WesFest Day 2: Rushmore

Yesterday I wished my best friend a Happy New Year, and then we got into it a little bit about the correct order in which to rank Wes Anderson’s movies. I found myself unsure of whether to agree or disagree passionately with the things he said; I haven’t been caught this off-guard by an exercise since quadratic equations took, well, a rather unexpected turn. 

1- Moonrise Kingdom (unlikely to change).

2- The Grand Budapest Hotel (I’m distrustful of this, but Budapest remains the most technically excellent).

2- The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (can I have two number two’s?)

3- Fantastic Mr. Fox (in fact, can I have three?)

3- The Royal Tennenbaums. (Shit, I’m doing this wrong!)

4- Rushmore. (SOMETHING IS CLEARLY WRONG WITH ME!!!)

5- Isle of Dogs (Higher, if it weren’t so aesthetically heartbreaking …)

6- Bottle Rocket. 

I don’t think I was physically, mentally or spiritually prepared for how fantastic Rushmore was still going to be. It is indeed the first true Wes Anderson film: sardonic, sarcastic, only pretentiously mean-spirited, and wholly dedicated to the singular beat it challenges its characters to defy. 

That beat is established nice and early by Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), a sort of wunderkind of whom appearances are deceiving. His grades at the highly esteemed Rushmore Academy are in freefall, and so his principal (Logan Roy from Succession, that old dog!) threatens him with suspension. (On a report card, cut towards with trademark tongue-in-cheekery, we learn that Max has scored only 41% in Botany.) A wonderful opening sequence, to the triumphant tune of ‘Making Time’ by The Creation, informs us that Max is a member and even chairman of far too many clubs and societies. Anderson’s protagonists suffer almost debilitating delusions of grandeur, they try to live outside of time, and Max is no different. He clearly has not intention of reducing his preoccupations, as he befriends a local millionaire and falls for an English English teacher — who he tracks down after discovering a daintily scribbled anecdote in a copy of Jacques-Yves Costeau’s Diving for Sunken Treasure. (Hint hint, my fellow Andersonites!)

Chaos and awkward hilarity ensue, as said millionaire (favoured Anderson accomplice Bill Murray as Herman Blume) falls for said English English teacher (Olivia Williams as Rosemary Cross), who spends much of her screentime trying to disavow Max of his romantic obsession. 

Anderson has a fascinating worldview inflecting his filmmaking. The world is a place of infinite possibility as long as our self-delusions allow it to be. These know no bounds until we open our hearts and then our mouths — and then reality starts to shrink the size and scope of everything. Max lies to the school bully about inappropriate behaviour with the mother of (perhaps) his only friend on campus. He completely ignores the precocious Margaret Yang after he’s forced to change schools, even though she shares several of his personal interests. He sabotages a man’s car, tries to fell a tree upon his head, and also is exquisitely rude at dinner; but because a state of fantasy is what allows him to be, Anderson makes it easy for us to be sympathetic when his pattern of life begins to unravel.

But there’s more. Anderson and (co-writer Owen freaking Wilson) 300% believe the written word can be funny, because there are countless scenes in which its authors aren’t present to claim responsibility for their absurdity. Characters often seem puppeteered into scenes, to make subtle adjustments to carefully arranged frames. Despite the director’s delicateness of touch, however, each time underlines the sense that their interjections are mostly unwelcome. 

Body language is everything in Rushmore, that constant invasion of space, not least when Anderson presumes violence is a mediocre way for men to express their superiority over one another. When bodies aren’t crashing into scenes unannounced, they’re swaying in the background or falling perfectly into formation — to help Anderson complete loops of symmetry. 

The movie ends with a series of heart-warming apologies; declarative acts that will presumably begin the rest of Max’s life. Right at the tail-end of things, Ms. Cross congratulates him on putting together another immersive theatre production. 

“Well, you pulled it off.”

“Yeah. At least nobody got hurt.”

“Except you.”

“I didn’t get hurt that bad.”

I can’t wait to hear them run that exchange back when Anderson scores his lifetime achievement Oscar. It sums it all up — Anderson, Rushmore, life — perfectly.