Sole Criterion: The Royal Tenenbaums
By Brett Ballard-Beach
January 5, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
“Well, everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What [my] book presupposes is... maybe he didn't.” --Author Eli Cash, discussing his latest effort at a book signing
Opening on December 14, 2001, a mere three months after the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Wes Anderson’s third feature film The Royal Tenenbaums is a work of art that manages to capture, by melancholic happenstance, something resembling the emotional tenor of America at that particular moment (much like Spike Lee’s drama 25th Hour would capture the despair and fallout and idealized hope for some kind of future utopia, when it was released just over a year later). Anderson’s film is set in New York City and was filmed there, but it is not the NYC of easily discernible landmarks or a skyline that had - by that time - been forever altered.
(I feel I should add that I don’t mean to suggest any kind of balanced equation between the real-life horror of 9/11 and the personal and professional travails of a fictional filmic family, simply that in its more fairy tale and/or fantastical moments and in the lingering sadness and rue that underlines even the most comic of images, such as the play by play of tennis star Richie Tenenbaum’s professional meltdown on the court, an appreciation for the fragility of life and the evanescent nature of happiness and security that many became aware of again in those days, finds a mirror in the film’s world).
Anderson intentionally chose to avoid anything that might resemble an iconic city image and molded a cityscape both anachronistic (the gypsy cabs that ailing patriarch Royal Tenenbaum often hails) and geographically tweaked (though it sounds impressive, there is no 375th Street Y). As a result, Anderson wasn’t forced to deal with the dilemma other filmmakers faced that fall - notably Edward Burns and his romantic comedy Sidewalks of New York - of whether or not to hold off on releasing films taking place in NYC and/or to digitally edit out shots of the Twin Towers.
Anderson’s cinematic world is thus already inhabited by an absence of sorts - NYC is rendered as both familiar and yet markedly uncanny - and a sense of something lost which may never be recovered. On the plot level this is echoed in its tragicomic story of a memorably dysfunctional family of prodigies turned n’er do-wells, the hangers-on, family friends and associates caught in their orbit, and the father figure (Royal)’s misguided but ultimately successful effort to reunite them again, even if it means behaving like an “asshole” and/or “son of a bitch” (the first term is Royal’s self-analysis, the second that of the man about to marry Royal’s long-estranged but not-quite-ex Etheline.)
The conceit of the Tenenbaums (screenplay co-written by Anderson with his frequent collaborator and star Owen Wilson, who here plays long-time family friend Eli Cash) owes more than a passing glance to the works of J.D. Salinger, in particular his affectionate tales involving the Glass family, an extended brood of former radio quiz show stars with remarkable genius, piercing insights into human nature, and all too crushing emotional frailties they face as they pass through their precocious moppet phase and quickly enter an adult world they felt ill-equipped for dealing with. What Anderson and Wilson do with this story, however, in its construction and presentation, elevates it beyond simple homage. The pair make every effort to cover most of the creative arts, mixing and matching mediums at will, either inherent in the story being told, or through the mise en scene in which the story unfolds. I doubt this list will be comprehensive but simply considering even a small portion of the ways in which they draw attention to the story they are telling and the myriad manners in which stories can be told helps open new worlds of appreciation for Tenenbaums’ accomplishments.
The written word: The film opens on an image of a book entitled “The Royal Tenenbaums” being checked out from a library, handed across the counter to have its check out card removed, hand stamped (another charming example of the film’s anachronisms and/or favoring antiquity in the face of modernity), and replaced. Throughout the movie (which is broken up into eight chapters and an epilogue), we see the opening pages of the chapters and can glimpse a little of the writing, which appears to be more akin to the stage directions in plays, the field in which Margot Tenenbaum has had past success. Authorial pretensions abound among the characters, not just the aforementioned Cash with his historical revisionism on Custer, but accountant Henry Sherman (a primer on family finances), and neurologist Raleigh St. Clair (who pens a case study of a young man who suffers from “symptoms of amnesia, dyslexia, and color-blindness” tempered with extraordinary hearing). I may be mistaken, but Royal may also have published a book on law, and former financial whiz Chas Tenenbaum one on beating the stock market.
The spoken word: Not everyone has the proper tone and timbre to provide voiceover narration that achieves what the best narration should (in my humble opinion): giving you something you can’t get from the other elements of the film alone. The worst kind of voiceover feels simply thrown in and tacked on, to explain and explain when the realization has hit that the film is a mess (i.e. Southland Tales) and needs a “voice of God” to keep the audience on track. The best combine a wealth of information with a knowing inside tone (Joanne Woodward as an Edith Wharton stand-in for The Age of Innocence), deconstruct expectations through irony and snark (Christina Ricci’s priceless delivery of cynicism laced bon mots for The Opposite of Sex) or simply exist with an omniscient weariness that stands outside of the here and now (Michael Hordern’s cold yet not dispassionate commentary about the life and times of Barry Lyndon).
While The Royal Tenenbaums doesn’t contain one of the best instances ever of voiceover, Alec Baldwin has a voice that blends perfectly with what Wilson and Anderson have penned. The affection that the writers have for the characters extends even to the nameless narrator, and Baldwin does a remarkable job of tempering his seductive voice, which lends itself well to both menace (Glengarry Glen Ross) and ridiculousness (30 Rock). Wry might be the proper word for the tone he strikes (with perhaps a little bemused regret tossed in).
Like an emcee at an awards show, the narrator gets the ball rolling in the first 20 minutes, conveying important information quickly, but also capturing that almost indefinable sense of loss to which I keep alluding. The Narrator’s contributions are limited from then on, but note the exquisite timing and tenor of the line, “Immediately after making this statement, Royal realized that it was true”, which is not only a great Anderson-Wilson one-liner, but a shining example of what Baldwin brings to the film.
The play’s the thing: The audience is treated to brief glimpses of the plays Margot stages, but what really stands out for me is the opening sequence where each of the main characters is glimpsed face on for a few seconds (as if they are looking into a mirror) with credits that read “Gene Hackman as Royal Tenenbaum” etc. Although there is nothing cinematically new about this, in the context of the film I always feel it is akin to the list of character descriptions that precedes Shakespeare’s plays (Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Pusher” Trilogy inspires similar thoughts in me with its equivalent character introductions). In identifying the various levels of the Tenenbaum house as the film opens, the Narrator’s words coupled with onscreen descriptions also conspire to create the feeling of the locales of a play unfolding before the audience.
Music: Anderson’s soundtracks are always remarkably chosen, both for their thematic conceits (foreign-language David Bowie covers in The Life Aquatic, music from Satyajit Ray films in The Darjeeling Limited) and their generic breadth, but I want to briefly mention what almost passes for a two minute music video here, as a private investigator’s look into Margot Tenenbaum’s life, as presented to her husband, takes the form of a visual case file via a series of liaisons and infidelities involving both genders and several ethnicities. That this droll sequence is scored to The Ramones’ raucous classic “Judy is a Punk” adds to the incongruity (as does Gwyneth Paltrow’s gloriously bored and apathetic visage which she wears here and for nearly the entire film, and which makes the case that she’s a lot more interesting as an actress when she is denied her smile.) Elsewhere, a symphonic take on a Beatles classic performed by a group helmed by the leader of Devo opens the film and a pair of Rolling Stones songs underscore a key scene of romantic longing and regret.
Architecture: The house may be the unsung cast member so it’s nice that the Criterion DVD includes a foldout illustrated floor design to accompany the viewing. What I find most notable about the house used is not only how its size illustrates how easy it is for the Tenenbaums to keep each other at arms’ length (floor’s length as it were) but how packed every corner of it is with knickknacks, bric a brac, belongings, and, as the film progresses, people. Even at the height of the family’s estrangement, the film’s production designers have crafted a residence that hums and crackles with life, reminders of the past and their psychic baggage be damned, there is love here and the possibility for love as well.
Hobbies, passions, etc.: There are the paintings Richie does (all of Margot), Chas’ experimentation with Dalmatian mice (descendants of whom seem to be underfoot of the Tenenbaums for most of the film’s running time), Margot’s brief marriage to a recording artist (and contributions to one of his albums), Etheline’s hosting of bridge tournaments, Eli’s experimentation with mescaline, Richie’s keeping of falcons on the rooftop. While there may be a tendency that these traits slide into quirks, more often than not, they simply seem to be extensions of the character’s personalities, a way for them to express themselves outside of normal channels, or in contrast to their presumed or assumed role within the family dynamics.
ONE KEY THEME: The quote from Eli at the top of the column is perhaps my favorite in the film - verbally, for the use of the word presupposes, which seems like a word that Eli would toss out, but also for its echo in the slightly falsified epitaph that Royal chooses for his tombstone (which I will allow those who have yet to see the film to discover for themselves) and in the brief exchange where Eli reveals that he “always wanted to be a Tenenbaum” and Royal concurs, “Me too, me too”. In each of the three cases, there is the desire and the hope to rewrite the past, to scrawl into the history books or etch into granite the way things might have been, could have been, should have been.
There is also the fervent desire expressed to be somebody else (or in Royal’s case, to be a better version of himself). Eli and Royal both feel like outsiders (as opposed to, say, pretenders or fakers) and their journeys each take them to a point where they must finally make peace with and accept how they fit in with, or don’t, The Royal Tenenbaums.
A final thought: I have expressed dismay and sadness elsewhere over the fact that Gene Hackman has made no films in the last seven years, that he announced his retirement several years ago, and coming up at the end of the month on his 82nd birthday, it seems less and less likely that he will unretire. His role in Tenenbaums will perhaps remain one of his last five. I often wrestle with what I love about Hackman, and I think I have come to the conclusion that he seems to be that most American of actors: a chameleon hiding in plain sight. I don’t associate accents or costumes with him (Young Frankenstein aside) but a certain attitude, an easygoing smile that somehow can slide over into violence, a cocksure attitude that can veer off into doubt and loathing. In The Royal Tenenbaums, he is able to play clueless and classless and push buttons and get the laughs, and on a dime, with just a brief lift of the veil past the opaqueness of his eyes, suggest that his character knows all along the price he has paid for his behavior.
Next time: Spend 201 minutes with a single mother as she cooks, cleans, turns the occasional trick, and watches her tightly wound world begin to come undone. DVD spine # 484.