Authorship in The Royal Tenenbaums

Introduction to Film

Professor Orgeron

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Authorship in The Royal Tenenbaums

The Royal Tenenbaums opens with a shot of a like-named book being checked out

of a library. The next shot with motion, just several seconds later, is the scene depicted

on the book’s cover, an invitation requesting “the pleasure of your company at home.”

Immediately following is a brief shot of the book’s first page, which corresponds to the

movie’s opening narration. This device serves to liken the movie-watching experience to

that of reading a book.

On another level, though, the film’s metaphorical opening shots express a fact its

director, Wes Anderson, is both conscious of and comfortable with: Anderson is truly a

cinematic author. While his films (Bottle Rocket, 1996; Rushmore, 1998; and

Tenenbaums, 2001) are, like all major motion pictures, a collaboration of specialists, each

project exhibits his unique style of filmmaking and shared thematic elements. From the

narrative’s initial framing as a work of literature to the slow-motion closing shot, The

Royal Tenenbaums is unmistakably a Wes Anderson creation.

In the movie’s first scene the Tenenbaum family’s patriarch, Royal, who has been

separated from his wife, Etheline Tenenbaum, visits his young children at the family’s

house—from which he has already moved-- to discuss with his three children, Margo,

Chas, and Richie, the possibility of divorce. The father-children conference takes place

at a long, polished table in a meeting room, and in the background a curious but charming

classical rendition of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” can be heard, complete with Anderson’s

trademark harpsichord. The first shot shows the three children at one end of the table,

each facing the camera; the camera is placed at the level of the table and seems to be

looking up at the children. Chas, the business genius of the Tenenbaum trio, sits between

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his siblings; he occupies the center of the space and seems to be presiding over affairs.

The shot is carefully constructed: the space between each sibling and on the borders of

the shot is filled by windows, which bring light to the image and make the space seem

more expansive. Additionally, both spaces between the three children include a three-

pronged candelabra with candles lit; the candles have the dual effect of contributing to

the sense of the children’s mature, almost stately demeanor and drawing the three

children together in the image.

The scene then enters a standard shot-reverse shot cutting pattern. The camera

remains fixed at a point on the table which is much closer to the children’s end than

Royal’s; the camera placement makes Royal seem small, distant, and isolated from the

children. Additionally, a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling seems to loom over

his head, and each upper corner of the shot is occupied by a small, three-branched

candleholder. His space seems to be rather empty and dwarves him; interestingly, the

room’s decoration augments and unites the children, but seems to have the opposite effect

on Royal.

Dialogue in the scene reinforces this; essentially, each of the children asks Royal

a question and he answers them as best as he can. However, it is obvious to the viewer

and characters that he plays no fatherly role to his children, and that there is clearly little

hope for Royal’s future in the family. The scene reinforces a thematic element common

to each of Anderson’s films; it hints at the disjointed parent-child relationship that Royal,

an absentee parent, and his children will share. As the rest of the film will reveal, the

Tenenbaum family is possibly as dysfunctional a group as has been shown in a modern

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film and the first scene’s mise-en-scène reveals a rift in the family that Royal will attempt

to repair later in both his life and the film.

Several minutes later, after a summary of the children’s driven childhoods and the

eventual breaking of the family—symbolized by the release of Richie’s pet bird,

Mordecai—the climactic, emotional swell of “Hey Jude” fades and is replaced with its

musical opposite: a more austere, almost clinical violin and cello arrangement,

consisting largely of plucked, staccato notes. Time has passed since the preceding scene,

and the Tenenbaum children are now adults. The contrasting musical tracks seem to hint

at the fact that the glorious spectacle of each one’s childhood fame and fortune has

eroded over time, and the family’s emptiness and separation is all that remains.

The following sequence formally introduces the cast by actor and character

names; Anderson’s standard font, of course, is used. It showcases the technique of

tableaux vivant, that is, the characters shown in this sequence seem to have been placed

in a “living painting.” Each subject’s surroundings have been meticulously arranged, and

the camera remains stationary in each shot, preserving the organization of space.

Curiously, each shot, lasting for several seconds, depicts its character being groomed,

from the perspective of the mirror used by the character.

The first shot is of Royal in his hotel’s cosmetics parlor, having a skin-cleansing

mask removed from his face. Next we see Etheline fixing her hair in her office, the

background filled by Native American portraits and bookshelves. Chas is then shown

shaving at a pool, flanked and perfectly balanced by his two boys, Ari and Uzi. Margot’s

nails and hair are being prepared, and her head is balanced by two bright lights, almost

comparable to antennae, with various shades of green leaves painted on the wall

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providing a backdrop. Several other characters—Eli Cash, Raleigh St. Clair, and Henry

Sherman—are then shown, followed by Richie Tenenbaum taking his own picture on an

ocean liner; balance is maintained by windows on each side of his head. For each

character’s shot, the colors surrounding them introduce the color themes that will be

attached to the characters for most of the film; also, the style of dress of each character

remains essentially the same throughout the movie.

Tableaux vivant is used in both of Anderson’s previous films, and the method

itself demonstrates Anderson’s stylistic consistency. However, this sequence also

reinforces Anderson’s recurring theme of a detached or dysfunctional family; each

character is shown apart from his or her family members, unlike the previously analyzed

scene, and with the exception of Chas, each is essentially alone. The suggestion is that

each Tenenbaum child has left behind the family they once had. Their surroundings

have a perfectly contrived balance; it almost seems that each of the trio is searching for

harmony in their independent lifestyles. Ironically, the fixed camera shots seem create a

sense of stagnation; despite their best efforts, each of the Tenenbaum children has failed

to truly move beyond their childhood and grow up.

That stagnation is part of another common “Andersonian” theme which becomes

clear soon after the characters’ introduction sequence, as we begin to see the behavior

and interactions of the family, now grown up (with respect to age, at least). That is, each

of the main characters needs to change their perspective in some way, just as in

Anderson’s previous two films. Chas has become overly fixated on protecting the safety

of his children, after his wife has been killed in a plane crash which could have easily

claimed him and his boys as well (even worse, he isn’t prepared to admit that fixation).

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Margot is simply depressed or, in her own words, “in a rut” she needs to get out of.

Richie is in love with Margot, and has, for various reasons, retreated from the eye of both

the public and his own family.

A scene about halfway through the film signals a gradual growth away from those

problems. Royal is concerned with Chas keeping his boys “cooped up like a pair of

jackrabbits,” making them “scared of life.” Anderson soon cuts to an image of Royal

talking to Ari and Uzi encouraging them to leave their father’s home office and, in his

own words, “[take] it out and [chop] it up.” At this point, one of the boys replies

quizzically, “What do you mean?” That phrase covers a cut to the next sequence, which

explains what Royal meant to the viewer.

Royal and Chas’s two boys are yelling and rushing down a hall recklessly, the

image completed with a bright red “no running” warning painted onto the wall behind

them. The camera faces the three from the front, tracking quickly and somewhat

unsteadily in the direction they are running as if trying to avoid being trampled. This has

the effect of both removing the general restraint shown throughout the movie (by camera

and characters) and hiding from the viewer just what the three are headed for. The

camera cuts to a side- angle shot of the kids in bright red bathing trunks jumping into a

pool, followed soon by Royal in full dress, including shoes. A familiar device of

Anderson’s is then introduced: he cuts to an underwater shot of Royal, Uzi, and Ari

holding hands. In his previous works, underwater shots were used to mark a change in

the perspective of the characters in the water; in this case, it signals their perspective

being changed and foreshadows a similar change which will overtake the entire family.

The sequence then cuts to brief shots of Royal and Chas’s boys jaywalking

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through traffic, riding horses and go-carts, throwing water balloons at a taxi, and

shoplifting. In the latter two activities, a variation on the shot-reverse shot technique is

used: when shifting from one person’s face to the subject of his gaze, the camera quickly

pans to what he is looking at, rather than cutting. This has the effect of making the

characters’ actions seem less staged and more spontaneous, capturing the viewer’s

excitement and showing that of Royal and the boys. The sequence follows with shots of

the three riding a garbage truck, talking to Pagoda, and betting on a dogfight as a

carefree, whistling tune winds down. When the sequence ends, the movie is just halfway

complete, and the family is still far from reunited and functional; in fact, immediately

after Royal’s “education” of the boys, Chas admonishes him in the hallway closet for his

actions. However, the sequence (specifically, the underwater shot) marks the origin of a

slow, steady transformation from division within the family to restoration of previously-

existing bonds, not to mention the creation of some which had never existed.

The Royal Tenenbaums is a movie devoted to family. Wes Anderson carries into

his third film the detached families from Bottle Rocket and Rushmore; he goes a step

further here by giving them a thematic centrality and even showing that it’s almost never

too late to mend broken family ties. It uses many stylistic techniques and reimagines

several plot components tested in his previous films, and also shares numerous

idiosyncratic bits with Wes Anderson’s previous films, from extended hotel stays to

adults hiding behind trees in the name of love. However, the theme of family is the

telltale sign this is a creation of Anderson. In today’s world of film, where the creative

process is steered largely by marketing research and project producers, Anderson is one

of a select few directors who legitimately appears to be an expert cinematic author.