film #4

The Royal Tenenbaums

I like the details… when the trunk pops open, after Royal's been stabbed, when he asks to go to the Y- as if he's a dead body. Breaking the news to his young children across the long table… a coldly awkward, businesslike distance. The shot of Clue and Risk as Royal smirks about wedging Etheline and Henry- it's a game. "Immediately after saying this, he realized it was true." There's something to the way that half the songs on the soundtrack float omniprescently, like a normal soundtrack, but several others are controlled by the characters- they come from phonographs, from radios. "I wish you would've done this for me when I was a kid." "But you didn't have a drug problem then." There's a grace to the last scene… a powerful and unspoken fact here- if not for the events of this film, the funeral would have gone unattended.

It's a film with a very strange sense of time… there was only one place where I could even tell this story was set in the present day, and that's at the cemetery… only on the (1965-2000) headstone for Chas's wife, and Royal's headstone at the end. In their fashion, in the appliances they use, in the references they make (Royal's brand of racism, for instance), this film feels like a creature of the '80s or the late '70s. Which indeed must be the point- this is a defeated family, and they ache silently for the past by physically remaining there.

"Are there a lot of low-voiced questions with monotone, one worded answers?" …… "Yes."

I felt like I was 2/3s of the way to feeling these characters. They're interesting, in some cases there's a lot of detail, but they're all so reserved… there's a cautiousness to so many of them, they don't let eachother in and they don't necessarily let the viewer in either. I felt hungry for one or two more scenes with each of them. Royal and Richie are probably the characters I felt closest to, understood most clearly. Even Royal is tough to read… possibly because I took a brief intermission, but I'm not totally sold on his emotional switch at the end, from curmudgeonly jerk to curmudgeonly jerk fully giving back and letting go. Likewise I'm not sold on Margot's "I'm in love with you." I must say though, the romantic and sexual tension, the two of them sitting in that glowing tent… it's a particularly moving and captivating scene, because it's such a recognizable life moment… the passionate crush on the verge of breaking through with the slightest acknowledgement… the glance of her thigh, the shoulders touching as they sit.

I liked the opening sequence a whole lot, and many of my feelings for the film from that point on are determined by how well the characters are justified in the opening sequence. The more clearly Royal's destructive influence is conveyed, the more deeply I feel invested in his negative effect on his children. It's most effectively rendered with Margot- the hilarious and cruel review he gives to her play, on her birthday. With Chas, I recognize how he failed as a father, but I don't see how his cruelty would poison the root of Chas's genius, as he poisoned Margot's.

One more scene I gotta acknowledge: even though I'm not 100% sold on the process of getting there, the montage of Royal joyously romping and making chaos with Ari and Uzi, "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard…" classic and engaging.

I remember the previews, and the sense I got from this film, just osmotically in the culture, and I assumed that the story really was about this dying man coming home to repair the damage he inflicted on his family. It's funny and kinda smart how that plot is really a bit of a MacGuffin- he's not dying, and the director never even tries to convince the viewer that he's dying- pretty much as soon as he says it, I knew he was just saying it to get in. It would've been a pathetically obvious twist, had Wes really tried to hide it at all.

Sweet, a little dull, a little obvious and at the same time a little confusing from time to time. Likable but not an instant classic (though the beginning and end are both beautiful).