To learn more about Wes Anderson’s signature style, we reached out to Nik Dirga, an American journalist based in New Zealand who’s very familiar with the director’s work. “I first came across Wes Anderson when I rented a VHS tape of Bottle Rocket on a whim way back in 1997 or so, and I've been a big fan ever since,” he told Bored Panda.
“I think what's always appealed to me the most about his style is the way he intricately crafts his worlds in a way that feels just a little askew from our own reality, but still has an emotional heart. I still get choked up by The Life Aquatic every single time I watch it, for instance,” Nik noted.
“[Anderson’s] style has kept on evolving, and his recent movies like Asteroid City and The French Dispatch are so heavily designed and mannered that they feel a bit more artificial than Rushmore,” Nik went on to explain. “But that's also kind of the point - he's been playing with the very idea of storytelling itself, drawing attention to the fact that what we see on screen is only a story rather than pretending it's a documentary portrait.”
Nik also shared that you can actually spot “Wes-style” anywhere you go once you’ve trained your eyes a bit. “Start looking beyond the surface of suburban sprawls of Costcos and Burger Kings, and you can find an offbeat beauty in everything up to a display of neon-yellow Cheetos containers at a Walmart,” he noted.
“Wes fetishizes elements of reality but never entirely leaves reality behind. I think part of the reason Wes Anderson style has become a meme is that it lets us pause a second and think, ‘Hey, that old grocery store logo is kind of gorgeous in its own way, that thrift shop outfit makes you look a little like a movie star,’” Nik explained. “It lets us imagine real life as a movie.”
#12 I Know This Sub Is Usually Buildings Or Scenery, But I Feel Like This Is Also Pretty Relevant
We also got in touch with film expert Darren Mooney, who runs The m0vie blog, to hear his thoughts on the topic. First, Darren broke down Anderson’s signature style for us. “I worry that this is going to sound very pretentious, but it's a very rigid formalism that draws the audience's attention to the artifice of the world,” he told Bored Panda.
“He does this by embracing the inherent unreality of film, presenting worlds that are very obviously constructed and not aspiring to verisimilitude or realism. He wants the audience to be aware that everything they see is constructed, and often draws attention to the artifice of the frame itself - symmetrical composition, limited planes of movement (dollies in and out or left to right, but rarely hand-held and rarely on multiple axes at once), shifting aspect ratios and even shifts between color style,” Darren explained.
“I am very fond of Anderson. In particular, I'm fonder of ‘late Anderson’, which is perhaps a rarer opinion,” Darren went on to share. “I really like Rushmore, but my favorite films of his are all from Fantastic Mr. Fox onwards. I think I prefer his style when it is completely disconnected from anything approaching reality or naturalism.”
“It's a lot easier to buy his characters and his style, for me, when these films take place in a realm completely separate from the mundane world,” the cinephile explained. “So my favorites would be the more stylised ones: The Grand Budapest Hotel, Asteroid City, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom. I like most of his films, but I think his weakest is The Darjeeling Limited, because I'm not sure Wes Anderson is the guy to make a movie about India.”
We also asked Darren if he’s seen anything in real life that reminds him of a Wes Anderson film. “Unsurprisingly given Anderson's fondness for old Europe (The French Dispatch, The Grand Budapest Hotel), it's European cities and environs that feel most Andersonian to me,” he shared.
“Paris and Vienna can feel quite quaint and old-fashioned and unreal in a way that reminds me of Anderson's style, while the French and German countryside occasionally has houses that feel like they could have come from an Anderson production,” he noted. “But even then, there's something magical about Anderson's worlds that I don't know I've ever felt replicated in reality, if that makes sense?”
