Quickies, Vol. XV

Quantum of Supremacy

Quantum of Solace (dir. Marc Forster, 2008) – Finally gave this one the second viewing it clearly needed, after unfairly measuring it against the standard (whether too high or just too different) of Casino Royale. It definitely sat better this time around, held its own more and seemed more like its own story rather than just an episode. An abundance of political content was hard to ignore. While not a bad thing in spirit, when the Bond franchise tries to make humanitarian statements, it feels a little like Starbucks saying they’re giving x% of the profits from one kind of special seasonal bean off to Africa. Also, how is this not influenced in every department by Bourne? Nothing against this new-and-supposedly-improved Bond, but he’s really more Matt Damon than Sean Connery or Roger Moore, isn’t he?

Grinning or wincing?

The Clock (dir. Vincente Minnelli, 1945) – Thanks again, Stanford Theatre. This is kind of a goofy little movie, melodrama at its purest, a musical minus the music. Robert Walker and Judy Garland are a couple fated to fall in love, which they do, and then fated to see the difference between love and romance. Of course, it’s all still very romantic. Aside from a formulaic narrative and some quirky acting, the quintessentially urban camerawork is worthy of praise. Almost seems as if the film hired a cinematographer who was over-qualified for the project. You get a real sense of height and depth. The camera begins and ends the same way: free-floating over crowds, relieving the viewer of the claustrophobia of the characters. It’s a God’s-eye view, or at least a view from the top of a skyscraper, recognizing the comfort that the cinematic audience experiences in contrast to its diegetic subjects. Most of the narrative conflict results from the city drowning out its inhabitants, separating them and crushing them. That the eponymous “clock” functions as the centripetal focus is fitting. It’s only a two-day shore leave, and they’re always at the mercy of time, which seems to tick away faster than it should in the metropolis. The question always seems to be whether they’ll have time, and it’s only when they make themselves and their romance subservient to the clock that they have any success.

"She thinks you're a failure?"

Bottle Rocket (dir. Wes Anderson, 1994) – C’mon, like there’s anything bad about this one. Even Marty Scorsese says it’s completely devoid of pessimism. After more-or-less completing a huge Wes Anderson project that didn’t have room for the beloved first feature, we had to watch it; it was a love-screening. Noticed a couple little edits of the Criterion edition. When Anthony picks up the book during the bookstore robbery, it’s not “Jobs in Government” anymore; it’s some warfare book. And when Bob tells his brother Futureman, “Can I at least have three bucks for gas?” His brother replies, “No, you can’t.” But above all, Bottle Rocket feels way more French New Wave than I ever gave it credit for. Watch some Godard & Truffaut – especially Band of Outsiders, Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim, and even Breathless and then you see their fingerprints all over Anderson’s first feature effort. Jump cuts, close-ups, zoom-outs, barely-audible dialogue, petty crime, criminals on the lam, funny cars, and that overall attitude of taking everything with an enormous grain of salt; the only big difference is Anderson’s delightful disdain for politics, making him more in line with Truffaut than Godard. There are too many beautiful and hilarious lines in this film to pick just one for here…might need to initiate some kind of new series. Yeah, probably.

Splitting headache

Scanners (dir. David Cronenberg, 1981) – After A History of Violence and watching numerous clips of The Brood, not to mention David Spade’s little joke in Tommy Boy, figured it was finally time to watch Scanners. It’s all there. And it’s not just a movie about photo-copying equipment. It’s been said that Cronenberg likes poking at bodies, but with Scanners he’s poking at them from the inside out. What’s truly horrific isn’t being blown up by a grenade or shot at; it’s one’s own brain exploding. While the dialogue, acting, and even narrative of this film is MST3K-worthy, the ideas presented are quite interesting. Much of it seems like an excuse for Cronenberg to investigate his own fear of the body and expose ours at the same time. There is something quite uncanny or unnerving about the body, isn’t there? Those of us who aren’t physicians can only wonder at what’s going on inside at any given moment in any given area. Not unlike Alien‘s great scene, there’s something freakish about our own innards, and our own obliviousness to the fact is probably a result of suppression more than simple ignorance. Scanners is mind over matter, or something like that, except the formula changes direction to expose suppression rather than wallow comfortably in it. Don’t swallow your puke, just blow chunks, is the idea here.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (etc.)

Film, staged

In Wes Anderson’s corpus of work, The Life Aquatic may just be the archetype, the consolidation of style & theme, the compressing of all-things-Wes into one film that overwhelms and confuses the unprepared viewer. It gets less credit than anything else the director has done, and for two main reasons. First, it’s deemed excessive. That’s certainly true and could not be argued – whether it’s “bad” is another question. Second, it came out following The Royal Tenenbaums, which came out after Rushmore, which came out after Bottle Rocket. Rushmore put Wes on the map, so all the film buffs and hipsters who saw it and loved it went and rented Bottle Rocket, which they found lovable and great in its own way but not quite “there” yet. When Tenenbaums came out, everyone else who didn’t see Rushmore either realized this was something great, or they really didn’t get it. Either way, you now had three films from the same director (and co-writer) to give you a good picture of what the major style and themes were, and a sizable crowd of people who thought they were “Wes Anderson” fans. When The Life Aquatic hit theaters, there was a lot of buzz that this was the film Wes had really wanted to make before but didn’t have the budget. Haven’t checked, but if my experience was any indication, the turnout on opening weekend to The Life Aquatic was substantially more than Tenenbaums, which obviously was the most popular film of the first three. People went to see The Life Aquatic expecting to laugh and to feel a connection to the characters like they did in the previous films. Wes’ characters weren’t always easy to love, exactly, but they weren’t very hard to love, either. That changed with this one. Steve Zissou repelled many viewers, perhaps because he was a bit more dirty-old-man than Dignan, Max, or even Royal. You can’t really say that Bill Murray was miscast, because he’s at least as much Wes’ muse as any other actor in his troupe. Add to Steve a supporting cast of characters that somehow seemed very “supporting” (unlike the ensemble of Tenenbaums), and an intense concentration Wes’ themes and style, and you’ve got a theater full of disappointed and rather nauseous viewers.

Connection

This nausea is easy to understand. To keep it in terms of “concentration” and budget constraints, imagine being too poor to serve your guests pure orange juice, so you water it down in order to spread it out and at least serve something. As you can afford it more, you water it down less. Then, in one fell swoop, you can afford to serve your guests the real thing. They may not be ready for it, and it may be too strong for them. Something like this happened with the reception of The Life Aquatic, although of course the illustration breaks down at a certain point. Still, Wes’ “authorship,” if it can be put that way, was simply not as strong in Bottle Rocket as it came to be in The Life Aquatic. James L. Brooks’ involvement with getting Bottle Rocket made led to him writing in new parts of the script, cutting parts out, and the like. (The hilarious line about how an “asshole like Bob can have such a great kitchen” – that’s Jim Brooks, not Wes Anderson.) By the time of The Life Aquatic, Wes grew out his hair, dappered himself up, and spent a lot of studio dough to create what probably appeared to be a comedy-action film when in fact it didn’t follow any formula other than Wes’ own. This isn’t to be overly congratulatory to him, since even his critics are quick to point out that it’s his distinctive, repetitive, overdone style that they find so tiresome. No one accuses him of being unoriginal, but of being all too singular, and being stuck in his own rut.

Blinding woman

Now, to the themes. Death makes hardly an appearance or even a suggestion in Bottle Rocket. By Rushmore, Max observes to Miss Cross, “So we both have dead people in our families.” No one dies in the film, but everything about the film is dedicated, in word and deed to fallen loved ones. Time is spent at a cemetery, and Max dedicates his magnum opus at the film’s end to his late mother and the late “Edward Appleby, a friend of a friend.” Characters in Tenenbaums make a few visits to a cemetery to visit fallen loved ones – again, a wife and also a wife/mother – until the film’s end when we witness a silent graveside service with only a gun salute. Even Buckley, the dog, dies, and his death presents opportunity for Royal to redeem himself in the eyes of Chas by saving Chas’ two boys from an oncoming car. (Never mind the fact that Royal hilariously endangered these grandsons of his earlier in a montage of running across the street during heavy traffic.) Richie’s suicide attempt is often cited as the most striking and overwhelming scene in the film. The soundtrack of Elliott Smith’s Needle in the Hay turned out to be sadly fitting.

Scare

The Life Aquatic is arguably even more concerned with death than the previous films. The film begins with a death, ends with a death, and is peppered throughout with little deaths. Esteban’s early demise at sea is the catalyst for Steve’s quest to find and destroy the jaguar shark. Ned’s death toward the end is, along with the Indian boy’s death in The Darjeeling Limited, the rawest death in Wes Anderson’s films. Royal’s death scene is poetic and beautiful, and most of the other deaths don’t occur within the film’s diegetic timeline. (Incidentally, if Ned’s death isn’t a nod to Manuel’s death in Captains Courageous, that’s quite a coincidence.) Earlier in The Life Aquatic, Steve shoots and kills one of the pirates. The crew attempts to hold a burial service for the man with no regard for his actions, though they are interrupted by Hennessey’s ship arriving and toss the body over the other side. (If this act doesn’t remind one of the rat’s death in Fantastic Mr. Fox – “But in the end he’s just another dead rat in a garbage dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant.”) Ned shows up near the beginning to introduce himself to Steve as his possible son and inform Steve that the woman who connects them died. Steve abruptly pauses his conversation with Ned and walks up to the top of the ship to smoke a cigarette. David Bowie explodes onto the soundtrack and we get a tracking shot of Steve’s hike replete with a slow-motion movement as he drops his hand drops down from his face after a hit on the cigarette. This is the death moment of Steve’s former lover. It’s late, since he only just found out, but Anderson’s characters always need a negotiation, a ritual to get them through death. These scenes always include at least some of the following: slow-motion, amplified musical soundtrack, tracking shot, close-up, and an absence of dialogue.

Mates

Death becomes more and more a fact of life for Steve, whose child-like nature rebels against it. When he arrives on the island (peninsula?) to meet up with his wife Eleanor (Anjelica Huston, the mother figure in Wes Anderson films), she informs him callously that his cat died. Steve is clearly upset, just as much that his cat died as at Eleanor’s careless way of telling him about it. Ned asks Steve what kind of cat it was, attempting to initiate an informal memorial. Steve’s bitterness prompts the reply, “Who gives a shit?…I think it was a tabby.” Here Steve corrects himself, momentarily angry at the messenger before giving the message itself its due. More significantly, prior to each screening for Steve’s two-part film shown within The Life Aquatic (and also entitled The Life Aquatic, in case anyone doubts the film’s self-reflexivity), his number one man dies. First it’s Esteban, and his death is featured as the primary event in the film. When part two is screened at the finale, it’s Ned’s death that punctuates the documentary.

As real as this beanie

The supposed “documentary” nature of Steve’s films gets some direct attention in the film and indirectly relates to the theme of death. During a one-on-one interview below deck of the Belafonte, Jane (Cate Blanchett), the British reporter who accompanies the crew on its voyage, accuses Steve’s film’s of being “fake.” Jane’s first question in the interview so disappoints Steve that his response is, “I thought this was supposed to be a puff piece.” Always the one to take things as personally as possible, Steve responds to the suggestion that his films are fake by pointing his pistol in Jane’s face and asking, “Does this seem fake?” He then asks Jane if it seemed fake when Esteban was eaten by a shark. His response is that of a child; he is oblivious to the possibility that anything in his films is less than completely authentic. The correlation between Steve as a filmmaker and Wes Anderson himself is too obvious to be denied. Anderson’s world is artificial, but only in a strictly superficial sense. That is to say, only the façade is “fake”; the heart of the films is “realist” to the highest degree just like Steve Zissou’s films. Steve’s criticism of Jane the reporter is Anderson’s criticism of the non-discerning critic/viewer: don’t be distracted by the surfaces of things. These films are no more “fake” than a child’s imagination is fake. The substance is fully real if the glossy finish appears disingenuous. And by creating a filmmaking protagonist such as Steve, who is more of a child than most children, Anderson arguably disarms his own critics who have accused him of being “pretentious.”

Internship

This is an aside, but the accusation that Anderson’s films are “pretentious” could hardly be more ironic. The suggestion deserves a few responses. First, the idea behind “pretense” is that of “pretending” to be that which one is not. The main characters in Anderson’s films have wild imaginations and try desperately – pretend, even – to be that which they are not naturally gifted to be. Their constant failures at one level brings them back repeatedly to all that they have in life: one another. Dignan stinks at being a crook, but at the end of the film, while basking in a glow that could come from nowhere but his own heart, he tells his friends visiting him at prison, “We did it, though, didn’t we?” His question is rhetorical, the answer in his mind clearly a resounding “Yes!” Second, all of Anderson’s protagonists are nothing more – or less – than children. To accuse Anderson of being pretentious is similar to accusing a child of pretense for constructing a tunnel of cardboard boxes in his garage and proclaiming that he is a spelunker. In the child’s world, he is a spelunker. In Anderson’s world, he’s a film director and nothing more. His characters live out his own fantasies, but they fail time and again. One of Max’s ridiculous plays (which are anything but creative – they all re-stage classic movies) ends with him taking a bow with a bloody nose after getting beaten up by one of his actors. Finally, the “pretense” allegation fails to take into account Anderson’s humor. Comedy hardly takes a break in his films, and when it does it’s brief and for an important reason. Anderson is notorious for his perfectionism in making movies. He takes the films very seriously so that the films don’t take themselves seriously.

I, kid

Rabbit trail over. The foreign woman is here in The Life Aquatic, as she is in all of Anderson’s films. Quick rundown: in Bottle Rocket, there’s Inez, Anthony’s Hispanic love interest who can’t speak English through most of the film. Any other women in the film? Really, only the blonde sorority sister at Bob’s house who is defined by idiocy of the most painful sort. Already in the first film, we know that Anderson has nothing against women, just typical American ones. In Rushmore there’s Miss Cross, who is British. Margaret Yang becomes Max’s friend/girlfriend by the end. She’s American, to be sure, but not your standard white-girl American. When the idea of the “foreign woman” is taken beyond ethnic connotations to include the definition of “distance,” we can begin to include almost all the rest of Anderson’s female characters. So in Rushmore, Max’s mother would qualify, having died while Max was only seven years old. Herman Blume’s wife gets little attention in the film, since she is in the process of suing Herman for divorce. In Tenenbaums, Chas’ wife has died a year before the film’s narrative begins. Royal visits his mother’s grave a couple times, emphasizing distance via death. Margot Tenenbaum, as Royal often points out, is adopted. Then there’s Etheline, who probably comes closest in Anderson’s films to breaking the mold of the foreign woman. Still, if one considers the film as primarily occurring from Royal’s point of view, then Etheline is the estranged wife. Skipping ahead, Peter in The Darjeeling Limited is married to a British woman. Jack’s love interest is defined by her distance from him, and the Indian woman he meets on the train is…Indian. Above all in the film, the mother of the brothers (Anjelica Huston, in her third consecutive Anderson film as a maternal figure) has left her family and her world for missionary work in India. When the boys finally catch up to her, she flees from them. (For the sake of space, Fantastic Mr. Fox will be omitted here, although the pattern persists there.)

Let me in

So in The Life Aquatic, Jane is a British reporter and Eleanor again becomes an estranged wife. (In fact, she’s an estranged wife twice over, having been married to Alistair before Steve.) Steve’s former lover, who is also Ned’s mother, died prior to the film’s beginning. The only female crew member, Anne-Marie, plays an odd and decidedly distant character by being almost perpetually topless. Her casual undress keeps her separated from the male crew members in nearly every shot of her. Whether this continuous theme of the distant woman pierces into (or stems from) the psychology of Wes Anderson’s own experience is hard to say, but it certainly confirms that his movies are male movies. They are not misogynistic; rather, they reflect a loss of the maternal repeatedly. Rushmore, Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, and The Darjeeling Limited all are heavily concerned with the absence of the mother and the attempt to replace her with a maternal or romantic figure. Ned’s fascination with Jane revolves in part around her pregnancy. Assuming the validity of the Oedipus complex, Ned’s romance with the pregnant Jane and fist fight with Steve (his potential father) embody the archetypal male character in Wes Anderson’s films.

Fake: that's just ketchup

That’s a little too cynical, however; or at least too cynical for Anderson. Though conflict exists between father-figures and son-figures, it’s only to build narrative tension leading up to a final (re)connection. Mr. Henry in Bottle Rocket notwithstanding, Rushmore, Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, and Fantastic Mr. Fox all end with a sort of resolution to the father-son problems presented in them. (The early death of the father in The Darjeeling Limited makes that film a necessary exception.) It’s just before Ned’s death that he and Steve discuss their first correspondence years earlier. As if to make up for lost time, this memory they share, and the mementos they kept ever since, connect them and compensate for years of lost connection. Ned dies, but Klaus’ nephew Werner steps in as a substitute for the son-figure for Steve. Steve’s acceptance of Werner (placing him on his shoulders while descending the steps) may be symbolism just as overt but just as powerful as the end loss of baggage concluding The Darjeeling Limited.

Like Francis & Sofia

This has become quite fractured due to the bit-by-bit writing of these paragraphs. For now, this’ll do. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: an excuse to ramble about themes prevalent in all of Wes Anderson’s films.

Fallen

UnionReunion

Remember

The Crew

That was pure wild-animal craziness: Fantastic Mr. Fox

We can use that!

Finally, disciples of Wes Anderson can feel vindicated – not that they ever cared – for their faith in a filmmaker whose efforts seem to hit and miss with the masses (particularly the critics) but which never stop providing constant joys to those blessed with the sight and souls to recognize and to feel the powerful beauties that he is so gifted at producing. (Let the record show that only one sentence was filled with over-the-top praise and swoonery for our friend Wes.)

The Crew

I will try to refrain (note: “try”) from delving into the “metascopic” ramifications of Wes’ films and the fascinating phenomenon of their diverse but predictable receptions into the general public. It’s the film that deserves attention: Fantastic Mr. Fox. Following the release of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, there was word of Wes’ next project: an adaptation of a Roald Dahl book, the sort of thing one expects Tim Burton to do, not Wes Anderson. The news was that Henry Selick – Burton’s collaborator on The Nightmare Before Christmas – would work with Wes to produce a stop motion animation film geared toward children and featuring a cast composed largely of actors Wes fans have seen and heard before. Some of us were, we confess, worried that good Wes was beginning his move toward selling out. This is the sort of thing directors and actors are good at doing, after all: finding some success with challenging movie work, then producing general-audience crowd-pleasers. At heart, we knew Wes wouldn’t do that sort of thing. The only other person trying was Spike Jonze, whose Where The Wild Things Are back in those days was looking like it would never be made. How does Hollywood successfully wed serious “independent” talent (someone with a unique artistic vision – nay, an “auteur”) with a bankable story intended for audiences young and old alike? We may appreciate Brad Bird and Andrew Hanson, but they’re really not “independent” talent.

His ears were cold.

While we were wondering this, Wes pulled a fast one on us, announcing a film called The Darjeeling Limited. More in the vein of his previous work, this one would be filmed mostly in India, bring Jason Schwartzman back into the fold, and feature real people with no puppets. This was more like it. Let the children grow old waiting for their “Mr. Fox” and let us have our vintage Wes Anderson grub. What we got was something great but something fairly vintage in Darjeeling; not that it didn’t have some great and interesting nuances from the other films. Years later (or longer), the trailer for Fantastic Mr. Fox was released, and immediately after (during, even), some of us confessed our sin of momentary doubt, realizing that this was something remarkable, something wonderful. Blast all those short films the studio subsequently released showing how they set up the puppets, etc., etc. Haven’t watched them, probably won’t for awhile. That would be like reading a book on the techniques of a magician (sorry, an “illusionist”) before, or soon after, going to a magic show. Sometimes it’s better to let beauty be beauty than to understand its inner workings.

I modified this tube sock.

Mr. Fox starts out like a silent film. Of course, it starts out as a book, quite like Rushmore and Tenenbaums, with an intertitle on the first page: “Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. One short, one fat, one lean. These horrible crooks, so different in looks, were nonetheless equally mean.” Unlike those films, though, this one starts without a soundtrack. The cut to Mr. Fox on his hill, then the trademark reverse-shot perpendicular cut to Mrs. Fox about to ascend it, happen without any real sound. The character movements are fast and jagged; it looks a little like Buster Keaton at a distance. This changes, of course, and music figures prominently throughout the film, to our great joy. British Invasion tunes are in sync with Mr. Fox’s invasion of the chicken coop, and the Beach Boys (a new one for Wes) set the new tone when Mr. Fox and the crew prepare to retaliate against “the man” in the disheveled but strangely organized manner of a bunch of West-Coast surfers, each knowing his part. This offsets the opening silence of the film, which stands out even more on the second viewing. Everything about the production of this film has been based on old standards; no computer imagery was allowed, and the stop-motion style itself hearkens back to a dated look. The early nod to silent cinema points to a source for all of Wes’ films that makes sense. He’s always loved staging his scenes as if they were in a play – at times very overtly indeed. This very theater-like mode of filmmaking defined early films, before directors and cinematographers learned new ways of moving cameras around to create something uniquely cinematic. Wes loves cinema enough to wallow in his film-history ruts, from silent cinema to the French New Wave.

The meanest, nastiest, ugliest farmers in this valley

The detail(s) of Mr. Fox is being mentioned a lot, and for good reason. Certainly Wes’ films have been getting progressively more detailed, going along with the “staged” aspect to his filmmaking style. (A personal favorite is the closet scene in Tenenbaums; all those board games…) There is enough detail in this film not to have any idea where to begin. For example, my eyes were somewhere else on the screen during the first viewing when, after which it was mentioned to me, the word “CUSS” appeared in graffiti on a building in the town. (The “cuss” gag, by the way, has to be the most creative way for a film to sidestep profanity and maintain a PG rating that has ever been.) Wes’ protagonists have always enjoyed their style: Dignan (yellow jumpsuits), Max (the hat), Royal (the suits), Steve (the beanie, etc.), and the Whitman boys (custom Louis Vuitton). Mr. Fox is no different in kind but rather in degree: he dresses more like Wes Anderson himself than any other W.A. character. The careful symmetry of the film and the Fox home within the film display all the tell-tale signs of a certain familiar look. However, at the precise moment when the viewer is becoming accustomed to this hyper-perfect surrealism, Mr. Fox sits down for breakfast and shocks the viewer by eating the way a wild animal eats. This and the cussfest between Mr. Fox and Badger (Bill Murray, thank you for returning), along with other scenes, are delightful indications that this film and its characters are really wild at heart.

How'd you get platinum?

Ironic about this film’s reception (and, we’re back into it) is that it’s been embraced as something fresh and different from a director who apparently could only make one kind of film. With no intention of selling short the special beauty of Mr. Fox, it’s worth noting that thematically it is uncannily similar to all of Wes’ previous films. A fearless leader, unhappy with a status-quo life, bands together a small community of outcasts all connected somehow for a particular goal, a goal that serves merely as a façade concealing the desire for togetherness that unites them. I know of no simpler way of boiling down Wes’ main theme than this, and even now the number of little exceptions and nuances in all the films clamor for attention. Mr. Fox is the quintessential Wes Anderson character, this time given a nice touch by George Clooney, whose efforts with the Coen brothers in particular give him all the right stuff for this role. (Think O Brother, Where Art Thou? especially.)

Tail grab

With the exception of Bottle Rocket, each of Wes’ films has included death at some layer. In Rushmore, the memories of Max’s mom and Miss Cross’ husband surface many times. In Tenenbaums, the family visits the gravesite of Chas’ wife and Royal’s mother; the dog Buckley’s death and Royal’s own at the film’s finale make death particularly integral to that film. The Life Aquatic practically opens with a death scene, seen through a filmstrip showing Steve’s friend Esteban get eaten by a jaguar shark. The death of Steve’s son Ned later in the film is shocking for its rawness; it’s the kind of scene no one expects in an Anderson film. Obviously The Darjeeling Limited has everything to do with death. Some form or another of the word “die” is mentioned many times in Mr. Fox, perhaps surprising some parents who took their children to see it. As animals who steal from humans for a living, their lives are in danger from the first scene, and Mrs. Fox is typically the one to suggest that they may die. The only death that does occur (other than a few silly beagles – they really do love blueberries) is that of Rat. Rat is an interesting character, one easy to take for granted. He functions as a sort of counterpoint to Wolf. Wolf is talked about a few times, usually scaring Mr. Fox by the power of suggestion. Wolf is something transcendent, beautiful, and fearsome. His only appearance gives rise to a wow-sensation, standing there with authority, dignity, and – most importantly in Wes Anderson’s world – independence. He is his own creature, and his ability to survive and thrive on his own means that the characters in the film, just like the audience watching it, will never see him close-up. He is an enigma that Wes himself doesn’t seem to understand, and so how can his characters?

Symmetry

Rat is similar but located on the other end of the spectrum. Instead of beauty and dignity, he’s defined by ugliness and unseemliness. He runs his own show, too, but without the beauty and poise of Wolf, Rat is destined to die, which he does. Mr. Fox and the others pity him as much as they fear him, whether they’re locking him into a chest while they steal cider or are giving him his last sip before his pupils turn into little X’s. When Ash sorrows for Rat and suggests his redemption, Mr. Fox says something to the effect of, “But in the end he’s just another dead rat in a garbage dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant.” Isn’t this like Ari and Uzi giving a BB-gun salute at Royal’s funeral or Max deciding not to fell a tree on Mr. Blume while visiting Max’s mother’s grave? These death scenes in Wes’ films are often punctuated or offset with humor. The effect doesn’t seem to be to dampen the gravity of the scenes, but to lend something human to them. Wes only took the big, humorless risk with two death scenes – in Life Aquatic and Darjeeling, and the latter worked better than the former. Rat’s death in Mr. Fox gives the ugly character some final beauty, as he confesses how all he really wanted was some nice cider.

She's always doom 'n gloom

All of Wes’ protagonists – all of his characters, really – live on the edge. Or, if they’re not, they will be soon. Without the risk of death in some form, there is no life, even in a children’s movie. Just as clear as that, the risk is always taken collectively, never as individuals. At one point in the film, Mr. Fox sets out to sacrifice himself for the cause. He leaves everyone and heads toward the danger, but he’s back in a flash, proclaiming, “Suicide mission canceled,” and proclaiming a new and better plan that maximizes the strengths of everyone (demolitions expert!). The only way an individual succeeds by himself (yes, usually “himself”) is when others are nearby also desperately trying to succeed for the sake of the group. Often the victories are accidental, such as Ash breaking Kristofferson out of his cage, but they’re still victories. There’s no way to put a bottom line to one of Wes’ films, in my book. So, I’ll finish here by shouting out to Jason Schwartzman and  Wally Wolodarsky, whose voices in Mr. Fox provided more delight and laughs than I’ve experienced in a cinema in awhile. Also, these images are great: