Wes Anderson is one
of the few directors whose style of film-making I absolutely loathe. I took a
liking for Rushmore but other than that, I found all his films either plain
lazy or too subtle for their own good. I just couldn’t decide which. I never managed
to find the motivating factor behind his characters and their actions. It
echoed the experience of watching a foreign film without subtitles. But what’s
worse is the distant way with which he treats his characters. Anderson writes
damaged characters and weighs them down with heavy baggage from the past while
he rolls on the floor laughing with his finger pointed at them. I don’t believe
Kubrick or even The Old Mallick saw their characters with such iciness. While
those two auteurs saw their characters through alien eyes, Anderson sees his through
those of a heartless little prankster. Even crueller is the bright-and-sunny exterior;
a clear indication that the film-maker takes pleasure in torturing his
characters. To make a long story short, I rarely get Anderson’s films but when
I do, I’m mostly appalled.
When Terence
Mallick returned after a twenty-year hiatus with The Thin red line, I can only
imagine how people must’ve felt. This was a different Mallick. He wasn’t just
seeing his characters, he was feeling them. This particular trait was
predominant in The New World and more so in The Tree of Life. As feeling became
more and more abstract, Mallick’s films became more and more amorphous. Wes
Anderson takes a similar turn with Moonrise Kingdom.
