I rewatched all of Wes Anderson's movies over the past week and thought I'd rank them as I went.
I became a fan of Wes Anderson with The Royal Tenenbaums when it had its first home release, which was my introduction to the Criterion Collection. Along with Roger Ebert's Great Movie reviews, Criterion became my main gateway to foreign and art films.
I then doubled back to Rushmore and Bottle Rocket, and loved Rushmore even more than the Royal Tenenbaums. I could relate to Max Fischer playing at being more than he was until he could finally accept himself and find value in truth.
I would show Rushmore and the Royal Tenenbaums to my friends in school, and we all eagerly anticipated The Life Aquatic, or rather I think my friends enjoyed my own hype and anticipation. I watched it twice in theatres. It was my introduction to David Bowie's music. I put several references to it into World Piece.
The Darjeeling Limited has only become more relatable as time goes on, its depiction of brothers reminding me of the friends I had in high school, and how honest we were. We could go on silly adventures, and also be raw and real in our conversations until we all went our separate ways.
Moonrise Kingdom might be the most relatable movie about kids I've seen, in terms of tapping into a child's view of the world. I think all of Wes Anderson's movies basically represent a child's view of the world.
Re-watching The French Dispatch, a love letter to the written word -- and also painting, The French New Wave, animation, and so on -- I realise that Wes Anderson must have realised that film is the one medium that can combine every single art form, and then proceeded to put all those art forms into every movie he made, in a way that nobody else has really done or could do and still make it cohere.
Sound=music and images=pictures, sure, but there's almost always elements of play/theatre, pop songs, written scores, sculpture, painting, stop motion, 2D animation, prose/poetry/journalism, and on and on.
Wes Anderson's movies are their own worlds, constructed out of our world, a world of art, with wounded characters doing their best to navigate that world. Just like us.
