I want to like Wes Anderson. I really do. Honest to God I want to enjoy his films. I do think parts of his films can be fun and cute, but for the past month I’ve been getting into these small internal discussions over him and what he means to me. I know it’s ridiculous to spend so much time thinking about him, but I want to know what I truly feel while watching his films. Is is jealousy? is It resentment? I think most thinking beings would agree that Anderson is not a great filmmaker, to me he is a fantastic commercial director, but to watch a whole film of his can be a little much. When I watch his films I can only see him scratching the surface of everything and everyone I love (Fitzgerald, Truffaut, Rohmer, Salinger) and applies their style and worlds to a poorly written and directed film, with the exception of Bottle Rocket. Bottle Rocket is one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen, and surprisingly lacks the vapidness of Anderson’s later work. He’s been on a consistent decline since, which brings me to Hotel Chevalier…in his defense it was just a cute short film (or Apple commercial), but it was absolutely terrible. Everything about it made me cringe, except for the colors and Paris. I guess it comes down to Wes Anderson reminding me of those 14 year old girls who have LiveJournal icons of Antoine Doinel with pink cursive font and sparkling hearts around his face. There is no question that these people missed the whole point of the films they’re obsessing over - they’re watching these films for purely aesthetic reasons and escapism …but they’re 14 and on liveJournal, Wes Anderson is 38.
…and yes, you’ll probably find me in the theater on The Darjeeling Limited’s second week, but only because I like his colors. I guess thats is where he has the one up on the 14 year olds. Color.