Wes Anderson
Encyclopedia : W : WE : WES : Wes Anderson
Wesley Wales Anderson (born May 1, 1969, in Houston, Texas) is an American writer, producer, and director of films and commercials. He attended St. John's School, a private school in Houston, later used as a filming location for his second film, Rushmore. Anderson then studied philosophy at the University of Texas, where he met future collaborator Owen Wilson.
Influences
Anderson's acknowledged inspirations include several directors of the French New Wave. François Truffaut and Louis Malle in particular influenced his penchant for sympathetic tragicomic characterization, his unconventional mis-en-scene, and his unabashedly personal approach to filmmaking. He often cites Mike Nichols's famous comedy The Graduate as a recurring inspiration for his own work, which also features adolescent themes. Anderson is also noted for drawing on famous works of American literature, particularly the down-beat work of F. Scott Fitzgerald and J.D. Salinger. Fitzgerald's famous quote that "There are no second acts in American lives" seems to apply to all of Anderson's characters, who tend to fall quickly from their initial success and renown (although many of them make limited comebacks). Anderson's increasingly stylized films also borrow youthful aesthetic qualities from comics such as Charles Schultz's Peanuts (The Royal Tenenbaums/Rushmore) and Herge's Tintin graphic novels (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou).Critical Interpretations
Some have argued that the themes of Anderson's films have a significant relationship to 19th Century Romanticism. Anderson's tendency to fetishize states of childhood, his emphasis on imaginative individualism, his focus on characters who fall from an initial state of grace, his portrayal of melancholy as a redemptive state, and his interest in the power of nature as a site for self-discovery (particularly in The Life Aquatic) are all signs of a Romantic artistic temperament. #redirect
Many critics understand Anderson as a postmodernist filmmaker in the vein of Jean-Luc Godard. These critics emphasize Anderson's tendency to use extensive intertextual quotations, parody different genre-conventions quite blatantly, and include many different reflexive gestures within each of his films. #redirect
Personnel
Anderson has created each of his films with many of the same actors, crew members, and other collaborators. This has contributed to a great consistency of both style and dramatic content.
Actor Owen Wilson co-wrote Wes Anderson's first three films and has appeared in major roles in three of Anderson's films. Actors Bill Murray, Kevin Clevette, Kumar Pallana, his son Dipak Pallana, Stephen Dignan, Andrew Wilson (the "third" Wilson brother, though older than Luke and Owen), Luke Wilson, Brian Tenenbaum, Eric Chase Anderson (Wes's brother), and Seymour Cassel have each appeared in three of his films. Anjelica Huston has appeared in two of them.
Eric Anderson has been involved in set design on several of his brothers films. Writer Noah Baumbach has also been involved with the creative process for many of the films. Cinematographer Robert Yeoman, A.S.C., has photographed each of Wes Anderson's feature films as well as several of his commercials. Anderson's pictures always feature the music of composer (and Devo singer) Mark Mothersbaugh. Production designer David Wasco has also worked on three of Anderson's films.
Other Work
Anderson's interest in stop-motion animation (used in The Life Aquatic) led him to his next full-length project, a stop-motion animation adaptation Roald Dahl book, Fantastic Mr Fox.
In 2005, Anderson produced The Squid and the Whale, directed by Life Aquatic co-writer Noah Baumbach. It garnered two awards at the Sundance Film Festival.
In 2006, he directed a "My Life, My Card" American Express commercial. [link]
According to a CNN interview with Owen Wilson, Anderson is in the very early stages of work on a project about three brothers who make a journey to India. [link]
Acclaim and Criticism
Critical reviews of Anderson's early work were initially very positive and hopeful, with some very loud exceptions. His second film Rushmore was a critical darling, and many argued that Anderson would soon become a major artistic voice in American cinema. Many critics noted a strong sense of sympathetic but intelligent humanism in Anderson's films that linked them to the work of Jean Renoir and François Truffaut. The Royal Tenenbaums was also a critical favorite, although many objected to Anderson's increasingly stylized, knowingly ironic, and reference-laden filmmaking style, thinking of it as a kind of emptily-clever hip formalism. The film was his first high-profile commercial success, featuring several notable A-list stars. Critics reacted more negatively to his fourth film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Many critics find that Anderson's idiosyncratic filmmaking style has become overripe, rather than truly developing.
Filmography
- Bottle Rocket (short) (1994)
- Bottle Rocket (1996)
- Rushmore (1998)
- The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
- The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
- Fantastic Mr. Fox (2006)
External links
- [Into The Deep], in-depth Anderson profile at The Guardian (February 12, 2005)
- [Wes Anderson's American Express commercial]
- ["The 'Quirky' New Wave".] Alternate Takes
| The Films of Wes Anderson | |
|---|---|
| Features Bottle Rocket (1996) | Rushmore | The Royal Tenenbaums | The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou | Fantastic Mr. Fox | |
| Shorts Bottle Rocket (1994) | |
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.