Rushmore
July 27th, 2006
While sitting at home in Deep Bay, I happened upon “Rushmore” on TV. I’m a big Wes Anderson fan. I own several of his movies but not “Rushmore” (at the time). I saw “The Royal Tenenbaums” first and seeing “The Life Aquatic” at the SUB was one of the few flashes of fun I had in a galaxy of dispair while a Sauder MBA student.
Watching it a second time I can’t help identify with Max. Identifying with a guy whose life falls apart isn’t hard for me, I’ve done it before.
Movies have happier endings than life.
The reason I’m writing this is because a song came on which I immediately knew as the Who and went to my iTunes library to see if I had it. I was sure I must have it as I like the Who better than the Rolling Stones or the Beatles which puts me in that odd third category, the only lonlier group is those that like the Kinks the best. I’m a Kinks fan plus the Zombies who are also underated, but I digress.
The song in question is part of a mini rock opera, the chorus is “You are forgiven.”
Wes Anderson always has excellent eclectic song selection on his soundtracks, one of the reasons I own the Cirterion Collection edition of “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” was for the complete versions in Portugese of all the David Bowie songs. I think tomorrow I will finally get around to ripping it from the DVD so I can listen to them in iTunes. I’m going to use WireTap Pro it’ll work but it has to be done by hand in real time.
Wes Anderson also reuses actors, just like Kubrick did, another of my favourite directors. There is of course the Wilson brothers, Bill Murray, but my favourite is Kumar Pallana who has since passed on. If you have thoughts on Wes Anderson’s films you can leave them below.
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One of my Christmas presents this year was the Criterion Edition of Rushmore. I sat down and watched it tonight. And I was reminded again why I think Wes Anderson is the best film maker we got right now in the English speaking world. His films have such great heart.
His films also always have great use of popular and sometimes not so popular music. After seeing the movie again I set out to buy the song that plays while the film closes. I knew the song but couldn’t say for sure from where. It is Ooh La La by the Faces which I just bought on iTunes.
In addition to relying on music to set a mood and inspire a feeling he makes extensive, some might say excessive use of slow motion. His films just make you feel good. Like I said the best way I can describe it is, they have heart. They have a quirky internal consistency. I recommend every single one without reservations with the exception of Bottle Rockets which is the only one I don’t own.
He also likes to dolly across screen in crowd scenes. His use of music, slow motion, and long cross screen dolly shots are probably his signatures along with using certain actors and of course the quirky humor and plots.