Accidentally Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson at The Design Museum, London

Ginevra back this week reporting for duty. Today I will be briefly reminiscing on an exhibition Mum and I saw at one of my favorite museums in London: The Design Museum. I have been going to the Design Museum since my dad first took me when it was still in the Shad Thames/London docklands area, always such a cool place to visit. The museum was founded in 1989 by renowned architect and designer Sir Terrance Conran so was a must visit for my architect dad. The museum now calls Kensington home, more posh than hip, but the building itself is a 1960’s space-y swing-y fun building, not at all staid, and a great place to house the world of design.

The exhibition we went to see was on Wes Anderson. Mom had previously seen an exhibition on Wes Anderson at the Paris Cinémathèque. It would appear that these exhibitions like to hop the pond between London and Paris as much as we do!

It was a great exhibition. Wes Anderson is a real auteur, a world builder. His particular vision is on display and celebrated and its fun to reminisce about your favorite Wes Anderson movies. He is meticulous in the designs of his sets and the shots of cinematography, you could pause each frame and have a perfectly composed piece. This makes his work pretty perfect for The Design Museum.

The exhibition was in chronological order starting with Bottle Rocket. This was his first full length film that he wrote and directed and worked with his college buddies the brothers Luke and Owen Wilson, with whom he would continue to collaborate and indeed still does. I saw Bottle Rocket after I had become a Wes Anderson fan. I wanted to see where he had started so to speak. At the exhibition, I really enjoyed seeing the story boarding, the little drawings of the scenes, a method of laying out a film I was first introduced to when I saw an exhibition on Stanley Kubrick at the Jewish Museum in San Francisco some years ago. Hand drawn story boards just have this sort of childish delight to them, though they are serious piece of cinema building as they map out the shots frame by frame, they are sort of the first fleshing out of how a movie will go and are really important.

There were also beautiful photographs taken by Luke and Owen’s Mum, acclaimed photographer Laura Wilson. You get the sense of this whole art world, with Wes directing and writing, the brothers acting (Owen also writing) the Wilson Mum photographing, sounds like a lot of family fun.

Next was Rushmore which I have always been a bit meh about, but as my Mum pointed out this is the beginning of the connection with the Coppola family, with Jason Schwartzman in the lead - Anderson later collaborates with Roman Coppola. The film is also the beginning of a fruitful relationship with Bill Murray. It’s the storyline of Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray wanting to get with the same woman which makes me gag, like seriously those are her only options? Neither of them are even remotely age appropriate just as a starting off objection. Like hello lady hitch a ride to the next town please!

What I did enjoy seeing were all the little world building props that were made that were on set but were not necessarily an explicit part of the film, they are there to help the actors find their character because that is ultimately what Wes Anderson cares about. It may seem that the point is the visuals, but the visuals are there to serve his characters and together they create the films. Notably there were playbills from the play Schwartzman puts on, notes from his classmates etc.

Finally we got to my favorite film: The Royal Tenenbaums. This was also co-written with Owen Wilson and starring both Owen and Luke, with Ben Stiller, Angelica Houston, Murray again, Gwyneth Paltrow, and the inimitable Gene Hackman. It’s Hackman’s loveable asshole that you simultaneously hate and root for that makes the film a joy to watch, as he interacts with the children he basically “messed up”. The film is in a way the first “real” Wes Anderson in that the set building, the world building really comes to the fore. There is more interior design and costume design, and framing than you could possibly hope for, a perfect piece for a design museum and the film that sets the stage and the expectations for the rest of Anderson’s work.

For each of the films they had extended clips which were really fun. I hadn’t seen the Royal Tenenbaums in a while and they had the clip where Royal gets his grandkids to come with him on a day of innocent debaucherous fun away from their neurotic dad. Its Hackman at his best and a joy to watch.

Next was The life Aquatic, I thought the visuals of that movie were fun, and there were some funny lines, but plot wise I was not as invested. I should give it a re-visit.

And then Darjeeling Limited. This is my Mum’s favorite. I’ve probably said “these Germans are bothering me” more times than I care to admit and more often than not it wasn’t about Germans. Its also possible I may also say “fuck the itinerary” a little too often. It’s a really great movie, those beautiful Anderson visuals and framing and the family dynamic of the three brothers really rings true.

Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest and Fantastic Mr. Fox were all so fun to reminisce about with models and drawings and props and costumes. Its such a feast of the visual senses and a celebration of art and indeed craft. With the ever looming presence of AI and a second industrial revolution on the way, the atomization and dehumanization of our culture, these hand made delights are even more important now. The hand made is what has stood the test of time and what will continue to in the future.

There is such a plethora of paper materials, of drawings, of building models all of which you would easily find in an architect’s office (well before architecture got auto-CAD - puke!) But because it is all in service of film and imagination it retains its humanity.

Wes Anderson has such a distinct color palette and color rendering of film plus framing, all of which has made his films so visually unique. There was an instagram account devoted to what was termed “accidentally Wes Anderson” where you take a photo or find yourself in a perfectly framed perfectly Wes Anderson colored environs. I remember reading a review from Bottle Rocket and the critic said you could tell that this was a director who really loved his characters, and I think that continues to ring true. I love his depictions of sort of “odd” families, because basically aren’t all families odd when it comes to it?

Wes’s vision is so unique that Saturday Night Live made one of its greatest spoofs imagining a Wes Anderson horror film, with Edward Norton as the Owen Wilson stand in. Its so spot on, so funny because Wes Andersons films are so distinctive.

Towards the end there was a little cinema room to watch his short films in full. The one we came in was called The Swan and is based on a Roald Dahl short story and starred Rupert Friend as the adult narrator recounting a traumatizing event during his youth. It was interesting how it was told, the subject matter was difficult to deal with, it involved extreme bullying by little boys to one another and the killing of a Swan, so disturbing that I didn’t want to take a picture of the dead swan wings that were over the door as you exit through the gift shop.

So that is my brief (but spectacular) review of a very enjoyable exhibition at a very enjoyable museum. Here are some links for further reading of articles on Wes Anderson by my Mum, starting with her review of almost the same exhibit at the Cinémathèque in Paris. And also below please indulge in my photos of the Wes Anderson exhibition, all of the beautiful handmade details. Thanks for reading! Also let me know which Wes is your favorite!

From Muse to Maker: “I would rather take a picture than be one" Lee Miller

Musée Musings