by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

Wes Anderson is known for his aesthetic style. Dollhouse sets, whip pans, color palettes reminiscent of the late 1960s and 70s, symmetry, and everything being “just so,” are all hallmarks of his visual style. Rock music, deeply flawed men, frantic dialogue, Jason Schwartzman, and a dry wit are also common features of Anderson’s work. Because of his singular aesthetic, people have made many parodies of his style over the years, with “What if Wes Anderson directed X-Men?” being my favorite. More recently, non-artists have been using AI to generate similar parodies, and there was even a recent TikTok trend emulating his style. While his signature look and tone is easily imitated, what is Wes Anderson actually saying with his work?

Perhaps, the short version is this:

Why a fox? Why not a horse, or a beetle, or a bald eagle? I'm saying this more as, like, existentialism, you know? Who am I? And how can a fox ever be happy without, you'll forgive the expression, a chicken in its teeth? –Mr. Fox (George Clooney), Fantastic Mr. Fox

While evident in all of his pictures, the theme of alienated loners who are seeking acceptance from those around them without changing their intrinsic nature crystallizes in Anderson’s first animated film, 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. While ostensibly an adaptation of the Roald Dahl book of the same name, the existential confrontation threaded throughout is all Wes Anderson (along with screenplay collaborator Noah Baumbach). Foxy himself verbalizes it over and over in the movie. A thief-turned-newspaper man, he struggles with his class (he wants to live above ground, raising his station to upper middle class), but the basic issue he seems to have is that writing a newspaper column doesn’t satisfy his inner nature the way a chicken in his teeth does. It’s clear that Fox loves his wife, Felicity (Meryl Streep), and son, Ash (Jason Scwartzman). There are things he likes about his life, like his job, his family, and his community, but there’s a wild animal inside him that is being lost in all this domesticity.

While it could be easy to dismiss this as a typical “middle aged man feels castrated by life in the suburbs” ennui, what redeems Foxy is his desire for both. He’s not the best husband or father, as Felicity reminds him while they hide out in the sewer. “I don't care about the truth about yourself. This story is too predictable,” she says. He asks what happens in the end of this story, and she tells him, “In the end, we all die. Unless you change.” But should Foxy change his nature? Thematically, this all comes to a head in what is arguably the best scene in Anderson’s entire filmography:

After rescuing his nephew Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson) from the evil farmers, Foxy and crew spot a wolf in the distance as they ride by on a motorcycle. As Alexandre Desplat’s score swells with liturgical vocals and a snare drum, Mr. Fox speaks to the wolf in English, Latin, and French. He attempts to communicate, before confessing he has “a phobia of wolves.” Tears form in his eyes as he looks at the wolf, and he raises his paw. The wolf returns the gesture before slinking off into the woods. In this scene, Foxy confronts his wild side, which he sees as the truth about himself. In the words of Matthew Zoller Seitz, in his excellent The Wes Anderson Collection book, Fox, like many Anderson protagonists up to that point, is “a charismatic but selfish father figure who cares more about his own pleasure than his family’s needs, puts them through hell, suffers alongside them, and partly redeems himself.” 

Along with the father, one of the other major recurring character types in Anderson’s movies is the creative. Max from Rushmore, Margot Tenenbaum (even if she is adopted), Steve Zissou as a Jacques Cousteau stand-in, Jack (Schwartzman) in The Darjeeling Limited, and so on. But an important thing about the way Anderson deploys this archetype is that almost none of them are major commercial successes. They are all about making art for the sake of making art as their primary objective. Furthermore, most of them are all alienated loners, and through sharing their art there is often an attempt at connection with others. 

With Fantastic Mr. Fox, Felicity embodies this best. She paints landscapes, mostly for her own personal pleasure. Mr. Fox calls her “possibly the best landscape painter working on the scene today,” and it’s unclear if he is being modest or actually bragging, because her paintings do look nice. Regardless, they always seem to feature thunderstorms in them. This is perhaps her way of expressing the same angst that Mr. Fox is trying to remedy his bandit activities, but she has found a less dangerous outlet for these feelings. Painting is very unlikely to cause extreme ire from the local farmers.

Moonrise Kingdom acts as a sort of pivot point in Anderson’s filmography. A love story between children, it is important to note that the primary thing that Suzy (Kara Hayward) and Sam (Jared Gilman) have in common is their disaffection. Sam is an orphan, which makes his acting out more understandable, and through circumstances and behavior, he has alienated most people. Suzy feels like an outsider and misunderstood by her family. She is the artist of the pair, with her love of fiction, music, and other creative arts. Sam is almost feral but has a keen understanding of survival skills. Again, the reason for their bond and romance is they see each other’s intrinsic natures. Suzy is prone to violence, while Sam starts fires while sleepwalking. In Anderson’s work, everyone feels like a weird outsider until they connect with someone who sees them for who they are. The truth about themselves. And living that truth ends up changing the whole island of New Penzance for the better. Their pure childlike version of romance reminds the adults around them about the need to connect with each other, and to take children just a bit more seriously.

The Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dispatch are celebrations of this need for acceptance as well, but with more urgent purpose. M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) and Zero (Tony Revolori/F. Murray Abraham) are an unlikely duo but are united in their love of the Hotel as well as their embrace of their eccentricities. Anderson reminds us that people like queer-coded single men and immigrants are most vulnerable to the threats of facism. With each person killed or removed, a beauty and voice is erased. Gustave lives his whole life essentially following the creed that “there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.” Through his mentorship of Zero, which becomes friendship, Gustave demonstrates the importance of these principles as a bastion of creativity, and ultimately connection. While Gustave may be a judgmental person at first glance, he has a warmth and humanity that he also seeks in others, which is especially evident in the prison sequence. There is a version of service that is truly about taking care of others, and Zero comes to learn that it is better to be imprisoned, or even murdered, for your beliefs than it is to not live your truth about yourself.

The French Dispatch is itself an ode to the way that art connects us to the people around us, and the world beyond. Anderson treats writers as stars, and their words as art. Through the work of the magazine and as a tribute to the work of The New Yorker, the film celebrates the telling of stories in lyrically dry fashion, as well as the act of journalism itself. The best segment is “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner” in part because it is told by Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright). One of Anderson’s best characters, Wright is a loving caricature of James Baldwin and towers over anything else offered. He also has the best line of the film, which again, sums up this incarnation of Anderson’s grand thesis. “Maybe with good luck we'll find what eluded us in the places we once called home.” 

“Why a fox?” Because we are all wild animals. Distilled down, Wes Anderson’s work is all about the longing we all have to be accepted as ourselves and how we get in our own way in trying to find it. We all struggle with our own insecurities, the things that keep us from being who we are and trying to be someone we like better. Or at least I struggle with mine. Anderson’s work has deep resonance for me and always has. In some ways, MovieJawn is one of the ways I find time to make art in my own life for the very same reasons: to connect with other people, and to better understand the things that elude me. Movies are my favorite form of art, and writing about them is my own expression of the truth about myself. Whistle, click-click