrack was 10/10, kind of a diamond in the rough there.
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It's amazing, like finally seeing the original of a band after mainly seeing cover acts.
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The Peoples joker may be better then you think it will be.
It may be the most comic loving movie I've ever seen in my life.
I drove two and a half hours to see it and it was wonderful.
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Youtube now available
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EDIT: And Morpheus is in it!
I get it only because he hasn't really made any money on a movie since Dracula.
But as someone who doesn't care if a movie makes money or not, I'm jazzed to see this
Well I guess not surprisingly that is very dead dove don't eat haha.
But thank you for saving my sanity and actually breaking it down!
Definitely worth seeing again if you caught it during its festival/secret screening run. There were a few extra scenes and some editing changes that were cool to see.
Is that Adam Driver as Al Pacino in Scarface?
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fucking rip to a real one
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Some really great practical stunts and Gosling and Blunt are so good together. Seriously, the movie works because theyre great together and you actually want them to be together.
Winston Duke is really fun in it as well.
Its worth watching in the theater.
So
...
I always have to remind myself "No, you're thinking of Wes Craven." Every time I see his name.
Man, I wish we got more of this Rock.
He's still clearly built like an action star but still comes off like a somewhat regular guy.
He knows he's not the biggest badass in the room, he's still rough and tumble, shows fear.
Its great.