Boy Movies #33

The Wes Anderson issue

You’re reading Boy Movies, a weekly newsletter about boy movies written by Allison Picurro — me! For a variety of reasons, this issue is late, as I warned it would be. I hope my poor time management skills don’t deter you from subscribing. Either way, thanks for reading!

On Sunday, I saw the new Wes Anderson, Asteroid City. The theater was almost empty, and my friends and I were seated in front of a pair of men who had quite possibly never watched a movie before. They were hooting, they were hollering, they were reacting to each little thing like they were watching Avengers: Endgame or some shit equivalent. It was a bizarrely outsized reaction to a Wes Anderson movie, which I liked fine but didn’t love as much as everyone else seems to. I’m sorry to generalize during the final dregs of Pride Month, but these two patrons of the cinema were, by all accounts, straight guys, and their extremely vocal responses to something so muted reminded me of a question I’ve received quite a few times: Does Wes Anderson make boy movies or girl movies?

There is no clear answer to this. Boy. Girl. Both. Neither. I can see arguments for both, and I can also see arguments for placing him in some amorphous, in-between category. When I was in high school, I became obsessed with Wes Anderson after seeing Fantastic Mr. Fox for the first time. His films had deep emotional cores, fanciful color palettes, neat symmetry, and Jason Schwartzman — all things that spoke to my teenage sensibilities. I devoured his filmography and rolled my eyes when The Grand Budapest Hotel got him his first Best Director nomination at the Oscars, like the Modest Mouse fans who got all pissed about “Float On” being their breakout hit. (By the way, I love “Float On.”) I’ve grown to appreciate Grand Budapest more as I’ve aged, but found everything that’s come after generally forgettable. I was recently talking to Boy Movies art director Sarah Turbin and earnestly said, “It’s crazy that he hasn’t made a movie since Isle of Dogs,” at which point Sarah looked at me blankly and said, “Dude, French Dispatch.” Oops! I saw The French Dispatch opening weekend and only remember Timothée Chalamet’s adorable mustache. Humiliating, but can you blame me¹?

Anyway, I’m stalling. Look, I don’t know if Wes Anderson directs boy movies or girl movies, okay? I don’t know if his dollhouse girl tendencies outweigh his man angst. His films are sensitive. They star sad yet fashionable little guys. They deal with girl themes like grief as well as boy themes like complicated father-son dynamics. I thought Asteroid City, a live action cartoon about depressed people (I guess this could describe any of his movies, but it feels especially pronounced here), might help clear this up, but it only confused things further. He is so squarely in the middle, a genderless enigma. He has transcended the binary. Maybe Wes Anderson is our most progressive filmmaker. (Imagine if I really felt this way — I’d hope that a beloved reader would have me institutionalized.)

In attempt to make sense of it all, here’s the Boy Movies ranking of the feature films of Wes Anderson, from least to most boy:

You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep

11. Moonrise Kingdom

For once, Wes pays as much attention to the relationship between a mother and daughter — and to his girl protagonist’s coming of age journey — as he does to the one between a father (figure) and son. Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) is an emotionally volatile, monotone preteen in a pink dress and heavy eyeliner who wishes to escape the people she feels will never understand her. She falls head over heels in love and will do anything to keep it. She wants so badly to be interesting. She’s Lady Bird, but younger. This is easily the girliest Wes Anderson movie.

10. Fantastic Mr. Fox

Many kids’ movies are exempt from the trappings of the gender binary, but even when Wes does one for children it contains shades of wry darkness. In any case, Fantastic Mr. Fox is girlish. Stop motion is of course a male art form, but it also has gentle autumnal landscapes, a light and bouncy score, and Meryl Streep as Mommy. Don’t even get me started on Jason Schwartzman’s Ash, who is full of teen rage and dare I say gay coded.

9. The Royal Tenenbaums

This is where the ranking starts to get murky. Here we have mothers and daughters, yet again. We have a fabulously miserable Gwyneth Paltrow delicately smoking while wearing instantly iconic outfits. We have Luke Wilson playing a Kendall Roy precursor. We have a collection of characters involved in the arts in some way. We have “I’ve had a rough year, dad.” Yes, there are boy elements at play — a deadbeat yet lovable patriarch, jealous boy best friends, Alec Baldwin — but the use of Nico’s “These Days” is enough to tip it into girl territory.

8. Asteroid City

At the risk of oversimplifying things, I would say that grief is for girls and aliens are for boys. There are so many boyish things about Asteroid City: the meta narrative, the tortured genius played by Edward Norton, the ambiguously dead but incredibly beautiful wife, and, as always, the focus on a relationship between a man and his father(-in-law). Still, to me, Anderson’s sense of whimsy is what always makes him lean girl director — he’s been described as “twee,” which is a typically a term that gets pejoratively lobbed at women — and Asteroid City is probably his most whimsical film since Fantastic Mr. Fox. Also, Rita Wilson is in this. Rita Wilson doesn’t appear in boy movies.

7. The Grand Budapest Hotel

Even a very flamboyant Ralph Fiennes hooking up with a be-wigged Tilda Swinton in old lady drag isn’t enough for me to declare Grand Budapest a girl movie, though it’s close. What makes it feel boy to me is that it’s inherently a film about men who go to work. <3 Tony Revolori I love you <3

6. Isle of Dogs

Stop motion is a male art form.

5. The French Dispatch

I famously remember next to nothing about this movie and didn’t have enough time or willingness to revisit it for this issue, so forgive me if you think this placement is off. This was the Wes journalism era, though, which is something every male director must go through at some point.

4. The Darjeeling Limited

The Darjeeling Limited is Eat, Pray, Love for boys. In this case, the film’s trio of brothers, played by Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, and Jason Schwartzman, are all Julia Roberts. They’re fighting constantly and are all obsessed with being their dead dad’s favorite boy. (They cannot do this, you see, because he is dead.) They resent their bitch mom who abandoned them. One of them left his pregnant wife to get on the train to India, one of them is horny, and one of them is suicidal. I know people find this film clunky and hate the “emotional baggage as literal baggage” thing, and obviously the “white people go to another country to find themselves” trope is hack, but I still find so much to love about Darjeeling. In fact, if I’m being honest, it’s my favorite Wes.

3. Bottle Rocket

In all of its sweet scrappiness, Anderson’s first movie is truly just boys making movies. It’s Film School: The Movie.

2. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Sometimes you’re middle-aged and washed up and your best friend got eaten by a shark and you have an estranged son and you both want Cate Blanchett so bad. What else is there to say? I guess only this: Men absolutely love this movie.

1. Rushmore

I saved Latin, what did you ever do? Max Fischer, a plucky little asshole who no one likes, is a hero to off-putting nerd boys and incels everywhere. Herman Blume, a lonely divorced guy who gets through the day by projecting on a kid, is a hero to disillusioned forty somethings everywhere. And academia is for men. Period.

1. I know that The French Dispatch has shooters, so I apologize if this offends you, but please.