Wes Anderson’s Wayward Journey

Wes Anderson at Prada

It has been a bit distracting seeing so many cameos in Wes Anderson’s recent films. Yes, that’s Henry Winkler in the “Real Modern Art Scene” from French Dispatch. I suppose that’s a pretty good indication how well respected he has become in Hollywood with Pamela Anderson blurting out “Wes Anderson is king” in this odd article about Brian Cox’s favorite movies. He had a role in Rushmore as Dr. Nelson Guggenheim. They were referencing The Grand Hotel Budapest. I firmly expect to see Pamela pitch up in Wes’ next project, especially with all the attention she has been getting in the wake of The Last Showgirl, directed by Gia Coppola. Wes has worked closely with Gia’s uncle Roman on many of his films.

I get the sense that fame and fortune have gone to Wes’ head and that his latest films have become vanity projects, much like his commercials for Prada and Montblanc. He even has his own Montblanc pen now!

Wes’ first star-studded cast was The Royal Tenenbaums. Not only was he finally able to land Gene Hackman as the disgraced patriarch of the family, but Anjelica Huston, Danny Glover, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Alec Baldwin (narrator), in addition to Bill Murray and Seymour Cassel, holdovers from Rushmore. You figure with a cast like that the movie could have been pulled in all sorts of directions but Wes remarkably held it together, delivering one memorable scene after another, never quite sure where he was going to go next with this wonderful dysfunctional family.

Unfortunately that cannot be said of his latest films. They seem to serve mostly to pack in as many guest cameos as possible with very thin plot lines that barely hold the stories together. The Phoenician Scheme was probably the best of this trio of films that also includes The French Dispatch and Asteroid City. With so many notable actors in small roles, you lose any sense of who you are supposed to follow.

This was most evident in Asteroid City with its multiple layers and so many recognizable faces pitching up that I found myself saying out loud, who’s next, Margot Robbie? Right on cue, there she was in a balcony scene between two plays going on at the same time near the end of the film. Admittedly, Wes had dropped a clue in a photograph that was presumably the deceased wife of Jason Schwartzman’s character Augie Steenback. I say presumably because you never quite knew who the actors or the “real persons” were in this star-studded film. It was a film about a film with a number of theatrical elements thrown in for good measure, loosely based on the premise of the first alien encounter in a fictional town not far from Area 51 in the 1950s.

One of the wonderful things about Wes Anderson is that there are so many things going on inside his head. Asteroid City got lost in the “Barbenheimer craze” that summer, yet here was the Fermi paradox laid before us in the most abstruse way possible, which I suppose is why many viewers didn’t get it. Not that it mattered with so many great actors taking turns in this odd film. There were a number of first appearances like that of Tom Hanks, who would reappear in The Phoenician Scheme, as Wes likes to invite everyone back to his movies, even if it is just for one small scene.

It lends the appearance of a big extended movie family — fictional parents, brothers, sisters, first cousins, long-lost cousins, in-laws, you name it — gathering around a big table and enjoying the convivial vibe. That’s the way his regulars describe it anyway. Wes brings everyone together the best way he can, determined to make it a friendly and mutually satisfying occasion. Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. Gene Hackman lost his patience, would get very testy, and even admonished Wes to “pull up his pants” while filming Tenenbaums. With the last scene cut, Gene just left. No goodbyes or hugs. That must have irked Wes a little after making such a great effort to get him to play Royal Tenenbaum. You can skip forward to the 14:30 minute mark of this clip to hear what Gene thought about the movie.

However, when you branch out like that and bring so many people onboard, it is pretty hard to hold things together. This was the sense I got in Wes’ last three films. I enjoyed them if for no other reason than the wonderful set designs, amusing moments and feeling for a lost era that he created, but they seemed like vanity projects. They lacked the cohesiveness and emotional impact that made The Royal Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic and Grand Hotel Budapest so fun to watch, which also had star-studded casts.

Wes is at his best when he is plunging deep into his own soul for material and not trying to make what are ostensibly art house films. French Dispatch seemed to be more about his love for the written word, which I thought was better done in his lovely little recreations of Roald Dahl short stories for Netflix. In large part because these were small casts with tight stories that suited his brand of filmmaking better. In French Dispatch, he tried to reach for something he couldn’t quite attain.

The same thing could be said for Asteroid City and The Phoenician Scheme. While I did make an effort to try to figure out what was going on in Asteroid City, I didn’t bother in The Phoenician Scheme. If he had some larger story he was trying to tell about neo-colonialism in the Middle East in the 1950s, I let it slide by me and just focused on the odd familial relationship he created between Zsa Zsa Korda and his estranged daughter Liesl. It was better that way.

This is no mark against Wes Anderson. I’m glad he is trying to reach for something bigger than himself, I just wish he would return to a firmer ground like he had in Grand Hotel Budapest — a compelling central story that allowed the viewer to better empathize with what was going on between the World Wars in Central Europe. In his three latest movies, I didn’t feel the same emotional attachment. I’m afraid people will start to lose interest if Wes can’t find that emotional center again and that would really be a shame.

For that reason, I watched Bottle Rocket again last night to see again how it all began. It is such a simple story, which he reprised with a much broader pallet in The Darjeeling Limited that is his brand of movie making at its best. If you look at the two films in tandem, you see how Wes grew as a filmmaker without sacrificing his personal attachment to these films. You can feel him in the movies. That cannot be said about his later films, where he feels wholly detached, as if examining the lives of his characters through a magnifying lens as you would a bug collection. I would like to see him get back to that sense of being part of the journey.