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With Tenenbaums, Rushmore and maybe the Darjeeling Limited we had enough of the classic Anderson visual style for the films to have lovely atmosphere, but with

With Tenenbaums, Rushmore and maybe the Darjeeling Limited we had enough of the classic Anderson visual style for the films to have lovely atmosphere, but with the actors still being warm, lively and human enough to create real sympathy. After those, his own movies have almost become caricatures of an Anderson film and the characters have become so much like clockwork that they might as well be set pieces themselves. The one later exception I can think of, off the top of my head was Ralph Fiennes in Hotel Budapest. His character, and the actor himself in how he plays him, are just too zesty to stay wooden.

ramesh31 1y ago
>After those, his own movies have almost become caricatures of an Anderson film and the characters have become so much like clockwork that they might as well be set pieces themselves. I think this is a feature of his artistic refinement through the years; he's the last true visual storyteller in Hollywood. Actors don't really matter, scripts don't really matter - it's a treat for the eyes alone. Something really was lost in the transition from silent to "talkies" where the focus became entirely on plot and dialogue. If you go back and watch those films now, the very best of them had almost no dialogue or title cards. I'd liken what he is doing to something like Joyce in literature, where it's not even about the words, but their semantic structures alone. It seems that all visionary artists end up going in this direction, see Picasso in his later years of total abstraction, or Schoenberg's final works that completely abandoned tonality.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- Citizen_Lame 1y ago
  Check out Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal. First season has no dialogue.
bborud 1y ago
Ralph Fiennes in Grand Budapest isn't just an exception. The performance, in my not so humble opinion, is quite possibly the most memorable and brilliant of any performance in a Wes Anderson movie. It is delightful. That being said, I actually think his style of late has its place. At least he is trying something different in a time when most movies are so derivative and bum-numbingly boring that I rarely bother seeing a movie in a movie-theater. There is a rarity of interesting outliers in mainstream film today. Outliers are good. They are not wayward miscreants that must be herded back into mediocrity lest we have to think. It isn't like I'm a snob who only watches art films. I used to watch almost everything that hit the big screen, and I'd enjoy the whole range from hard-to-grasp, arty farty stuff most people think is boring/demanding/ugly/confusing to blatantly commercial nonsense ... that was nonetheless entertaining and fun. (I'd make my proto-hipster friends cringe with my love of B-movies). I had to empty my wallet of ticket stubs regularly so it wouldn't burst the seams.
pram 1y ago
IDK personally I don't think Grand Budapest feels wooden at all. The entire scene where Adrien Brody smashes the Egon Schiele-esque lesbian painting is one of the most hilarious things I've seen in a movie.
mzs 1y ago
The actors being the most human-like in "Fantastic Mr. Fox" of all his films is pretty telling.
babyshake 1y ago
This is clearly intentional, whether you like it or not. My mileage varies depending on my mood. Fiennes is indeed grand in Budapest.
torben-friis 1y ago
For me the casual violence in this movie really destroyed it - it’s not at all super prevalent throughout the film but there are some “gory” bits played for comedy that took me fully out of the whimsical coziness I expected from it. The comedy didn’t land either.

ramesh31 1y ago

>After those, his own movies have almost become caricatures of an Anderson film and the characters have become so much like clockwork that they might as well be set pieces themselves. I think this is a feature of his artistic refinement through the years; he's the last true visual storyteller in Hollywood. Actors don't really matter, scripts don't really matter - it's a treat for the eyes alone. Something really was lost in the transition from silent to "talkies" where the focus became entirely on plot and dialogue. If you go back and watch those films now, the very best of them had almost no dialogue or title cards. I'd liken what he is doing to something like Joyce in literature, where it's not even about the words, but their semantic structures alone. It seems that all visionary artists end up going in this direction, see Picasso in his later years of total abstraction, or Schoenberg's final works that completely abandoned tonality.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Citizen_Lame 1y ago
Check out Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal. First season has no dialogue.

bborud 1y ago

Ralph Fiennes in Grand Budapest isn't just an exception. The performance, in my not so humble opinion, is quite possibly the most memorable and brilliant of any performance in a Wes Anderson movie. It is delightful. That being said, I actually think his style of late has its place. At least he is trying something different in a time when most movies are so derivative and bum-numbingly boring that I rarely bother seeing a movie in a movie-theater. There is a rarity of interesting outliers in mainstream film today. Outliers are good. They are not wayward miscreants that must be herded back into mediocrity lest we have to think. It isn't like I'm a snob who only watches art films. I used to watch almost everything that hit the big screen, and I'd enjoy the whole range from hard-to-grasp, arty farty stuff most people think is boring/demanding/ugly/confusing to blatantly commercial nonsense ... that was nonetheless entertaining and fun. (I'd make my proto-hipster friends cringe with my love of B-movies). I had to empty my wallet of ticket stubs regularly so it wouldn't burst the seams.

pram 1y ago

IDK personally I don't think Grand Budapest feels wooden at all. The entire scene where Adrien Brody smashes the Egon Schiele-esque lesbian painting is one of the most hilarious things I've seen in a movie.

mzs 1y ago

The actors being the most human-like in "Fantastic Mr. Fox" of all his films is pretty telling.

babyshake 1y ago

This is clearly intentional, whether you like it or not. My mileage varies depending on my mood. Fiennes is indeed grand in Budapest.

torben-friis 1y ago

For me the casual violence in this movie really destroyed it - it’s not at all super prevalent throughout the film but there are some “gory” bits played for comedy that took me fully out of the whimsical coziness I expected from it. The comedy didn’t land either.