Wes Anderson Influences

Moonrise Kingdom was being shot while Grand Budapest Hotel was being written and one can see the resemblances. Wes Anderson has a very particular way of shooting his films, often using one point perspective. The scenes appear to be moving pictures since the scenes are shot so flat. Balance is key when he shoots his shots. Characters are never overlapping to the point where you cannot see more of him. He is not trying to simulate or recreate reality; he is making a movie, a theatrical work. Everything in the film is a set, is a stage the characters are acting on and the camera moves horizontally or vertically. The overall film is very theatrical; there is an Opera being preformed within the film and is used to draw a parallel between the film and the play. There was a little bit of stop motion, like with the arrow, and the film before this was Fantastic Mr. Fox. He is huge in storyboarding too since he has started making movies. Whenever characters are having a conversation and are cutting between them there reactions are always flat/rational/calm and if there is a burst of emotion Anderson will cut wide and show how the scene plays out. There is also a parallel between the kids who ran away and their parents. The parents continue to say that the kids are messed up, crazy, have too many problems; yet it’s the adults who are fighting, having affairs, and arguing. Anderson also tends to focus on fugitive movies; all three that have been mentioned are a group of fugitives running from the “law”.

Landscape is strongly influences in both Moonrise Kingdom and Grand Budapest Hotel. Maps play a major part too, one can feel where the borders lay in the films. Anderson tends to use overall color schemes in his films too. Grand Budapest Hotel is greatly influenced by Stefan Zweig. He also uses a specific composer, Benjamin Britain, which also brings a parallel to his movies. The kids are dancing to the Yé yé girls, who are the girl singers in France who sang a lot of love songs, and they were famous at the time of the film. The short story, “Twenty-four hours in the Life of a Woman” and Wes Anderson films had a very similar framework. He clearly chose to use this choice, and the effect of this choice shows these multiple sets and because he has these flat frameworks, he compensates with depth. In the first half of the 20^th century, this style was very popular among authors for is gave the illusion of infinite planes to the landscape. One can see the connections with Zweig and Anderson. The scene with the two kids seeing each other in the field, then cutting to the one-year later, may have been influenced from one of Zweig’s stories. Influences on Grand Budapest Hotel, the theme of nostalgia is strong.

Embodied in Anderson’s work is a nostalgia than one will feel whether you lived during that time or not; there is a grandness or a moment that has passed and no longer lives in the world he has created which leaves the audience with a sense of reminiscence. The nostalgia part is not just reminiscence, but a longing for that time to return. In Moonrise Kingdom, the nostalgia was for the 1960’s, for Grand Budapest Hotel it’s when the hotel was popular, and Fantastic Mr. Fox it was for his younger days. The mixture of a storybook and real life and the uncanny valley of these two sides of his films make them so appealing. For example, with Fantastic Mr. Fox, it is very storybook like with the animals living like humans, but having real world problems, like bullying, being rich then poor, having to deal with your mistakes and more. When reading “Twenty-four hours in the Life of a Woman”, part of the enjoyment of this was comparing it to the Grand Budapest Hotel and seeing the parallels. I think that is I had read this story not having seen any Wes Anderson films; I would not have enjoyed it as much. One can almost picture how Anderson would have filmed this short story.