Movies, Drama

Bottle Rocket

11 October 2010

image A few months ago I read a story about the director Wes Anderson in the New Yorker. Anderson was hailed as an innovative filmmaker with a peculiar style. I had seen his The Royal Tenenbaums  when it came out and found the film different but not particularly compelling. It struck me as trying to take a different perspective for the sake of taking a different perspective, rather than trying to take a novel perspective to shed light the centrality and challenges of family in our lives. The portrait of Anderson in the New Yorker, however, made it apparent that there was more to this filmmaker that met the eye in the The Royal Tenenbaums. I just watched his first film ever, Bottle Rocket. It was a complete commercial failure, but boy is this film a charmer. I can fully understand why Martin Scorsese named Bottle Rocket one of his top-ten favorite movies of the 1990s. Bottle Rocket follows three losers in a rich Texas neighborhood who come to the conclusion that “crime does pay.”

The film works in part because we have all seen famous bank robbery film in which the thieves bring to bear amazing skills to get the cash and elope the police. We sense from the beginning that our three losers will find it difficult to pull off their plans although their leader Dignan (Owen Wilson) tries mightily to apply modern management techniques to turn his two partners Anthony (Luke Wilson) and Rob (Robert Musgrave) into an effective team (click on more to see evidence of Dignan’s management techniques). After some initial success the team runs into serious trouble in large part because they have strongly conflicting views how their future should unfold. Anthony, who has just left a mental institution, finds his spirits healed when he falls in love with a Peruvian housekeeper at a motel where the gang is plotting their next coup. Robbing another bookstore now doesn’t seem nearly as appealing to Anthony as convincing his new love to marry him.  In his first film, Anderson does also try to do everything a bit different. But here is is in the service of telling deep story about the human condition. I want to see this film again before long to catch all the little gems that Anderson placed into picture. But first I will watch his second film and then all the others except for The Royal Tenenbaums.image

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Peter

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