“Every film trains its spectator… In other words: a movie teaches us how to watch it” (Bordwell, 2021). Wes Anderson’s cinema is full of intertextual references to the work of the renowned auteurs he grew up watching and being inspired by, with knowledge of auteurism and an awareness of it being applied to him (Browning, 2011: 157). The director and screenwriter for all of his films, producer for all but his first, Bottle Rocket (1996) – and executive producer on Rushmore (1998) – Anderson is a renowned American Indie filmmaker known, inside and outside the independent cinema circles, for maintaining an extremely distinctive visual style and an instantly recognisable mise-en-scene, labelled “quirky” in a 2011 article by MacDowell. This “quirky sensibility” is not just a pop culture term, but a subcategory of Indie cinema that encompasses a range of films and filmmakers that emerged from Indiewood in the 90’s and early 2000’s, with films recognisable for their dry, deadpan approach to comedy, visual artificiality, a thematic interest in childhood and family, and most particularly, a tone that balances ironic detachment with sincere engagement. MacDowell views Anderson as a “key player in the quirky”, arguing that his body of work offers “perhaps its most potent and consistent expression”.
Browning’s 2011 book on Anderson compares his films to the Marmite test, provoking either extremes of fierce love or violent antipathy, and little in between. His oeuvre of work seems to either have die-hard fans or ever sceptical critics accusing his characteristic tendencies of being “repetitive and ostentatious” (Kunze, 2014: 7). Like every artist, Anderson’s genius lies in his ability to create something original from the wealth of resources he draws upon whilst filmmaking, including those associates with whom he has ongoing personal and professional relationships. It could be argued that “his workplace is as carefully arrayed as the set of one of his films” (Brody, 2009). Collaboration is an important part of modern filmmaking, as will be discussed in chapter one, and it is notable that Anderson manages to maintain such an identifiable filmic signature when working on such high value films that require a multitude of creative contributors. “As well as with his regular writing patterns, there is an almost family feel to the casts he surrounds himself with.” (Babb, 2012).
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