The Film Auteur: Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson has one of the most recognizable styles to his films of any director I’ve seen, aside from maybe Quentin Tarantino. Most of Wes Anderson’s films are recognizable as his within the first few minutes of the film. He has very particular patterns in both his storytelling and how he constructs and composes his films that crop up in pretty much every movie he makes. Some might even argue that he has become a bit of a one-trick pony, making only the same kind of film every time, but despite a lot of the similarities that come as part of Wes Anderson’s personal voice, all of his films remain uniquely different.

There are two main stylistic things that I noticed while watching Wes Anderson’s films, Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Fantastic Mr. Fox. First was the highly saturated color or strong sense of color script for each film. Moonrise Kingdom is full of saturated yellows and greens throughout the whole film. Grand Budapest Hotel has a lot of reds, pinks, and oranges; still all warm spectrum and very saturated. Fantastic Mr. Fox is much like Moonrise Kingdom in its color scheme of neutrals and very saturated yellows. Wes Anderson seems to like to over saturate his films with warm colors, and that gives all of his films a very distinctive look.

The second stylistic choice that I know is very indicative of Wes Anderson’s films is how he films most, if not all of the shots in a film, in one-point perspective. It’s something that is not immediately noticeable, but when it’s pointed out, it becomes abundantly clear. It is pushed the most, perhaps, in Fantastic Mr. Fox, probably because as a stop motion film, Anderson had direct control over every shot and the position of everything in relation to the camera. He still is able to achieve one-point perspective in his live action films, and it gives all of his movies a very distinct feel to them. I think it makes them feel slightly more fantastical and strange, because we generally don’t see the world in perfect one-point perspective, and so putting films in that way separates us from that world a little bit. It also makes the films feel more like a storybook, somehow; as if we are watching a series of perfectly composed storybook images.

When it comes to themes, Wes Anderson’s films still have that telltale stamp of being a Wes Anderson film. Perhaps the most prevalent theme in his films is the theme of nostalgia. Wes Anderson seems to always glorify and live in the world of nostalgia, and all of his films feel very nostalgic as a result. Fantastic Mr. Fox was purposefully animated in a ‘messy and imperfect’ way so that it emulated a time when we didn’t have the stop motion technology that we have now to make stop motion behave how we want it to. The aesthetic of all three films in dress, time period, etc. is all very reminiscent of times past. He also never seems to tell his stories entirely chronologically. They jump all over the place, and are often stories within stories, where a character is recounting memories such as in Grand Budapest.

When it comes to actors, Wes Anderson certainly favors a handful of people to work with, but there is one actor who has been in every single one of his films (aside from Bottle Rocket) and that is Bill Murray. He is in every film, ready to deliver a deadpan line of dialogue. And speaking of dialogue, every actor in a Wes Anderson movie delivers dialogue in a very different way to how people generally talk. They speak quickly, and bluntly. Everyone is to the point without a whole lot of flourish to the words they are saying. They get out what they need to say and move on. Everything is also generally said with a air of seriousness to it that can sometimes be strange within the context of what’s being said. In general, Wes Anderson characters don’t really talk like real people.

Wes Anderson has some of the most prevalent and obvious autership of any director I am well acquainted with. You know when you’re watching a Wes Anderson film. He is the only one to make movies the way he does and although charming the first several times, I wonder if this strong sense of style might lead to his films becoming stale. I enjoy them for now, but some of them can feel a bit same-y.