Filmography
Nov. 8th, 2006 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyThe Royal Tenenbaums
This film is amazingly good - five stars without question. We sat down to it last night and I don't remember laughing out loud so much in a film for ages.
The plot revolves around the Tenenbaum family, wife, husband and three children. The husband is thrown out, the wife raises the children as geniuses. We have a ten minute segment introducing us to the family, then zoom forward twenty years or so, by which point all of the children are in freefall for one reason or another, the father hasn't spoken to any of them for three years, and the mother is happily being an archeologist and falling in love with her accountant. When said accountant proposes, father hears of this, and plots that he won't lose his life. He fakes stomach cancer, and pulls the whole family together again. Eventually, his fraud is outed by the accountant, but the threads of reconciliation have already been put in place, and by the time the film closes upon his funeral (heart attack), it is quite clear that even though the family are still quite broken, at least they've got past some of the hurdles that have been blocking them for the past however-many years.
And, may I just say, how lovely it is to see Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson in a 'straight' film together? Stiller plays Chas, the oldest son, an financial genius as a youth who still runs a succesful business, but because of his unresolved and unfaced grief about the death of his wife has become fiercely overprotective of his two sons. Wilson is Eli Cash, the child from over-the-road who ingratiated himself with the Tenenbaums, has now become a writer of quite bad Wild West novels, and has a mescaline addiction. Plus he's having an affair with the daughter, Margot. Eli drives back out of nowhere for the marriage of the mother and her accountant, managing to run over Chas' family's dog and barely missing the children. Chas obviously goes a bit batshit at this and chases him through the house, knocking the priest down the stairs in the process, and hurling him over the garden wall. This is the sole momeny of Stiller/Wilson 'comedy', and yet it's perfectly integrated into the film - this is the first point that Chas actually lets out his anger about his wife's death and realises he has a problem. A brilliant use of the partnership without undermining the film's integrity at all, especially since Chas' refusal to address the grieving process has been foregrounded so strongly - the scene where he confronts his father in the games cupboard only to turn the light out and walk out when asked about his wife was classically brilliant.
The other acting is also brilliant. Gene Hackman turns in a fabulous performance as the old roué of a father, Royal Tenenbaum, nicely paralleled by a very understated Anjelica Huston as his wife, Etheline Tenenbaum. Gwyneth Paltrow's Margot Tenenbaum is a fantastic encapsulation of a child who got stuck in puberty!goth and has never got round to getting out, despite marrying a man very much her senior. She was a great writer and playwright as a child, but alas! Her muse has deserted her. Her mysterious loss of finger is explained to her nephews with wonderful deadpan expressions by all concerned, and her habit of obsessively hiding the fact she smokes is classic. The fact that this, above all, shocks people instead of the myriad sexual affairs in her life (which are wonderfully weird and exploratory) is typical of the film. She is, it should be noted, only an adopted daughter, a fact always made painfully clear to her, that she plays on throughout. Scarring much?
The final Tenenbaum child, Richie, the sporty one, is in love with Margot, which raises a whole raft of 'family/adoption/not blood/family/argh' emotions without ever making us deal with them actually getting together (the film hints rather than makes clear, thank goodness). He's the most sensitive and delicate of the lot, having sympathy for his father when he announces the stomach cancer, pulling the most strings, trying to get Eli into rehab, and so on. For most of the film he goes about with a great big shaggy mane of hair, and then shaves it all off (making one realise just how rather attractive Luke Wilson can be) just before, um, attempting suicide. Yeah. Admittedly, we were probably expecting that one as he's definitely not cast as the most sane and stable person in the world, and his obsession with Margot (he's just discovered her past sex life) has been leading him down that road. But ouch.
I could just rave and rave about this film. The script is brilliant, the timing is brilliant, the acting is brilliant. Watch it.
This film is amazingly good - five stars without question. We sat down to it last night and I don't remember laughing out loud so much in a film for ages.
The plot revolves around the Tenenbaum family, wife, husband and three children. The husband is thrown out, the wife raises the children as geniuses. We have a ten minute segment introducing us to the family, then zoom forward twenty years or so, by which point all of the children are in freefall for one reason or another, the father hasn't spoken to any of them for three years, and the mother is happily being an archeologist and falling in love with her accountant. When said accountant proposes, father hears of this, and plots that he won't lose his life. He fakes stomach cancer, and pulls the whole family together again. Eventually, his fraud is outed by the accountant, but the threads of reconciliation have already been put in place, and by the time the film closes upon his funeral (heart attack), it is quite clear that even though the family are still quite broken, at least they've got past some of the hurdles that have been blocking them for the past however-many years.
And, may I just say, how lovely it is to see Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson in a 'straight' film together? Stiller plays Chas, the oldest son, an financial genius as a youth who still runs a succesful business, but because of his unresolved and unfaced grief about the death of his wife has become fiercely overprotective of his two sons. Wilson is Eli Cash, the child from over-the-road who ingratiated himself with the Tenenbaums, has now become a writer of quite bad Wild West novels, and has a mescaline addiction. Plus he's having an affair with the daughter, Margot. Eli drives back out of nowhere for the marriage of the mother and her accountant, managing to run over Chas' family's dog and barely missing the children. Chas obviously goes a bit batshit at this and chases him through the house, knocking the priest down the stairs in the process, and hurling him over the garden wall. This is the sole momeny of Stiller/Wilson 'comedy', and yet it's perfectly integrated into the film - this is the first point that Chas actually lets out his anger about his wife's death and realises he has a problem. A brilliant use of the partnership without undermining the film's integrity at all, especially since Chas' refusal to address the grieving process has been foregrounded so strongly - the scene where he confronts his father in the games cupboard only to turn the light out and walk out when asked about his wife was classically brilliant.
The other acting is also brilliant. Gene Hackman turns in a fabulous performance as the old roué of a father, Royal Tenenbaum, nicely paralleled by a very understated Anjelica Huston as his wife, Etheline Tenenbaum. Gwyneth Paltrow's Margot Tenenbaum is a fantastic encapsulation of a child who got stuck in puberty!goth and has never got round to getting out, despite marrying a man very much her senior. She was a great writer and playwright as a child, but alas! Her muse has deserted her. Her mysterious loss of finger is explained to her nephews with wonderful deadpan expressions by all concerned, and her habit of obsessively hiding the fact she smokes is classic. The fact that this, above all, shocks people instead of the myriad sexual affairs in her life (which are wonderfully weird and exploratory) is typical of the film. She is, it should be noted, only an adopted daughter, a fact always made painfully clear to her, that she plays on throughout. Scarring much?
The final Tenenbaum child, Richie, the sporty one, is in love with Margot, which raises a whole raft of 'family/adoption/not blood/family/argh' emotions without ever making us deal with them actually getting together (the film hints rather than makes clear, thank goodness). He's the most sensitive and delicate of the lot, having sympathy for his father when he announces the stomach cancer, pulling the most strings, trying to get Eli into rehab, and so on. For most of the film he goes about with a great big shaggy mane of hair, and then shaves it all off (making one realise just how rather attractive Luke Wilson can be) just before, um, attempting suicide. Yeah. Admittedly, we were probably expecting that one as he's definitely not cast as the most sane and stable person in the world, and his obsession with Margot (he's just discovered her past sex life) has been leading him down that road. But ouch.
I could just rave and rave about this film. The script is brilliant, the timing is brilliant, the acting is brilliant. Watch it.
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