J.D. Salinger, Wes Anderson, Sic Transit Gloria
and the American Family
Wes Anderson strikes a chord with this generation that is unlike any other American filmmaker on the scene today. Two of his films spawned millions of Halloween costumes across America’s college campuses and personally, I’ve seen The Royal Tenenbaums at least twenty times, Rushmore almost as many, and I saw The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou five times in the theatre. Come to think of it, the last time I felt this compelled to love something was when I read all of J.D. Salinger’s work. I don’t think I’m wrong to draw a parallel between the author and auteur, where one can see Rushmore as Anderson’s Catcher in the Rye and the Royal Tenenbaums his Glass family tale and present Wes Anderson as our generation’s Salinger.
Salinger’s characters have a preternatural aversion to what Holden Caufield describes as “phonies”: insincere and hypocritical people. They yearn for cultural-wide reality check. Stephen Whitfield quotes John Updike in order to explain this yearning, “His [Salinger] ‘conviction that our inner lives greatly matter, peculiarly qualifies him to sing of an America, where, for most of us, there seems little to do but to feel’” (586). Today, Holden’s “phonies” have been replaced by a generation of people who have modeled their lives after Salinger’s characters which means that irony governs and with it, the ability to be affected is completely lost. But, a cycle has occurred and Updike’s observation once again rings true in Anderson’s films. “In a climate where coolness reigns and nothing matters, the toughest stance to take is one of engagement and empathy. Anderson seems to have accepted the challenge” (Olsen 12). Anderson, like Salinger, begins by exploring the rejection of the family as a means of rooting out the failures (like Holden’s decision to not go home after he had been expelled in The Catcher in the Rye) (p.51) and shifts to an embracing of failure and family where the sentiment becomes one of sympathy and a decided “we’ll always have each other” if nothing else.
The source of Anderson’s engagement and empathy lies in his treatment of the American family, taking a cue from Salinger:
For Salinger the family now holds the key. In a vast world full of misunderstanding and estrangement, the sensitive innocent must turn in towards the family to find the intimate love and communication that is so lacking in the outside world. It is through the family that he retains his equilibrium, balancing his moral integrity against the social pressures of the outside world…The Glass family is a striking affirmation in an era dominated by the disintegrating families of O’Neill and Wolfe. (Levine 98)
Anderson picks up on the fact that it is not the world that is full of misunderstanding and estrangement, but rather the relationships within the family. He explores the idea of the selfish parent as a person encased in a hard unfeeling shell due to generations of the disintegrating families of O’Neill and Wolfe. Therefore, the selfish parent (and those raised by him) looks to define the self outside of familial ties but has nothing to turn to in the event of failure. Anderson suggests in his films that the family still holds the key and that by experiencing failure, one will once again turn in towards the family to reconnect and redevelop the intimate love and communication that was once destroyed. The hidden benefit of failure is that it reminds us of one of the greatest American values: family.
Anderson uses a light, non-satriric touch to comfortably explore the pain of failure and alienation of family. He uses comedy to allow the viewer to laugh even if uncomfortably, definitely empathetically; he wants us to feel the significance of togetherness whether it is Max and his created family in Rushmore, the reunification of the Tenenbaum family in the Royal Tenenbaums or Steve Zissou’s familial reconciliation in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.
The filmmaker is reacting to a culture where one no longer rejects the family, rather, the individual must fight to maintain the family in spite of its imminent disintegration. He is the strongest voice in film today that seems to truly believe in family first. Following in Anderson’s wake are television shows like Arrested Development or Brothers and Sisters; both of which explore the dynamics of a dysfunctional family, functioning. The New York Times on September 7, 2007 wrote an article titled “Up Close and Painful” about the shift from film’s exploration of the single life to a more in depth study of the problems of the institution of marriage itself. Rather than solving our problems by looking out, we are looking in towards family, very much like Salinger’s Franny coming home to deal with her frustrations and failures.
The filmmaker’s work has “a melancholy and a nostalgic longing for a time past (perhaps childhood, perhaps just some impossible, fictional, mythic time when everything was uncomplicated and everything was generally ‘all right’” (MacDowell 4). It is a reaction to the failure of the family as a cohesive unit and therefore a way to deal with our need for the familiar and nurturing. To go back, means to remember what it is like to feel emotions to a time where one had a sense of integrity. Salinger used a similar tone in his writing where he “stood for a total withdrawal from reality into the womb of childhood and innocence” (Whitfield 586). Both seem to yearn for the authenticity and sincerity of childhood rather than childhood itself.
Salinger’s Franny and Zooey and The Catcher in the Rye emphasize a heavy sense of failure that drives the characters home and towards the family. Zooey to Franny: “You came home. You not only came home but you went into a goddam collapse” (Salinger 195). Salinger acknowledges the pull of the family as a place where one can experience collapse and failure. Similarly, in The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caufield wanders about after his latest failure unsure of how to go home without disrupting the normalcy. In the end however, he ploddingly makes it home at the behest of his younger sister, because the draw of family is too strong to push him away. Anderson takes this and incorporates it with the new state of the American family. No longer is the family a picture of normalcy, instead, Anderson’s characters like Max in Rushmore, the Tenenbaum children, or Steve Zissou encounter a world where the family unit is broken, emotions are hindered, and the ability to relate to one another is completely lost. These films show characters going home and changing rather than remaining failed. The family becomes a place for healing much in the way it was for Franny and Holden and this time, the whole familial unit is restored.
“Sic Transit Gloria, Glory fades, by Max Fischer” is the only Latin that Max from Rushmore knows, but it is a phrase that explains Wes Anderson’s intentions. His characters are plagued with failures, haunted by past greatness and have a strong need to relocate themselves. If Margot from the Royal Tenenbaums was once known as a playwright or Steve from The Life Aquatic as an oceanographer, Anderson redefines them as functioning members of a family. The family becomes the place where the self can explore society and it is through the family that the self can be defined, not through a mode of success. This is an example of where Anderson approaches the family through a modern eye while using Salinger’s emphasis on family. When Anderson’s characters return home and find it a mess, they look towards outward success like career. Anderson wants his characters to look past that mess, and rediscover the family. When interviewed Anderson said, “‘those are guys who lack some basic level of human decency, they have done some unforgivable things. I have some compassion for them. I am interested in people with those kinds of faults and who turn it around” (Mackenzie 7). He is interested in the Royals and Zissous who are able to embrace failure as a way to become closer to what meaningful, the family.
When Max’s “glory fades,” it is his father that first encourages him to pursue his old dreams of becoming a senator or something great, but Max can only respond “Pipe dreams dad, I’m a barber’s son.” While at first this exchange seems unsuccessful, it is the first time where Max and his father act like a family, where the self (Max’s plans for the future) meets with the family for support, something that only the family will always unconditionally provide in the Anderson/Salinger world.
Anderson definitely understands that there are moments when this is not necessarily true. For example, in the Royal Tenenbaums, he makes sure to paint the failed father, Royal, in a blameworthy light before allowing him to make amends. In Royal’s big fight with rival Henry Sherman, the camera is positioned in sympathy with Sherman. Anderson uses singles and with each escalating accusation, the shots get shorter and closer, until Sherman lets out a long rant: the camera is on a high angle over the shoulder shot, so that we are accusing with Henry, and looking down at Royal who looks quite small. And when Henry feels his shame for getting caught up, Anderson gives us a close reaction shot. The viewer is really meant to blame Royal. Even Richie can admit that Royal never understood “any of us [the Tenenbaum children],” but the point is that he is trying. All of his successes and failures outside of the family have given him nothing, but if he had a familial relationship, he would always have something that would be meaningful for himself. His first unselfish act is to divorce his wife Etheline so that she could marry her new love, Henry Sherman.
With Steve Zissou’s life falling apart he begins to see past his emotional pretenses. When he discusses his son Ned with his estranged wife, Anderson punches in to a close up as Zissou says “it’s very difficult for me.” Steve begins asking the same questions that were posed in the beginning during the TV interview, “What happened to me,” “Did I lose my talent,” “am I ever going to be good again?” He finally is ready to seriously confront them himself instead of ignoring them. Anderson frames him looking out over a mountain over the water as if there is a chance at change or redemption. Zissou looks out to the future and says, “I’ll probably just end up going home.” A return to family: he comes to realize failure is not so bad.
At the beginning of each narrative, the family is in a state of disarray: it is broken because of the mother’s death in Rushmore, the Tenenbaums are paralyzed and alienated from each other after “two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster,” and lastly, Steve Zissou in the Life Aquatic is unable to emote and be a member of a family. The moment that Anderson captures is where the shared world of the familial breaks open and the illusion is gone, where one can’t pretend that everything is okay anymore.
This sentiment is an echo of Holden Caufield’s frustrations with the phonies. Holden attempts to live in a perpetual moment of truth where there is never the illusion of everything being okay. The difference between The Catcher and the Rye and Wes Anderson’s films is that Holden ultimately embraces the illusion and chooses to go home and eventually go to school in the fall; he returns to all of the things he rejected throughout the novel. Anderson picks up on the same notion, where characters initially disregard the family, but by the end they return and understand that the familial is difficult and not perfect.
Rushmore opens on this the idea that Max refuses to accept his father as family. In an early scene of the film where Max is confronted by Dr. Guggenheim for his poor grades, Max immediately reminds the headmaster that it was a brilliant one act play that won him a scholarship to Rushmore and that he deserves to be there. Max’s mother encouraged him in that direction, and he desperately wants to stay true to her memory by remaining at Rushmore. Max’s mother, while not physically present in the film (she died when he was young) is ever present as she looms over all of Max’s actions and decisions. In an effort to “connect with his anger and sadness over his mother’s death,” Max engages in “outrageously provocative behaviour, begging for negative attention” (Jones 24). Part of this behavior involves rejecting his real father and not allowing him to play a significant role in his life. When introduced, Anderson doesn’t reveal the father’s face until Max looks at his haircut in the mirror; Max’s father’s image appears for a moment in the same mirror. By showing his face for the first time in a small, mediated way, Max’s father’s authority is undermined and reflected to another source. Mr. Fischer isn’t exactly real father figure either; he doesn’t seem to guide Max, rather Max seems to guide him. He jokes about Max’s failed exam by turning a grade of 37 into an 87. Max’s guidelines are confused because the authority at the school demands the 87, but the father doesn’t rightly encourage it. Ultimately, this makes it easy for Max reject his father and instead to turn to Mr. Blume as a father figure- a sign that at first, Max cannot pretend it is alright and therefore seeks an outside source of healing similar to Holden’s New York City wandering.
In 1963, Sam Baskett described Salinger’s Glass family stories as “an exciting and original attempt to deal with the American experience” (Baskett 61). Elaborating on the ideas of Rushmore, Anderson takes this idea of a family representing the best that American culture has been able to produce and uses today’s favored irony to confront complicated ideas of the American family. The tagline for the Royal Tenenbaums is “Family isn’t a word. It’s a sentence.” The ideal American family has been so utterly transformed that its become this complicated mess of failure and betrayal that leaves the members in a paralyzed state where they are so encased in their ironies that they are completely alienated from each other. In a way, Anderson doesn’t necessarily lose sight of the notion of a great American family, but represents it in a more accurate and relatable light. That family has lost its moral righteousness and instead has regained feeling.
In the opening sequence, Anderson presents the Tenenbaum children as if they were members of Salinger’s Glass family. Although still children, they are presented as fully developed adults: Margot reads Chekhov while Chas demands money from his mother who simply asks him to write a check she can sign. The father, Royal, confronts his children in a conference where he faces them as if they were a tribunal. He frankly discusses the separation from their mother and they respond in an adult like manner asking clear questions like “Was it our fault?” Royal implies that it is their fault, pushing the blame outside of himself, which ends up alienating him from his children. This tribunal is mirrored soon after as the children face the press about their mother’s book Family of Geniuses. This positioning places the three siblings in a defensive place where they have to defend their value as people against the idea that they are simply unique objects. In fact, Anderson uses objects to define each character as they are introduced with a set of things they are interested in “collection of cars, library of plays” where each shot is visually full of objects in which to describe the characters. They are so thoroughly defined by their early childhood that they are forced into a situation and personality where they cannot change.
Anderson uses the selfish parent to differentiate his family from the Glass family. Royal Tenenbaum, in true bad parent form, turns against Chas in a BB gun game where he chooses to shoot him in the hand in spite of the fact that they are on the same team. He constantly isolates Margot by introducing her as his adopted daughter in order to distance her from him and favors Richie to the point of exclusion. Anderson mournfully frames Margot and Chas in windows so that they are not only isolated from their father, as he takes Richie on a private outing. With the selfish parent, Salinger’s brilliant American family has “been erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster.” The filmmaker visually represents this in the last shot of the opening where Richie’s hawk, Mordecai flies around it the empty grey sky above the Tenenbaum manse to emphasizes the fleeing of the greatness.
The next sequence reveals them 22 years later virtually unchanged in mannerisms and appearance. Their clothing translates from past to present, freezing the characters in who they are, the embodiment of Max’s sic transit gloria: their glory has completely diminished. Each character has developed a secret behavior that has taken over their ability to be productive. Richie is crippled by his love for his adopted sister Margot and suffered a shocking loss in the tennis world, Margot languishes in her bathroom secretly smoking cigarettes and concealing other secret love trysts because she can’t seem to get enough love from her family or husband, and Chas is devastated by his wife’s death to the point where he forces his children to go through habitual fire drills in an attempt to completely dominate their safety.
In reaction to their failures, the Tenenbaum children return home drawn by the memories of comfort and a general feeling of all right. Chas returns to a place and time where he felt in control and incubated from danger. He claims his return is due to sprinklers being installed in his apartment even though there aren’t sprinklers at his childhood home; it gives him a sense of safety. His children, Ari and Uzi, constantly question his motives and they sort of act like a Greek chorus, in order to end ground him to reality: Ari descends from the top bunk bed to the floor where Chas lies, as if to bestow his good sense on his father. After Chas moves home, Etheline decides to rescue Margot from her incubation and Richie soon follows. In the bathroom, Margot is completely removed from having to be herself; she can be the shadow of her former great self and languish in the tub with the pathetic tiny TV. The sad Peanuts song, “Christmas Time Is Here,” plays throughout this sequence and complements their mournful pathetic demeanor. It is perhaps an indication that they themselves are somehow responsible for their emotional ruts and that moving home is an attempt to break out of it.
Anderson’s protagonist in the Life Aquatic represents the product of the broken home and dysfunctional family. Steve Zissou is a jaded middle-aged man who is utterly isolated in his inability to emote, and is therefore a character that would, ” I hate fathers, and I never wanted to be one.” He drives away the one person who might have loved him in the past, his wife, but one can never really see why or if she ever loved him at all. It is the son that eventually reaches out to the father, when Ned seeks out Steve. Unfortunately, in his emotional hole, Steve rejects the idea in their first conversation, choosing instead to remove himself and get high in the furthest reaches of the boat. However, Ned refuses to leave, so Steve is resigned to accept him. Rather than explore a real relationship, Steve annexes Ned into the created world of Steve Zissou. He tries to turn him into the son that he might have wanted, first by attempting to change his name, and by passing it off as a gift, “I thought you’d like to let me give you mine…I would have named you Kingsley if I had a say in it.”
As Zissou and his son attempt to reconnect for the first time, they share moments of death: Ned reflects on his mother’s suicide, and Steve talks about his best friend, Estaban’s death. Death becomes a channel that merits sensitivity, but even that isn’t enough jumpstart Steve’s genuine emotion. Anderson keeps giving us these moments that should be eliciting great, deep emotion from the characters, but instead, Steve seems so empty that it feels more touching when he can’t react normally. For example, his wife Eleanor tells him his favorite cat dies, and he reacts by accusing her of being unfeeling. His reaction comes off as a self defense mechanism where he realizes that he is incapable of doing anything about feeling sad or upset over another death that he blames someone else, and then takes a swig out of a half full bottle of whisky as if he thinks to himself, “oh this is something that really sad, angry people do when they hear bad news.”
In fact, Steve Zissou begins to play the role of the father simply for the sake of a documentary he happens to be filming. He is so encased in his hard shell of un-feeling that Ned begins to feel like a character in a “relationship subplot” of a film.
Through the film medium, Wes Anderson is able to manipulate the visual space to physically represent the damage and repair of his families. The best example is in The Royal Tenenbaums where the paralysis from the damaged family gives off a sense of “claustrophobia at the center of the film…everyone is locked in their own private worlds” (Mackenzie 6). Chas’ imprisonment is most obvious from the start of the film when Anderson portrays a late night fired drill. The handheld camera lends the scene a sense of urgency, but Uzi’s lazy reluctance to participate shows Chas’ hysteria. He is closed off from dealing with his wife’s death and instead is stuck in his fear. Chas is so distanced that when Richie reaches out to tell him that he loves him, all he can do is respond with “stop saying that.”
Richie’s spaces throughout the film are the most childlike and locked in. His tent is like a nostalgic time capsule where one can listen to records on a record player and dream about the space themed sheets. It also acts as in incubation and a shield from what is out there; the shed on the roof acts in a similar fashion. These spaces seem to be an adult extension of the tiny spaces he would share with his sister Margot, for example, under the bench in the museum. Like his beard and sunglasses, they protect him.
Margot, on the other hand, creates a world of secret experimentalism to shut off the rest of the world. She seems to have taken all of the rejection from her father in her early years and developed secretive habits where she could try and feel validated in her love. Margot uses marriage as a private space, but feels a sense of entrapment and stasis, so she jumps from relationship to relationship. Anderson represents her confused sense of a private space by using a quick montage of short shots revealing her many past relationships to her husband. Royal pinpoints this paralysis when he says to Margot, “You used to be a genius, at least that’s what they say.” On one hand, it indicates their former glory, while at the same time acknowledging its false sense of sincerity and security.
Anderson encloses the world in an even smaller space: illicit love between siblings. The closed world (as separate from the family) becomes even smaller when two siblings share it because their only outlet for real emotion is not exactly a healthy sexual relationship. In this sense, Margot and Richie’s relationship is the most touching where the first real poignant moment of the film occurs when they are reunited at the dock. Anderson, who continually uses in camera slow motion to stress a particular shot, brings it into place to reveal tenderness. Margot and Richie are equals, but emotionally connected on two different levels: first family, and second romantic love. They have a relationship that has a routine and an “as always.” Unfortunately, since neither can really express their love for one another, they remain even further incubated and alienated from each other and the damage is apparent.
Ultimately, Anderson shows the family, particularly this brand of American family, to be a desired enclosed world in itself. The window into this is through the character Eli Cash. Ken Jones explains the Cash character as “a little lower on the economic ladder, whose aspiration to be part of the exclusive milieu dovetails with a profound need for family” (Jones 24). Eli Cash is similar to Max from Rushmore in that he represents this person who wants so badly to be in with something. For Max it was Rushmore and falling in love. For Eli, it’s the Tenenbaums: he senses a magical quality of America’s greatness (great playwright, great businessman, great tennis player) in them, which draws him to them. They are the family he wishes he could belong to. Unlike the Tenenbaums, however, he has found success in literary pop culture, but is still separated from them because his genius is often questioned, “why would a reviewer make the point of saying someone’s not a genius? Do you especially think I’m not a genius?” He becomes so emotionally dependent on them as a family (while also badly needing a mother figure) that he continues to send Etheline all of his report cards and clippings. When he breaks off his relationship with Margot he tells her that she is in love with Richie and that it is sick and disgusting because they’re siblings. Although, much in the way that Richie and Margot are siblings, Eli and Margot are siblings. He is very much a member functioning member of the family and therefore, their relationship could be viewed just as “sick and disgusting.” Being on the outside, however, allows him to be a character that represents the person who can truly recognize family when he sees it. He becomes involved with Margot to sort of be closer to the family, he even admits, “I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum you know.”
In order to redeem the family in spite of its flaws, Anderson draws on the redemptive character of the selfish parent. This character grew from the parents of Salinger’s Glass family stories. Bessie and Les have produced very self-sufficient children, which allowed for them to maintain a distinct aloof-like quality that sets them apart from their offspring. This aloof-ness developed into the modern day selfish parent, which is something that clearly differentiates today’s family from Salinger’s family. This matriarchal or patriarchal figure is not necessarily a bad person, but someone who has completely lost touch with the family. He has become so concerned with his personal failures that he is unable to go home without taking the steps to heal the family and allow the children to come home.
When Mr. Blume is introduced, he gives a speech for the students at Rushmore where he says, “For some of you it doesn’t matter, you were born rich and you are going to stay rich,” but for the less fortunate his advice is “they can’t buy backbone.” He senses the disconnect between success and money; his money hasn’t bought him his dreams. As a result, even though Blume represents the success of the American dream (rich, family with kids, success in his career) he has failed as a person. Anderson portrays Blume’s disappointment in the scene where he aimlessly tosses golf balls into a dirty pool with a lame cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth. He defeating looks over as his wife flirts with a younger man- the tennis pro. With each golf ball, he seems to fall into a deeper emotional hole, as if he were throwing away his dreams with each golf ball. He carries a whisky to the pool and cannonballs into the womb water and remains in fetal position as a young, virile spermlike boy swims around him. After throwing the golf balls away he follows them into the pool sort of as a sign of his ultimate defeat, his definite lameness.
Blume is also completely unconnected to his sons; for example, when his Ronny turns on the AC to blast Blume’s reaction is to deadpan and simply turns it off. The camera then moves to the outside of the car. “Never in my wildest imaginations did I ever dream that I would have sons like these.” The deadpan represents the figure of the dislocated or selfish parent. “As an emotive gesture, it’s uniquely contextual: a work in negative space, a non-reaction to a reaction-begging event. It’s a look for a seen-it-all age and, as the default pose for a generation of would-be ironists, the most debased gesture in current usage, a gimmick for instant cool and wise-up superiority” (Norris 34). The parent who can’t deal with either his own failures of his failed family resorts to turning the pain into something ironic and obvious, and therefore something that shouldn’t elicit emotion. He becomes a shell of a person- someone who forgot what it means to be human. He also relies so much on his personal success that he forgets the value of family and even rejects it as just another layer of failure that is ironic, a sort of “see? I can’t keep my career together, why should I bother about my family,” it is the “wise-up superiority” that Chris Norris talked about.
Royal Tenenbaum is the ultimate selfish parent. He has no idea what it means to be fatherly, nor does he seem to do anything unless it positively affects is own life. At the start of the film, the children return home in an attempt to repair their static lives, but Royal returns home because he went bankrupt and was kicked out of his hotel. He sort of knows what role he should have been playing all along, so he confronts his wife Etheline by saying, “I want my family back,” but she rejects him (like he rejected the family). During this confrontation Anderson visually places Etheline ahead of Royal, and she is the one that leaves the frame as they argue, a sign of her control of the situation. Royal resorts the cheap “I’m dying” ploy to lure her back in, so she returns into frame. Anderson explores the potential of death as an emotional lure, and later in the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, how it brings about emotionality when it definitely occurs. With the potential of death, the characters, for the most part, are more willing to forgive each other. When Royal actually elicits an extreme emotional response, he can’t handle it and immediately contradicts himself, “I’m not dying,” so again she leaves the frame.
The damage Royal’s absence incurred is quite apparent when he meets them for the first time in twenty years. As Royal confronts his children, Anderson repeats the image from the beginning of the film where they sit in conference – only this time Chas is physically separated from the group. He refuses to let Royal in and cannot forgive him for abandoning them as children. He is especially resentful of the fact that Royal was missing while he was dealing with his wife’s death as well as the fact that Royal stole from him as a child. He really hasn’t changed since their childhood as he repeats beliefs that separate and alienate his children, for example he reminds the adopted Margot, “Well she wasn’t really your real grandmother.” In returning to his family, Royal has a sense of “they’re all he’s got” and even though it stems from a selfish need it turns out to be the correct sentiment.
Richie is the only Tenenbaum that sympathizes with Royal and appropriately says, “I know you’re not very good with disappointment.” Richie understands that Royal wants success for his children in order to feel successful himself- but doesn’t feel the need to encourage it himself. This little truism is the first of many that arise out of Royal’s interactions with the family. His bad parent behavior gives him license, in a way, to say what he wants to, regardless of its insensitivities. For example, he bluntly tells Chas “I think you’re having a nervous breakdown, I don’t think you’ve recovered from Rachel’s death.” In this way, Royal activates and rejuvenates the family’s feelings (even if they are against him), which eventually gives them the ability to break free from their stagnation.
Anderson sets up Steve Zissou’s selfish parent character from the opening scenes before we are even introduced to his long lost son. Steve seems emotionally botoxed so that he can only state, not feel, his emotion. Steve often makes blatant statements “I’m on edge” with the deadpan. Questions that Steve experiences throughout the film are posed in the beginning when he watches an interview with himself where the reporter asks him “what is Steve?” He only quietly looks on and poignantly touches the TV screen as if he really had no idea how he had become the way he was.
Reporter Jane Winslett writes, “The Zissou of my childhood represents all the dreams I’ve come to regret.” Steve clings so dearly to the Zissou of her childhood that he rejects anyone who cannot hold him to that standard. His selfishness arises from his need to validate himself through his career rather than his relationships. He looses a friend to the dangerous jaguar shark, but chooses to continue chasing it despite the danger it puts on his crew. Steve eventually suffers a mutiny and is accused of being a “selfish maniac.” When Ned wants to call him “Dad,” he responds negatively because he is too selfish (and previously damaged by his dwindling fame) to acknowledge his mistakes in not being a father in the first place. After this conversation, the characters exit the frame, leaving Ned alone in his abandonment.
The director offers several solutions to issues raised by being in a family today. He seems to restructure the family so that authority is transferred to the youths of the films that have an awareness of an emotional need that the adults lack. Disillusionment with the family has completely dissipated and transformed into this delicate need for a reaffirmation of feeling and togetherness despite whatever dysfunctions might be in play. Max creates a family for himself in Rushmore, while also eventually accepting his real father, the youngest and oldest generation of Tenenbaums in the Royal Tenenbaums redeem the family, and Steve Zissou finally breaks down and recognizes his need for a loving family after his probable son’s death in the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. The resolutions of these films give a sense of “we’ll always have each other,” and that it is in the family that we can locate the self and find meaning.
The first time that Blume and Max meet Anderson uses close-ups as Blume drives slowly and Max walks to show an instant connection between them. They are both intrigued by each other and sense that they are kindred spirits. Blume becomes a great father figure for Max, as someone who has achieved success and can set an example (unlike his barber father) and Max becomes the youthful jolt that Blume needs to invigorate his life. The mother figure is fulfilled when he meets Miss Cross. She is able to fill the void in his life after his mother’s death because she (like his mother) encourages the ability to dream and imagine: Miss Cross leaves an inspirational Cousteau quote in a Sunken Diving book that Max reads.
By situating Max’s created family in this way, it is inevitable that Miss Cross and Blume become romantically involved. Their first honest flirtation occurs when Blume goes to her house where Anderson gives us a wide shot of Blume knocking on the door and retreating down the steps. This move is very similar to his hiding behind the tree the first time he had to speak with her alone. In that scene Blume desperately needed to engage in his emotions but couldn’t figure out how to handle it, so when the tension breaks, he suddenly sprints away as if to get away from those feelings as fast as possible. Again during his flirtation on Miss Cross’ stoop, he is unsure of his emotional state, and therefore retreats from it. The wide shot gives us a sense of his unease, while also showing us his smallness in the face of it. Anderson also visually situates Miss Cross above Blume in order to show who is in control. His “new family” of Miss Cross and Blume works because they both have the sense that “I can’t safely say I don’t think I’ve met anyone like you [Max]” and therefore are invested enough to stick by Max. They become the inspiration and support that he is looking for in a family.
Now that his new familial relationships are set up, Max casts off his real father in an obvious manner. Mister Fisher forlornly looks on as Max tells him to go home because he has to go to a “cast and crew dinner only” in spite of the fact that his father attempts to provide fatherly care, “do you need money?” Max shrugs him off and his dinner ends up being with his created family, Blume and Miss Cross. Since he has set this up as his family, he completely rejects the intrusion of Miss Cross’ date, Peter. His reaction at first seems childlike, where he attacks Miss Cross for bringing a stranger into their circle. He is naïve, but through the director’s shot choices and Max’s truthful attacks, Max commands the control in this scene. As Max says, “that’s because you weren’t invited” the camera gives us a reaction shot of Miss Cross looking completely frozen in bewilderment. When Max cracks a joke about Peter’s OR scrubs “OR they?” Blume can barely contain his laughter. Blume and Cross blame each other for Max’s outburst, while Max, playing the adult, claims he can write a hit play and can drink whisky to unwind should he please. He does what he wants because he has the control, he is the one who created this group of people, and they don’t quite know how to act in his world, yet are still so willing to be a part of it. Peter looks on as an alien, who doesn’t quite know how to act.
When Max reconciles with Miss Cross, a strange Oedipal situation is set up. She tells him that he reminds her of her dead husband, Edward Appleby. She is already an adult figure in his life, and also the only female one. He positions her as the mother figure with Blume as the father, and by relating him to her dead husband, the erotic gets complicated. She seems drawn to him because of these characteristics (Max’s ability to hold onto dreams) that are similar to Edward’s, while she is supposed to be fulfilling a nurturing role as the adult. Max is overtly attracted to her, and even tries to destroy the father figure, Blume, later on once his jealousy is activated. She assumes the mother role by becoming his tutor in another musical montage that depicts the created family as congealing and functioning normally. In the end, this positioning is unhealthy and culminates in the joining of both created and real family where Max finally finds himself amongst a group of people who love and support him where he can relax and be himself.
This feeling of togetherness and “we’ll always have each other” is exemplified in Anderson’s use of plot device to bring all of the characters together in the final scene. Miss Cross and Max have a conversation that sums up Anderson’s intentions.
MAX
No one got hurt.
MISS CROSS
Except you.
MAX
No, I didn’t get hurt that bad.
He accepts his family, his father and his created family and gets that it is with them that he has a cushion to help him through the times when he does hurt badly: the family triumphs even if it isn’t perfect.
Steve Zissou has two versions of the family: the real, his son Ned and the created, Team Zissou. He treats both as projects rather than actual familial units that he belongs to. Steve initiates Ned into his “band of misfits” by giving him a red cap and Speedo as if to quickly insert him into an existing structure, but unfortunately one that has become stagnant and without meaningful interactions. His motives for reaching out are completely selfish, “because he looks up to me” and he feels as if he is doing Ned the favor of “throwing him a life preserver.” Team Zissou lives on Steve’s island in dorm like rooms. They’re all very much trapped by the nostalgia of Steve’s prior greatness not knowing where else to turn. They sit together, in the room, watching old documentaries when they were successful, pathetically looking on. Steve feels the weight of the failure as he watches them, so he walks out and takes off his red cap. They have no idea how to relate to each other without that success. With Ned’s persistence, Steve is lead towards opening up and accessing the sincerity that he lacked.
During the Ping Island Lighting Strike Operation, Team Zissou is lead through a decaying island that mirrors Steve’s own decay. When the operation seems to have failed, and he tumbles down the stairs in a literal fall from grace. It is here where admits the truth of his failures, and accepts his son Ned as a son, and accepts his role as a father. He allows Ned to help him up; it is Ned who throws Steve a life preserver after all.
Steve’s transformation is complete when he endures the death of a son he so recently connected with. Anderson uses quick cuts as Zissou attempts to shield Ned as their helicopter crashes, but unsuccessfully. Silence. No music. Just water. There is no longer lack of emotion, but rather, it is too full of it. The funeral is pregnant with a heaviness that unites the characters with a shared emotion. Their togetherness is no longer about chasing after the glory of finding the jaguar shark; rather it is a way for the family to heal. Anderson visually represents their closeness as they huddle together in a tiny submarine with Steve at the helm. He enters into the realm of childlike magic and wonder as the group explores the unknown. It becomes a way for adults to explore the sincere emotions that one recalls from childhood- the feelings of all is well, and a sense that have a support system that works. The team had been chasing after this shark throughout the film, they’ve lost two members, so the moment they finally encounter it, is timeless, as if suspended in the air. It unites them once again in a shared experience with emotions of cathartic release (instead of the sadness over Ned’s death). Steve breaks down and cries finally become a person again, not just playing Steve Zissou the famous oceanographer. The entire crew physically connects as they all touch him on the shoulder at the same time. Steve taking on his role as father touches the future when he places his hand on Jane’s pregnant belly. Anderson shows him as a character that has the potential to make a shift in the way families operate because his development was so significant. He took his failed career and learned to love it anyway, while also healing whatever damage he had was holding within, which allows him to be a healthier image of fatherhood. Anderson can’t help but continue his tradition of feel good togetherness at the end of his films, so he adds an epilogue to the narrative where all of the characters including Ned join each other on the deck of the Belafonte.
Mordecai is set free. Anderson uses his freedom as a way to visualize the releasing of old failures and tensions as the family begins to reunite and start over again. Although their unification occurs under false pretences (Royal lies about having cancer), impending death forces the Tenenbaum family to question what is really important to them. What is success (or failure) without a family to give it meaning? As the film progresses the family begins to sense a need to make amends with each other mainly due to the efforts of the oldest and youngest generations, Royal, Ari, and Uzi. The members of the Tenenbaum family are so incredibly bruised and alienated from each other that as they reconnect the relationships are not ironic but rather, poignant. They take their failures and learn to love each other again, realizing that perhaps it’s not necessarily the most important thing in the world to be a family of geniuses.
In the scene where the family gathers around Royal as he pretends to collapse, they physically hold on to each other for support (like Margot behind Etheline) and it is the first moment of unity for the family. After which, the Tenenbaum family is often visually treated as a whole unit, particularly when they are being confronted: Royal has brought them together. For example, following Royal’s collapse, they face Dr. MacClure as a unit as he gives a diagnosis.
The family once again attends the sick bed, watching an interview with Eli Cash who is discussing the Tenenbaums as if he really belonged. He accuses, “the father [Royal] abandoning them at a crucial time.” The camera then focuses on the TV and Anderson uses a slow push in reveals Eli’s breakdown, which foreshadows the breaking down of Royal’s relationship to the family when truth is revealed. As Sherman disclosed Royal’s lie, each character reacted as they had been reacting the entire movie: Chas with anger, Margot with quiet almost indifference, and Richie with a profound sadness. Etheline leaves the room. However, it is at this crucial confrontation that Royal realizes (as the narrator tells us) how important his family was to him and how happy they were together during his sojourn. Status quo was better at first for him rather than being disappointed in his and his children’s failures, but at this point, he so desperately needs to be reaccepted as more than status quo, “I want this family to love me damn it.” He has given up his selfishness-not only out of need, but out of desire to better himself which is evident when he applies to be an elevator attendant at the hotel in which he used to live for 20 or so years. He takes his downgrade in stride, without a hint of irony and its poignant.
In Rushmore, it is Max, the youth character, that defines a family for himself by creating one. Anderson locates the shift in attitude towards the family with the younger generations, so when Royal wants to redefine his role in the family he reaches out to the youths in the film. Anderson emphasizes the reaching out over a distance by using zooms as Royal approaches Ari and Uzi working out on a playground. Their generation is completely untainted and untouched by the burden of being in a family of geniuses and therefore, they are open to working things out. As outsiders, they are able to support Royal and are the connection between Royal and Chas who is with the rest of the family. The zooms also emphasize the beginning of an unlikely friendship that blooms into a way for the trio to confront the paralyzed siblings and bring them into fruitful emotional relationships again. It is through them that he earns his real rejuvenation and finds out how important his family really is. They breathe a youthful life into him, as they explore the city together in a montage of “dangerous boy things”: jaywalking, throwing water balloons, stealing chocolate milk.
In the last major scene, Anderson brings all of the characters together for Etheline and Henry Sherman’s wedding. They have transformed into a functioning family that cares, and responds to each other. A long take connects each character in one large puzzle that is finally completed and whole where they each reach out and have a moment of understanding and compassion. For example, Royal buys Chas a new dog and they finally apologize. They accept their losses together and Buckly the dog is buried along with all of the paralysis and bad feeling. They aren’t necessarily successful, but they have each other for once: Royal has bound them together.
Wes Anderson concocts unusual sympathies for seriously flawed characters to remind the viewer that we all have our downfalls, and that in the end it is okay to go home, a very beautiful sentiment that indeed recalls Salinger’s American family.
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