The Auteur of Wes Anderson

"I saved American cinema. What did you ever do?"

Wes Anderson films are a good fitness regimen for the cinema -- "good cardiovascular" -- keeping the spirits high for the patient with celluloid cancer. The Anderson canon is evidence of auteurism, in that he is a writer-director who is involved in every area of the filmmaking process and makes a series of films that have distinct and consistent themes and styles. Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums represent Anderson's birth into the cinema and possibly his early apex.

From a thematic perspective, Anderson's films melt together into a cohesive world, "a degree of two above reality", the auteur says, with consistently similar characters and situations. Scorsese on Anderson: "He knows how to convey the simple joys and interactions between people so well and with such richness." Like Jean Renoir films, one "immediately feels connected to the characters through [Anderson's] love for them." Antiheros like Dignan, Max Fischer, Royal Tenenbaum and his kids, all experience isolation and failure. They are outsiders of society, very childish, and almost cartoonish (the costumes advance to unchanging uniforms in The Royal Tenenbaums). Anderson has an unlikely affinity for the loser, raising him up by showing him sympathetically with montage and redemption -- the characters always come full circle having some sort of epiphany or coming-to-age. Each character has respective quirks that enhances the subtle wit that permeates through each film.

From a stylistic perspective, "Anderson has a fine sense of how music works against an image." Anderson says that "a lot of times, music helps inspire an idea. I may not even have the script yet; I just know I want to use a song, and I'll write a scene around the song." In Bottle Rocket, Anderson learned how "a story and characters can be supported through music." Anderson had The Rolling Stones' "2000 Man" in his mind for years, and the scene where Dignan runs back into the warehouse to save Applejack was written with this song in mind. "They'll never catch me man, 'cause I'm fuckin' innocent." And you believe him.

Anderson masterly uses music to slow motion. The most memorable scenes in Rushmore are as Max bows with a bloody nose while that endearing and melodic piano is played; the absurd and gleefully happy montage as Herman and Max prepare the aquarium for Miss Cross to Oh Yoko; and the slow motion dance with Miss Cross to "Oh La La". The music is intricately connected to the image, the image is unimaginable without it, and greatly enhances the feeling in the film. The cinema is, after all, in one word: emotion.

In The Royal Tenenbaums, Margot's slow motion introduction to Nico's These Days, helps express how each Margot and Richie have lost their way, have a nostalgia for their youth, and shows their secret desires for each other. Or Richie's suicide attempt to I-stab-myself-in-the-chest Elliot Smith's Needle in the Hay. Anderson just knows how to support the story and characters through music.

Anderson's use of the wide angel lens with a deep focus shows off the finely detailed world that each of his characters inhabit. Because Anderson is intimately involved in every process, including meticulously planning the mise-en-scene with the art designer, every detail further concretes the somewhat fantastical cinematic world of his films.

While Max never really saves Latin, Anderson never really saves American cinema. But, damn it, we believe he does.