Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Hooray for narcissism!

That's very much the definition of Wes Anderson's cinema. WA is fascinated with the involved narcissist who learns to sort of accept the outside world a little bit. That may be why I value Bottle Rocket and Royal Tennenbaums over Rushmore and The Life Aquatic. Narcissism breeds narcissism, and Where BR and Rushmore are about the beautiful dreamers, I think TRT at least deals with the grief such painful insulation can cause.

That may be why I find Life Aquatic so troubling - it sacrifices youth for knowledge. Publicly I have bad mouthed such directors as PT Anderson, Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith (among that entire generation of filmmakers) because they never seemed to leave their bubbles. Wes strikes me as one of the best, but ultimately these people need to experience more, to understand more to truly become great directors. We'll see how it goes, but Tarantino, for better or worse bests these guys because he knows that "a man's got to know his limitations."