-I wrote a suicide note.
-You did?
-Yeah, right after I regained conciousness.
-Well what does it say? Is it dark?
-Of course it's dark, it's a suicide note.
-Can I read it?
-No.
-Well could you at least summarize it for us?
This movie is about the Tenenbaum family: an estranged mother (Angelica Huston) and father (Gene Hackman), their two sons (Ben Stiller and Luke Wilson), their adopted daughter (Gwyneth Paltrow), and their "sorta" adopted next door neighbor (Owen Wilson). This seems like a pretty big group of characters but the director Wes Anderson masterfully introduces each one of them in the opening scenes of the movie. These beautiful scenes not only give an exhaustive background of each character, they foreshadow the problems that the characters will face during the film, and it is all narrated by Alec Baldwin. The genius of Wes Anderson is his ability to tell a story through quirky visuals, seemingly random occurences, and music that is just familiar enough to be recognizable (but not popular enough to be uncool). I know quite a few people who absolutely despised this movie. Although I don't get their hatred, I can say that if you aren't absolutely hooked by time you hear the strains of the Rolling Stones' "Ruby Tuesday", then you aren't going to get it.
On a semi-morbid side note, this movie has my favorite suicide scene of all time, which gives me a chance to present a "High Fidelity"-esque top 5 suicides in movies of all time:
5. Alien 3
4. Boogie Nights
3. The Shawshank Redemption
2. The Rules of Attraction
1. The Royal Tenenbaums
No comments:
Post a Comment