Analyzation of Wes Anderson Films

I am absolutely in love with Wes Anderson. I had heard a lot about him being in film school but this project gave me a reason to watch some of his films. He has such a unique style not only in terms of visuals but in his characters and storytelling techniques. His use of quirky characters and one-point perspective has such a warm and pleasant feel that makes his films so fun to watch. I watched Moonrise Kingdom, Grand Budapest Hotel and a short film by him called Castello Cavalcanti. Each of these films shared similar the feeling of warm colors, interesting characters and a tremendous understanding of framing and the importance of compositional balance.

            First of all, I really enjoyed how he, like many other directors, has favorite actors to work with like: Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray.  When directors do that it establishes almost a family-like bond between the actors and director and that’s a very pleasant thing to know while watching the film. It’s like when I was in high school making movies with my buddies; I wouldn’t try and reach out to fin d the best possible actors to convey deep, emotional characters I had written. I’d write goofy scripts with my friends already in mind already knowing who would play whom. I still prefer doing that to this day which is another reason I really connected with Wes Anderson on a directorial level. Another thing that was frighteningly similar between the two of us was our use of one-point perspective in our movies. His is obviously more refined and exaggerated but used just the same. Ever since I saw Napoleon Dynamite I loved that style. It is such a great way to express awkwardness or even how lonely, or perfect a character may feel. You can express so much with this one angle and it all just depends on how you balance your frame.

            I think that the term Auteur can definitely be applied to Wes Anderson’s films. Not only does he actually write his own movies, but his artist influences are so apparent as style choices that it is hard to imagine the movies being remade by any other director. I did a bit of research to see if I could find out where this style came Wes Anderson studied theatre production in school which is where that exaggerated symmetry and balance comes from. Before reading that I describe Wes’ style as the “dollhouse point of view” because the way the camera is placed and movies throughout the scene reminds me of looking at a cut away of a dollhouse. I watched scenes from Life Aquatic and he takes a cross section of the submarine so you can see all the different characters doing their own thing in different rooms. Wes also took a lot of influence from the French filmmakers. Style choices like the yellow font; his music choices and framing are all reminiscent of French films from the 70s/French new wave.