1 Rodrigo, Diagonia, Shirley, Warren

Rodrigo Gonzalez, Diagonia Eteak, Warren Hansen, Shirley Nonu

Marty Nabhan

Film 1023

23 April, 2018

Wes Anderson as an Auteur.

Wes Anderson is one of those directors that has a very distinct style. You know you’re

watching a Wes Anderson movie almost right away. His movies follow distinct color palettes,

are quirky, have amazing attention to detail and follow distinct themes and patterns. These are

just some of the things that define his films and we’ll go through those and much more. This is

all in an attempt to describe what to expect in a typical Wes Anderson film. We also hope to

show that Wes Anderson is indeed an Auteur or the author of every movie he films.

Before diving into a Wes Anderson film, one should research his style to better

appreciate the subtleties in his work. This is not said to scare anyone away, or to insinuate that

you might not understand his films, rather, the whole opposite. A little research would go a long

way; it would really help you visualize the amount of work and insane attention to detail Mr.

Anderson puts into every single shot he takes to tell a story.

Wes Anderson's meticulous attention to detail is what makes his films original. In Isle of

Dogs (2018) he takes care in writing the material for the newspapers being shown in the

background. I am sure if one slowed the shots down the sentences and titles would be legible and

intelligent; directors often do not waste their time on minute details like these. This is why one

can tell they are watching a Wes Anderson film within the first five minutes of the film. Wes

Anderson has worked very hard to become a well-known auteur in the film industry.

One is not sure whether to laugh or cry at his jokes in The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). (I would

like to name his style “The King of the punchline that never comes.”) Nothing in a Wes
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Anderson film is coincidence—every little frame matters. He plans and designs every single shot

diligently. One example of how far Mr Anderson’s madness goes is in The Grand Budapest

Hotel: Anderson creates a fake newspaper company that delivers fake newspapers filled with

fake stories about a fictitious country. And again, he literally wrote every fake story on that

newspaper knowing it would not be visible to the audience and that no one would ever read it.

This is because he believes there is no hiding anything from the silver screen.

He has also worked and had a ton of help from many talented production designers, including the

lead designer for The Grand Budapest Hotel—Annie Atkins. Atkins shares, with Anderson, the

same type of distinctive visual aesthetics and a passion for meticulous production. Atkins

describes working with Anderson as a laborious task. He has branded himself as a director and

his auteur-ism is not just graphics, or color, or camera angle, or actors hitting their marks, or

saying their lines perfectly. His style is in every single department, firing on all cylinders in

every single take. That is what it takes to make a Wes Anderson film.

From there, one of the easier stylistic choices to notice is Wes Anderson’s use of color.

You know its a Wes Anderson film when you can depict the precise and unique colouration of

his films. When you think Wes Anderson you think of colors like, purple, pink, sky blue etc, as

he encourages us to think, dream and create. Which is one of the many reasons why his films and

movies are so compelling. Take the muted pink of The Grand Budapest Hotel for instance, the

color makes the hotel itself the biggest character in the movie. Pink and French mustard yellow

were two colors that were used very heavily in the movie, it also involves lush colors in a very

matte and darkish tone, almost as if not equally lit. The color scheme in Wes Anderson's films

helps characters blend in with the scheme, such as the hotel concierge in The Grand Budapest

Hotel, M. Gustave (played by Ralph Fiennes), whom was is in a purple suit, although the color
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does stand out, the shading of the color does blend him in with the color scheme, as well as the

character Zero whom really stood out the most with the darker purple.

Aside from Wes Anderson’s landscapes muted colors, there’s always one thing that

indicative his films, and that was his actors. He continuously works with the same talent, both

behind the camera and in front of. Take Bill Murray for instance, I don’t know about you but

when I think of any Wes Anderson’s films, Bill Murray is usually the first person I think of, he

racked up the most screen time with Anderson, appearing in seven films by the director, amongst

a few other actors that has worked with Wes Anderson a few times such as Schwartzman and

Wilson.

On the more technical side, Wes Anderson’s camera movement and set design makes him

very distinct. Characters always seem to move left to right or vice versa from outside the frame.

They never seem to move towards the camera and seems to almost follow an axis. All his sets

seems set up as if we were watching a play and not in the real world. He doesn’t use many over

the shoulder shots if any. The camera almost seems stationary or at least follows the characters

with a dolly. One example of this is the camp scene for Moonrise Kingdom where Edward

Norton’s character is leaving his tent to start his day. He constantly moves to the right, inspecting

his scouts and it’s just not realistic. No one sets up their camp site in a straight line like that,

they’d probably set up tents around a campfire or however the set would allow. But in this scene,

Norton moves from left to right and constantly runs into a new scenario that requires his

attention.

To show the play or “dollhouse” set up as some people like to call it, I think The

Fantastic Mr. Fox is a good example. It’s an animated movie and while I feel like sometimes

someone might try and immerse you in the world, he treats it as a a dollhouse. The climax at the
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end when the animals try and escape the sewers and launch an attack on the town reminds me of

a lego playset advertisement almost. A lot of his interior sets almost feel like we’ve cut the set in

half, again, as if it were a stage. I think of the submarine from The Life Aquatic with Steve

Zissou, they didn’t do a CGI sub or build an elaborate set. If you look at stills of the set, you can

see it looks like they cut a sub in half lengthwise and used that as a set.

Also tying all this together is his use of symmetry and putting things/people in the center

of the shot. You can again see this, again, in the camp scene in Moonrise Kingdom, either

characters or items like flag poles are placed dead center in the shot and a lot of the time, if you

put a vertical line through the center of the shot, you’d see the right and left sides of the shot are

symmetrical. This user of symmetry is in every movie he does and it’s his quirk. You can look

on youtube and find videos with dozens of examples. Wes Anderson designs every shot to be

symmetrical and you should be able to pause almost every stationary shot and draw a line down

the middle to see this. This feeds back into his attention to detail because all the shots must be

built this way, it’s not coincidence, it’s meticulous planning on his part.

The final point we’ll touch on is about a common theme Wes Anderson uses in his films.

As an Auteur Wes Anderson uses an interesting style of depicting children as adults and adults as

children. He teaches us the importance that adults can learn to relax and enjoy the simplicity of

life as children do. Meanwhile teaching us that children can be more responsible, clever and at

times serious than adults may think.

Throughout each of his films we can see a distinct difference in the way society sees

children and the way Wes Anderson depicts them. Society as a hole tends to see children as

innocent, rambunctious and often irresponsible. Wes Anderson however has a unique style of

giving children equal or superior roles to adults in his movies.

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This is clearly portrayed in the movie Moonrise kingdom where we find an orphan named

Sam who runs away from his scout group with his lover Suzy. Throughout the movie we see the

above and beyond maturity within their relationship and the compassionate care they have for

one another as they try to stay one step ahead of their community. This is portrayed especially

towards the end of the movie when they are being searched for in the rain. They continue there

escape by climbing onto the roof in the rain displaying a real threat of danger. However Sam and

Suzy are willing to risk their lives for the love they have found.

The opposite of this secure compassionate love is found in the movie The Royal Tenenbaums as

Margot and Richie Tenenbaums struggle as adults to get over previous relationships and first

love. In the movie The Royal Tenenbaums we see the transformation of the three intelligent and

amazing children Chaz Margot and Richie Tenenbaum who were famous in finance, theater and

tennis as children. But due to the lack of leadership of their father Royal Tenenbaum and due to

there fractured family, they grow up to be quite the opposite of who they were as kids. In their

youth we see adults looking up to them for help and guidance as they succeed in there early

careers but as they grow we see this maturity fade away and replaced with a sense of instability

and childish behaviors. Through these examples we see that Wes Anderson often has adults take

the role of a child by having them portray innocence and lack of responsibility by creating adult

characters who are equal to or even look up to children for insight and guidance.

We also see a unique style in Wes Anderson’s movies as he consistently depict

dysfunctional family relationships throughout the course of his films. As family’s go from being

separated to over overcoming there struggles and becoming unified. This is depicted clearly in

the movie The Royal Tenenbaums as Etheline the mother of the children is clearly concerned

about the children’s success in life as she holds their education as their highest priority. Where as
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their father could care less as he portrays a sense of belittlement towards them. We later see this

family gradually grow together when Royal Tenenbaum begins to show concern and care for his

family throughout the film.

In Moonrise Kingdom we see the lack of respect and even hatred at times within the

Bishops family. We also see this depicted in The Darjeeling Limited as we see how separated

and far apart the brothers Peter, Jack and Francis are. We see them reunite and come together as

they struggle to overcome there individual problems throughout their journey to the Himalayan

Covenant to visit their mother while overcoming the death of their father.

In the end overall we find this style of Wes Anderson teaching us a valuable lesson that

yes family can be the source of problems and anxiety but in the end they always come together to

be united and flourish in life.

Just one of these items might classify a director as an Auteur, but Wes Anderson

accomplishes all this in each film he makes. This is why we feel he has a distinct style, voice and

skill that makes him the author of each film he sets out to make. He lays his mark on every frame

of film he exposes to his distinct view of the world and nothing is ever out of place in that frame.

Wes Anderson is a modern day Auteur that uses attention to detail, color, framing and story

themes that make his stories, his alone.

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Works Cited

Anderson, Wes, director. Fantastic Mr. Fox. 2009.

Anderson, Wes, director. Isle of Dogs. 2018.

Anderson, Wes, director. Moonrise Kingdom. 2012.

Anderson, Wes, director. Rushmore. 1998.

Anderson, Wes, director. The Darjeeling Limited. 2007.

Anderson, Wes, director. The Grand Budapest Hotel. 2014.

Anderson, Wes, director. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. 2005.

Anderson, Wes, director. The Royal Tenenbaums. 2002.

Dazed. “Wes Anderson's Insane Attention to Detail.” Dazed, 23 June 2015,

www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/25151/1/wes-anderson-s-insane-attention-to-

detail.