Spring 2014 #3: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) - Wes Anderson

Last night I watched the youngest movie on my list, The Royal Tenenbaums, which is also my first Wes Anderson film! The film was basically exactly how I imagined a Wes Anderson film being, based on how other film majors talk about him and how the trailers convey the tone of the films. It’s quirky, fun, and filled with dark humor in a way that makes it feel like a vividly colorful picture book.

The story follows a family of child geniuses who grew up and lost their way in their world. The oldest child is Chas Tenenbaum, played by Ben Stiller. Chas is a child prodigy in the business world who now raises his two sons because his wife died in a plane crash. Then there’s Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), a gifted playwright who is now married to a character played by Bill Murray. Their relationship is hilarious in that she is basically a grown-up Wednesday Addams and he is kind of like an intellectual Santa Claus.

The joke about Margot is that every character works to constantly remind her that she was adopted, unlike her brothers. It’s sad and funny at the same time.

The final brother is played by Luke Wilson, named Richie. He was a tennis pro until he choked at a match and retired. Owen Wilson, who also co-wrote the screenplay (if you’re ever wondering how Owen Wilson managed to get an Oscar nomination, it’s this), plays the family friend Eli Cash.

The film follows the three children as they move back in with their mom, played by the amazing Anjelica Huston. Their estranged dad also comes back, claiming to have stomach cancer in order to get back on good terms with the family he abandoned decades ago. He’s probably the funniest character, because his way of trying to interact with both his children and his grandchildren shows just how bad of a parent he actually was.

Anjelica is great because she credits herself with being the reason behind her children’s genius, and no has to cope with the fact that all of her children became antisocial and just generally messed up.

But Wes Anderson (and Owen Wilson I guess) have concocted a quirky story full of entertaining family dynamics. It’s like watching one of those Christmas movies where the family all comes together, except these characters are even more dysfunctional (and much less cliché). 

I found that the film lost a bit of direction towards the ending, because the setup is actually so funny that the ending just can’t hold up. Both Wilson brothers are in love with Margot (even though one of them is her “brother”), and she constantly ignores the fact that she’s married.

But just the general tone and character relationships are worth viewing, and I will make sure that this is not my last Wes Anderson film.

The Maltese Falcon (1941) - John Huston

So last week I had to read The Maltese Falcon for my Hard-Boiled Fiction And Film Noir class, and today I had to watch the film. I had heard the film was basically identical to the book, so I was excited.

The novel by Dashiell Hammett was one of the early hard-boiled detective novels of the 1930s. It started a massive trend (still going on today) of giving a rough, go-getter detective some insane mystery to solve. He often ignores the laws of the police force, and doesn’t take shit from anyone. In this case, his name was Sam Spade, played by the wonderful Humphrey Bogart. 

So the film opens with this intro:

And I was immediately like:

I spent the first about… 130 pages of a 215 page novel having no clue what the Maltese Falcon was and how it came about… and in the movie they tell you straight up! But oh well, I was over it, because even if they hadn’t told the audience I would have already known. So I sat back and enjoyed this amazing film.

The main plot follows Spade as he tries to figure out more and more about a woman named Brigid O'Shaugnessy. She originally came to him as Miss Wonderly and then later told him her real name was Miss DeBlanc, but then finally settled on her “actual” name about 30 minutes into the film. And she’s very messed up.

She’s a pathological liar and good one at that. She keeps the truth from Spade for almost the entire movie, until finally he figures it out and gets to the bottom of the actual case, which involves a man named Gutman and his desperate attempts at obtaining the Maltese Falcon from Brigid. 

One thing I found odd about both the film and book is that they throw in this very off-putting character of Joel Cairo. And by off-putting I mean the most bizarre, metrosexual/homosexual man I’ve seen in any film from this era. Here he is.

And by no questions he’s referring to his sexuality… okay kidding. But he’s just weird. In the book, he physically comforts a young man who has just been beaten up by Spade, and in the movie he does it even more awkwardly. Also there’s a creepy undertone about him being foreign and slightly (totally) homosexual at the same time. It was creepy and I don’t know why it was necessary.

Homoerotic undertones. Just saying.

Aside from that, the film was actually really entertaining. The mystery aspect of it was well done, because the plot is like… The DaVinci Code-level complex… but entertaining and thoughtful.

Also, when I was doing some research for this post I came across the weirdest discovery. The director of the film, John Huston, is Anjelica Huston’s father.

That’s not the weird part. When I saw his IMDb picture, I recognized him, but I wasn’t sure what from. I tried to forget it… but then:

John Huston plays Noah Cross in Chinatown! Granted that was 33 years after he directed The Maltese Falcon. Okay… if you haven’t seen Chinatown, just understand that his character in this film is the stuff of nightmares.

Unfortunately (but also fortunately) gifs of this man do not exist.

Okay, overall, I loved the movie. But I think a big part of that came from having just read the book a few days ago. It ranks at #122 on the IMDb Top 250, which I can agree with. It had its slow parts, but from a film standpoint it was engrossing, intellectual, and humorous when it needed to be.