I’m not a huge Wes Anderson fan. I wanted love Rushmore, but didn’t. I liked Royal Tennenbaums, though. N + 1 posits that Anderson’s aesthetic is the ‘hipster’ point of view running out of gas:
All Anderson’s movies share one overriding theme: the fundamentally disappointing quality of adulthood. So Anderson and his characters wish they were still children. Surely there must be a trust fund, or at least a platinum card, in sight. They exist in a state of perpetual luxuriant slumming. They drink blue-collar beers but hold white-collar jobs. Or vice versa. Whether he comes from above or below, the hipster takes care never to appear to be striving. Class anxiety isn’t hip.
A casual racism pervades Anderson’s movies. He has this in common with fellow hipster auteur Sofia Coppola. Her Lost in Translation succeeded mostly as a sustained mood piece—Williamsburg goes to Tokyo, holes up in a fancy hotel, feels sorry for itself, hangs around in its underwear, then bumps into Bill Murray drinking himself to sleep at the bar.
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