Wes Anderson's Chosen Families

Wes Anderson's nine feature films (soon to be ten including the as-yet-unreleased The French Dispatch) are perhaps some of the most stylistically recognisable movies of the last twenty years. It doesn't seem to matter if the subject matter is 12-year-old sweethearts, animated foxes, talking dogs in Japan or washed up twenty-somethings in New York, there is something illusive that seems to mark Anderson's creations as apart from other directors, distinct from one another yet somehow consistent from film to film, character to character. Perhaps it's just as Anderson himself has said in interviews, "I'd rather do my own thing. That's what I like to do". Whether loved or loathed by viewers, nobody can argue that the stylish precision of Anderson isn’t glaringly obvious. Whether in incredibly specific balanced shot compositions, delicately well-matched indie soundtracks, exaggerated colours and costumes or witty fast-paced dialogue, Wes Anderson's films are unique both stylistically and thematically. Beneath the exaggerated characters, fantastic cinematic universes, humour and aesthetic precision of these films often lies a sincere exploration of human relationships, the perils of growing up and the importance of family. So, as we recover from our disappointment at the delayed release of The French Dispatch - we're looking at you Ms Rona - let’s look back to consider the often-unappreciated significance of family and more importantly – chosen family - in Wes Anderson’s earlier films.

The Royal Tenenbaums was the third feature length film written and directed by Wes Anderson. Released in 2001 and telling the story of a dysfunctional family of child geniuses, the children now twenty years on (Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson and Owen Wilson) return to their family home and separated parents as they must each come to terms with the disappointments and losses of adulthood, attempting to heal a fractured family dynamic. This film to me appears to be the most emotionally loaded Anderson movie, touching on suicide, divorce, grief, addiction as well as our identity as both individuals and in relation to our families in a way that is in equal parts painful, yet surprisingly playful. There is no one protagonist of The Royal Tenenbaums, but amongst the colourful cast of characters includes Royal Tenenbaum himself (Gene Hackman), the father figure and a scoundrel who in his old age attempts to win back over his disillusioned family’s affection, Richie Tenenbaum (Luke Wilson) a once successful professional tennis player who is in love with his adopted sister Margot Tenenbaum (Gwyneth Paltrow), herself an ex-child prodigy playwright, now in an unhappy marriage with an older man (Bill Murray). What is most striking about The Royal Tenenbaums however is no one individual character, nor the incredibly talented cast, but rather the surprising depth that Anderson is able to employ in each individual without compromising his stylistic integrity. More accurately perhaps, it is the interaction of these individuals that is both characteristic of Anderson’s movies, and what sets it apart as arguably the best of his films. It is an exaggerated, but ultimately honest representation of the challenges of a family dynamic.

It may sound like the start of a bad joke, but when we ask ourselves what a fox, three grieving brothers on a train in India and a young girl who runs away from home with a boy scout have in common – we begin to see the way in which family underpins so much of Anderson’s work. The fantastic Mr Fox gives up his fantastic thieving because of his wife’s pregnancy, the three brothers of The Darjeeling Limited are searching for their estranged mother as they come to terms with their father’s death and twelve-year-old Suzie’s parent’s marriage is falling apart, whilst boy-scout Sam’s foster parents have abandoned him. In spite of geographic location, the age of the characters involved or even the species of those characters, Anderson’s stylistic escapism seems unable or perhaps unwilling to accommodate complete escapism from reality. The lives of the fictional characters in Wes Anderson’s films are tinged by very real brushes with loss and love, with the message of all his films seeming to be the importance of companionship, whether that comes from a romantic partner, friends or as is often the case, family.

The conclusion of many of Anderson’s films involve familial reconciliation or formation of some kind. In the case of Moonrise Kingdom boy-scout Sam, after a close brush with child services and a particularly unkind foster family, is finally adopted by Scout-master Randy Ward (Edward Norton). In Fantastic Mr Fox, Kristofferson Silverfox, the cousin initially resented by the only-child and son of Mr Fox is finally fully accepted into the family unit. In The Darjeeling Limited, the brothers abandon their useless attempt to reconcile with their mother and are finally able to move on, this time together, leaving behind the literal and metaphorical baggage they have been carrying since their father’s death. Anderson seems unparalleled in the respect he provides every character in his films, no matter how big or small the part. More importantly, familial connection in his work is not understood within the limited scope of who we are related to by blood. The adoption of Sam by the father figure boy-scout leader in Moonrise Kingdom, or bell boy Zero’s acceptance as a kind of surrogate son by his charismatic boss, Monsieur Gustave H. in The Grand Budapest Hotel is testament to this view of family as more than simply a biological lottery – but something that we can take an active role in creating and nurturing, even through our adulthood. Even in Isle of Dogs orphan Atari Kobayashi and his new bodyguard dog Chief become a kind of chosen family unit, whilst Spots and Peppermint start a family of their own with the birth of their puppies.

It is The Royal Tenenbaums however that is the ultimate demonstration of the value of chosen family in the Wes Anderson cinematic universe. Royal Tenenbaum’s faked stomach cancer has been discovered and as has the affairs of Margot Tenenbaum with a host of other men, including Owen Wilson’s character and close family friend Eli, who it transpires has a serious addiction problem. This affair has shattered Richie and combined with his failed career and unrequited love for Margot drives him to attempt suicide, meanwhile, Chas Tenenbaum is still unable to move on from his wife’s unexpected death, projecting his anxieties onto his two young sons. Everything seems to have fallen apart, each character isolated and miserable for a whole host of reasons. Ultimately, however, it is only through reliance on one another and communicating this reliance that any kind of recovery is possible. Richie survives his suicide attempt and returns home to Margot who admits that she has feelings for him too. Royal Tenenbaum realises at the point at which his fraud is discovered that the time he has spent with his adult family twenty years after his separation from Etheline is the happiest he has ever been. It is this moment of realisation that prompts him to genuinely reconcile with each of his children, taking Margot for the ice cream he never bought her as a child, taking Chas to visit the grave of his mother, the same graveyard at which Chas’s wife Sarah is buried and – most importantly to grant Etheline the divorce that allows her to remarry. It is through this act of letting go – of accepting what is important and what is inconsequential - that allows each character to come to terms with their interwoven pasts, coming together as the family is reconstituted through the marriage of Etheline and Henry Sherman. This newly merged family, of the widow Henry who is able to finally empathise with the grieving Chas and the returned children, is joined by the return of Richie’s childhood bird of prey Mordecai, now older and completely white. “Sometimes if a person has a traumatic experience their hair turns white”, Richie says at his surprise return, to which Margot replies “Well I’m sure he’ll get over it”.

This act of “getting over it” is a common theme in all of Wes Anderson’s films. The desire for acceptance by our families and our chosen families is an aching need that does not end as we grow into an adults and Anderson’s childhood experiences of his parent’s own divorce are a clear influence on the importance of chosen family in his work. In one interview he commented “the father-son thing may at least have much to do with people that I have met. For many years I have had a number of different friends who are in the same age range as my father and they have quite influenced me.” In The Royal Tenenbaums, the welcoming of Eli (played by Owen Wilson, Anderson’s college roommate) into the family unit perfectly demonstrates the value acceptance by a chosen family can have. In a moment of vulnerability, he admits to his friend Richie, “I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum”, “me too”, Richie replies. Despite the dysfunction of this and other families in Wes Anderson’s films, we as his audience can see this appeal of acceptance into a family unit. By the end of The Royal Tenenbaums, I find myself also wanting to be a Tenenbaum along with Eli, part of the extraordinary ordinariness of Wes Anderson’s beautifully stylised version of reality.