157 The Royal Tenenbaums

[Steven H]

The Royal Tenenbaums



Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) and his wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston) had three children—Chas, Margot, and Richie—and then they separated. Chas (Ben Stiller) started buying real estate in his early teens and seemed to have an almost preternatural understanding of international finance. Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) was a playwright and received a Braverman Grant of $50,000 in the ninth grade. Richie (Luke Wilson) was a junior champion tennis player and won the U.S. Nationals three years in a row. Virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster. The Criterion Collection is proud to present Wes Anderson's hilarious, touching, and brilliantly stylized study of melancholy and redemption.

Special Features

Double Disc Set includes:

• Special slipcase/box packaging featuring Richard Avedon's cast photo, plus cover artwork by Eric Anderson
• New widescreen digital transfer, supervised by director Wes Anderson and enhanced for widescreen televisions
• Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 soundtracks
• Commentary by Wes Anderson
• With the Filmmaker: Portraits by Albert Maysles, featuring Wes Anderson
• Exclusive video interviews and behind-the-scenes footage of Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, and Danny Glover
• Outtakes
• The Peter Bradley Show, featuring interviews with additional cast members
• The Art of the Movie: Young Richie's murals and paintings, still photographs by set photographer James Hamilton, book and magazine covers, Studio 360 radio segment on painter Miguel Calderón, and storyboards
• Theatrical trailers
• Collectible insert including Eric Anderson's drawings
• English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
• Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

Criterionforum.org user rating averages

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Just wanted to throw out there this little bit that I've been thinking about a lot lately. The film opens with a Two English Girls reference (showing the book in three different ways, an almost exact duplicate of the beginning of the Truffaut movie) and then goes on to introduce the family in a 15 minute narrated stretch (which seems to allude to both Jules and Jim and The Magnificent Ambersons). The Truffaut reference both have triad relationships at the center of their structure (Two English Girls - two girls and a boy... Jules and Jim - two boys and a girl), so maybe he's throwing us a bone that the film is based on triads? Am I reaching?

If you agree with me, do you find this kind of use of reference annoying or artistically worthwhile? To me it adds another layer of the film, but it certainly isn't necessary to enjoy the film... so I find it interesting.

[Narshty]

On a slightly less profound level, did anyone else notice "Blood of Christ High School" written on the school bus? Always tickles me.

[peerpee]

do you find this kind of use of reference annoying or artistically worthwhile?

It smacks of "winking to film critics" in a vain attempt to be referenced alongside those he's borrowing [cough] stealing from.

I don't get high from spotting allusions/tributes to other filmmakers in films, but I know many people who do. It makes them happy.

I want to see things I've not seen before, not bits of other films grafted together into some grand Frankenstein theft jigsaw, held together tenuously with a bravado seemingly gained from listening to Laserdisc commentaries. Such an approach elicits inconsequential Where's Waldo responses from boring fans, and little else. Maybe someone who's never seen a film before thinks it's the dog's bollocks.

I'd rather watch a filmmaker who doesn't rely on others (so shameful!).

[Martha]

I'd rather watch a filmmaker who doesn't rely on others (so shameful!).

Wow. That must reduce the number of directors whose work you're willing to watch to single digits, huh?

[Lemdog]

I'd rather watch a filmmaker who doesn't rely on others (so shameful!).

Filmmakers today are not just filmmakers they are also film historians. If they see or remember something from other films they can twist, turn, and shake a scene from another film around to accomplish their needs. Is he exactly copying it? No. Therefore I wouldn't consider it stealing. The single digits comment made by Martha is correct. Today is is very difficult, if not impossible, to find pristine directors that have not been influenced by any other movie. This kind of goes back to the old thread about the creative bankruptcy of Quentin Tarantino.

[cafeman]

Well, everybody stole editing from Griffith, so I guess the only original filmmaker would be Sokurov (had he not stolen the one-shot thing from Hitchcock).

[peerpee]

Didn't think that would be taken quite so literally. Obviously everyone borrows. It's the extent to which one borrows and the extent to which one seemingly relies on borrowing/referencing/alluding that I was commenting on.

I didn't mean to troll on Wes's skills, but I did, and this isn't the place for it. I simply find his films wellmade but inconsequential light comedies, and wish that America's auteurs were making more relevant films.

[zedz]

I think the difference lies in how gratuitous the references are, and I suspect that's what Peerpee is on about. I find it irritating when the function of the reference is simply to show off the filmmaker's pseudo-erudition (I know ALL THESE films! - so what?); slightly less irritating when the filmmaker is tackling a 'challenge' set by another filmmaker (as with the opening crane shot of The Player and, arguably, various shots in P.T. Anderson's films); and not irritating at all when the borrowings are motivated or justified by the subject matter (e.g. Fassbinder's co-option of elements of silent film syntax in Effi Briest), add to the meaning of the film, or have been 'internalised' as part of the director's style.

A good example of the latter two would be Tsai Ming-Liang's relationship with Les Quatre Cents Coups. It's clearly an important film for Tsai, and he's established his own version of a Truffaut / Leaud / Doinel relationship in his films with Lee Kang-sheng / Hsiao-kang. In What Time Is It There?, the allusions to the film serve an additional narrative function, however, in contributing to the web of connections between the worlds of Hsiao-kang and Shiang-chyi.

Tsai's use of intertextuality is subtle, purposeful and personal - Goodbye, Dragon Inn is another obvious example. Returning to the Tannenbaums example, if the references at the start of the film do offer some structural clue along the lines of what harri suggests, and if following that clue helps one better understand the film - or leads to a new understanding of it - then that seems a worthwhile approach on Anderson's part. That's a long-established and respectable artistic tradition (Homer in Joyce; Pushkin in Nabokov). If he's just randomly evoking Truffaut (he's a cool filmmaker!) and Welles (he's another cool filmmaker! - well, duh), then who cares? Is this a film or a pop quiz?

Personally, I think Wes Anderson has far fewer problems with over-referentiality than many young directors. He's certainly managed to establish a distinctive and original personal style and, if anything, his problem is likely to be excessive self-referentiality.

[Steven H]

Personally, I think Wes Anderson has far fewer problems with over-referentiality than many young directors. He's certainly managed to establish a distinctive and original personal style and, if anything, his problem is likely to be excessive self-referentiality.

This reminds me of Ozu a bit actually (I apologise for the blasphemy that is about to be typed beforehand). He referenced other filmmakers quite a bit in his early years (especially Lubitsch), but seemed to evolve his style into an "excessive self-referentiality" in his later years (reusing the same character names, similar story arcs, remarking on one film with another, etc). This could end up creating a timeless quality in Anderson's films, though his detractors might currently call this "self-conscious". I could probably think of a few more strong similarities between Anderson and Ozu... but I don't think this is the appropriate thread and I'm not trying to troll or anything.

[Andre Jurieu]

I would completely agree. I believe there is a great deal of Ozu's influence in Anderson's work to date, especially in the way he chooses to frame his characters when they address one-another, as well as the method in wish his actors deliver their dialogue.

[Steven H]

His detailed compositions and meticulously created sets also spring to mind. It also seems to me they placed similar importance on the creation of the script and storyboards. They show humor and tragedy goign hand in hand in their films.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Does this DVD come with two booklets, or one?

[Lino]

Mine has two.

[swingo]

Mine has two.

Mine as well... I just received a Ratcatcher with an extra booklet repeated...


Axel.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Mine didn't come with the second one. Anyone know how to replace it.

[swingo]

Mine didn't come with the second one. Anyone know how to replace it.

Send a mail to Jon Mulvaney at Criterionco.com they'll replace you...


Axel.

[ecschmidt]

Actually, a friend of mine bought his copy from Blockbuster (used) and he had to contact Buena Vista in order to get a replacement.

[blindside8zao]

I'll shamelessly say this is my favorite movie. I know, not a smart thing to say when people don't know you.

Also wanted to interject that this movie reminded me a lot of sound and the fury.

[Michael]

Also wanted to interject that this movie reminded me a lot of sound and the fury.

Can you please elaborate on that? Thanks.

[javelin]

Also wanted to interject that this movie reminded me a lot of sound and the fury.

As in the Faulkner novel? Yeah, definitely elaborate. I'm interested.

[blindside8zao]

oops, sometimes I post and forget about it. It reminds me of it, just because of the children I spose. Three brothers (if you count owen wilson's character) and a sister. The sister is promiscuous like Caddy, one is very neurotic and tries to kill himself because of his obsession with his sister like Quentin. I guess you can't really liken the other two brothers to Jason and Benjy much at all. It is in a way sort of about a family that has/is collapsing in on itself, like the family in SandF. The ending is a bit more optimistic in RT granted.

It's enough to make you wonder if anderson had read the book recently and just had some things floating in his head. I doubt it was purposeful if it was an influence as I don't really see any reason to make a connection or enough evidence to make it meaningful.

Just a little thing I noticed. SandF is one of my favorite novels and RT is one of my favorite movies.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

That's an interesting comparison. I never thought of that.

As many reviews have pointed out, the most obvious literary influence on The Royal Tenenbaums has to be J.D. Salinger's short stories about the Glass family, a family of geniuses in decline. Not to mention, Anderson's vision of New York has that same kind of timeless feel that I always get from reading Salinger's prose.

[Lino]

Nice little article about the music on the Tenenbaums as narrative devices.

[Steven H]

From the Days of Heaven thread:

I'd love to hear Salinger do commentary on The Royal Tenenbaums, actually.

...and I think Salinger would have hated Tennenbaums...

"The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding."

I can't imagine him liking them either. But I've always thought of him as a crotchety old genius. It's hard to think of crotchety old geniuses liking anything.

[Magic Hate Ball]

The Royal Tenenbaums is, without a doubt, one of my favorite movies. I have a lot of favorite movies, new ones get added every day. I love it because each scene and shot is carefully crafted. Wes Anderson may take things from other directors, but what he does take he polishes to a shine. There were probably dozens of people to do the quick zoom-in before him (eg, Ingmar Bergman), but he does it well when he does use it (the zoom-in on the man with the microphone on top of the building).

I know that a lot of people here hate both Andersons because they, for the most part, just collect bits and pieces from other directors (the Short Cuts/Magnolia dickwaving contest), but people miss that, nowadays, it's nearly impossible for a director to be completely original. And that's just a fact. Now it's just a contest to see how far you can fine-tune something. One of my favorite things about Wes Anderson is how he mixes and matches music to image. The scene in Tenenbaums when Margot steps off the bus to Nico's These Days is an example. There's a whole fleet of directors now who specialise in this.

Someone mentioned that Wes doesn't do a lot of pop references, this is another thing I like. He just creates a world and wallows in it.