The Best Films of the Zeroes: 2

2. THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS. (2002)
Directed by Wes Anderson

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is the highest ranked English-language film on this list. Wes Anderson’s third film as writer/director doesn’t deviate too far from his normal style, and is the equal of his previous film, RUSHMORE, one of the previous decade’s very best films (if there’s interest, I might look at doing a smaller Best of the 90s list soon). With a glittering cast, almost all of whom match or surpass their previous career best performances, this is a heart-warming, slightly odd, emotionally draining comedy-drama, with all the hallmarks that the writer/director has made his own over his six film career. In the aftermath of THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, Anderson has made three more films, none of which could quite live up to the achievement here; although each is excellent. Even if this is to be his peak, there’s nothing to be ashamed of in that, for this is as perfect a film as American cinema has produced in years.

As I’ve mentioned, Anderson is a director with many trademarks. While his namesake, Paul Thomas Anderson seems to have shed the early style he became famous for, Wes has become tied to it. A film like THE DARJEELING LIMITED suffers slightly not because of its quality as such, but because it’s under the shadow of Anderson’s earlier work. For many directors, a lack of progression in their style, or in the sort of films that they’re interested in making can become a hindrance, but I would always enjoy watching Anderson make the same film every three years, or so, even in the understanding that, that way, he would struggle to equal his best work. As it is, he is now probably the most distinctive filmmaker in Hollywood today, even if what seems like a hundred different pale imitations have attempted to ape his work.

The Tenenbaums, and their patriarch Royal, are the quintessential rich, dysfunctional American family. Watching the film, it’s hard not to be reminded of the writings of Salinger or Fitzgerald. Anderson even frames the film as a book, courtesy of a lugubrious voiceover by Alec Baldwin. At the start of the film, the Tenenbaums are a clan divided. Royal (Gene Hackman) lives in a hotel with his friend, and one-time manservant Pagoda (Kumar Pallana), his children are in crisis, Chas (Ben Stiller) is obsessed with the safety of him and his children following his wife’s death in a plane crash, adopted daughter Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a depressive, and has fallen out of love with her husband Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray) while Richie (Luke Wilson), passionately in love with his adopted sister is falling apart in front of a live audience on the ATP tennis tour. All the while, Etheline (Anjelica Huston), Royal’s estranged wife, is a serene presence in the family’s home; a home that each of her children are gravitating back towards.

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is the last film that Anderson co-wrote with Owen Wilson (so far), and it may be that Wilson is the missing ingredient from Anderson’s later films. He co-wrote THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU with Noah Baumbach, THE DARJEELING LIMITED with Jason Schwartzman and FANTASTIC MR FOX with Baumbach again. There’s something in the chemistry between Anderson and Wilson that makes their collaborations fly. While the director’s subsequent films have attempted to similarly meld the director’s trademark visual style with the kind of simplistic emotional bluntness that was so breathtaking in RUSHMORE and here.

Anderson’s films have always been built on a basis of arch, designed artifice, and THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is not just no exception, it’s also the perfect example of Anderson’s craft. The design of the Tenenbaum house on Archer Avenue is beautiful, and a precursor to the cut-away of the boat in THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, or the tracking shot of the train in THE DARJEELING LIMITED. It’s also another film in Anderson’s oeuvre where the characters are clothed in one distinctive costume throughout, whether that’s Margot’s furcoat, Chas’s Adidas tracksuit, Richie’s tennis gear or Henry Sherman’s (Danny Glover) blue suit and bow tie. It’s another level of distance from reality in Anderson’s film, something similar to what Paul Thomas Anderson does in the brilliant PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE.

That’s Anderson’s best trick. There’s so much artifice in his films, deliberately, that moments of genuine emotion are so disarming that they have a massive impact. You can think of the moment in THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU when Murray’s epidemic hero asks his son ‘Are you having a good time, out here on the ocean, with me?’, that also showcases the other ace up Anderson’s sleeve, the gauche vulnerability of his leading characters, who despite their frequently confident exteriors are obviously a mass of insecurities and vulnerability. For Herman Blume in RUSHMORE and Mr. Fox in FANTASTIC MR FOX, here we have Royal Tenenbaum, Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), the three children; Margot, Chas and Richie and Murray’s Raleigh St. Clair.

With so many massive characters, it’s hugely to Anderson’s credit that he manages to pitch the film, successfully, as an ensemble comedy. It would have been easy to focus solely on Royal, or on the doomed love between Richie and Margot, or even on novelist, and family friend, Eli, and his descent into addiction hell. The film is beautifully played by all of the cast. Murray, Hackman and Huston all approach their career best performances, while both Wilson brothers have never even got near to the perfection of their performances here. This was a lot of people’s first exposure to Stiller as a (more) serious actor, and he’s a revelation. The vulnerability that has always been present in his best comic creations overloads the character so that you’re completely unsure of how he’s going to react to any situation. The best performance in the film, though, comes from Gwyneth Paltrow, who as Margot, is sublime. It’s so much better than any other performance in her career that in Anderson’s next film, THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, Cate Blanchett does a Paltrow impression.

There are a number of superb scenes in the film, most of which are heavily linked to the superb soundtrack, which is a given in Anderson’s films. Here, there’s haunting use of music by Nico, Paul Simon, The Rolling Stones and, most memorably, Elliott Smith. The chemistry between the actors leads to some delightful moments, such as the scene in which Royal verbally spars with Henry, not to mention a stand-out rooftop scene between Luke Wilson and Paltrow, which is nearly heartbreaking. Given the problems that would later derail Owen Wilson’s career, the scenes in which his real-life brother and on-screen best friend tries to get him to quit drugs sticks in the throat, somewhat. The most powerful scene is the one soundtracked by Elliott Smith, a shaving scene with a hell of a kick. The film is funny throughout, yet it’s the moments of devastating sadness that endure. The mixture of the two help to make THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS the most rewatchable film of the decade, the best American film of the decade, and an incontrovertible, masterpiece that gets better and better with every viewing.