Mise en scène - Марія Думанська

Mise en scène January ‘15

Wes Anderson’s issue

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pin by Hannah Rowlands, taken from pinterest.com/pin/253749760225100663/

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taken from grandbudapesthotel.com

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Monsieur Wes Anderson

Photograph: Kevin Scanlon/Getty Images

Short Facts: Born in May 1, 1969 in Houston, Texas.

Graduated from the University of Texas in Austin, where he also met Owen Wilson his future collaborator.

His first feature “Bottle Rocket” was based on the short film with the same name.

Starting from “Rushmore” Bill Murray had appeared in all further Anderson’s films.

Wes also directed few tv commercials for Prada, American Express, Stella Artois.

Among Anderson’s cinematic influences are François Truffaut, Mike Nichols, Stanley Kubrick, Orson Welles, and Roman Polanski.

Resides in NYC and Paris.

FILMOGRAPHY:

BOTTLE ROCKET (1992) SHORT FILM BOTTLE ROCKET (1996) RUSHMORE (1998) THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (2001) THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU (2004) HOTEL CHEVALIER (2007) SHORT FILM THE DARJEELING LIMITED (2007) FANTASTIC MR. FOX (2009) MOONRISE KINGDOM (2012) CASTELLO CAVALCANTI (2013) SHORT FILM THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (2014)

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taken from moonrisenkingdom.tumblr.com

The Life Aesthetic With Wes Anderson With the release of his eighth feature film, “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Wes Anderson takes another imaginative leap into a world of his own invention.

Written by: HOWIE KAHN GUESTS CAME BY funicular, ascending into

Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson’s eighth

the foothills above the fictional European spa

feature, out this month, began as a character

town of Nebelsbad in the imagined nation of

sketch about a longtime friend. “The main

Zubrowka. They were greeted—the rich, the

thing,” says Anderson by phone from Lon-

old, the insecure; the vain, the entitled and

don’s Home House—not exactly a hotel but,

the needy—at the Grand Budapest Hotel by

rather, a private club with bedrooms upstairs

its heroic, mustachioed concierge, Gustave

and the director’s base for a press day in

H, dressed in a purple tailcoat, perpetual-

Marylebone—”is he knows everything. And

ly perfumed with L’Air de Panache. Inside,

he’s good with people. My friend is not a

the floors were covered with custom Art

concierge, but would have been the greatest

Nouveau carpets. Vaulted staircases led up

concierge had he fallen into it—and if he’d

toward magnificent panels of stained glass.

been born about a century earlier. I don’t

H instructed his staff to keep the hotel “spot-

think concierges do quite the same things as

less and glorified.” He deemed it “a great

they used to.”

and noble house,” before having his porters

What they used to do—and, more important-

and waiters consider 46 stanzas of didactic,

ly, what they’ve never done—is central to

romantic poetry.

Grand Budapest, the entry point into yet an-

This is hospitality Wes Anderson –style and

other of Anderson’s fully formed, meticulous-

it took almost a decade to configure. The

ly researched and wholly original worlds.

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With each new film, Anderson, now 44, has

it would always be Billy Wilder’s first stop in

honed a visual language all his own, refining

Vienna. You have to respect pastry from this

his signature aesthetic in a way that enriches

era, so I thought we should do a Demel for

the emotional lives of his characters. To be

our own little made-up country.”

sure, there’s repetition across Anderson’s cin-

Cake aside, Anderson was having trouble

ematic landscape—of behavior and design—

finding a structure that would properly house

but the result is a richness few other filmmak-

his own Grand Budapest until he arrived in

ers have consistently delivered. From 1996’s

the Saxon town of Görlitz and discovered

Bottle Rocket, written with University of

the vacated Görlitzer Warenhaus depart-

Texas classmate Owen Wilson in their Austin

ment store. Constructed in 1912, the building

apartment (Anderson grew up in Houston),

appealed to Anderson for both its sizable

to 1998’s Rushmore; from 2001’s The Royal

atrium (it would become his hotel’s lobby)

Tenenbaums to 2004’s The Life Aquatic With

and its ability to house his production offices,

Steve Zissou;

“

art department and

Wes has an almost old-world workshop (bottles from 2007’s The way of considering other of L’Air de Panache Darjeeling Limited to 2012’s luminous people, a rare kind of cour- and other objects Moonrise Kingdom, tesy. But he’s also very pre- had to be made) Anderson’s worlds now all under one roof. pared, very specific. form their own galaxy.

“I don’t like things Ralph Fiennes Obsessively curious— that remind me too

”

compensating, perhaps, for not living in the

much of traditional

movie sets, where

gilded era of Gustave H himself, between the

everyone’s always getting in and out of

World Wars—Anderson acquired as much

vans,” says Anderson.

knowledge as possible about his concierge’s

“Wes works hard at creating an atmosphere

world before he got to work designing it.

of closeness,” says Ralph Fiennes, a new-

Prompted by postcard-like photographs he

comer to the director’s ensemble (regulars

found in the Library of Congress’s Photo-

include Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman and

chrom Print Collection, he set off for Austria,

Wilson, all of whom appear in the film) and

Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and

the man who breathes comedy and gravitas

Germany. “Before we went looking at all

into Gustave H. “There are no trailers for

these old hotels, we looked at thousands of

individual actors,” says Fiennes. “We all live

pictures—landscapes and cityscapes,” says

in the same hotel, eat dinner together every

Anderson. “It was like having Google Earth

night, get in costume in our rooms and just

for the Austro-Hungarian Empire.” When An-

go downstairs for hair and makeup.”

derson’s own Grand Budapest Hotel needed

Though Anderson’s movies often highlight

a pastry program, he turned to inspiration

the dysfunction of families, his sets celebrate

from the legendary Viennese bakery Demel.

their intimacy. Anderson likes to point out

“They have sachertorte, and a friend told us

that his cinematic tribe isn’t exclusively made

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up of actors. He’s worked with illustrator

ners with an adventurer’s heart, the film finds

Hugo Guinness, who has a story credit on

its protagonist accused of murder, stripped

Grand Budapest, since 2001. Cinematogra-

of his post, imprisoned, escaped and riding

pher Robert Yeoman has been Anderson’s

cable cars high into an Alpine monastery in

director of photography since Bottle Rocket,

search of answers. (And, typically for this

almost 20 years ago. Fiennes, for his part,

director, it’s all very stylish, with costuming

says he’d love to join the troupe again in

that achieves what Matt Zoller Seitz, critic

the future. “Wes has an almost old-world

and author of The Wes Anderson Collec-

way of considering other people,” he says,

tion, calls “material synecdoche,” where

“a rare kind of courtesy. But he’s also very

“objects, locations or articles of clothing

prepared, very specific.” Case in point:

define whole personalities, relationships or

those vans, which remained absent from the

conflicts.”) It’s perhaps the nearest thing to

film location. “We got a bunch of Danish

a Wes Anderson action blockbuster—a caper

golf carts to drive around town in,” says

with both suspense and speed—though the

Anderson. “That’s how we did most of our

director bristles at the description. “It’s more

traveling.”

us trying to do a Lubitsch-esque type of thing

There’s more to Grand Budapest than reser-

and maybe a ‘30s type of Hitchcock movie,”

vations and room service. A comedy of man-

he muses. “The cable car stuff, especially,

Martin Scali/Fox Searchlight Pictures taken from www.nytimes.com

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was me trying to think of a scene that might

his autobiography, The World of Yesterday,

have been a Hitchcock scene that never

which would be an apt subtitle for Grand

happened.”

Budapest. “Wes has his own unusual nos-

Anderson could cite references all day, foot-

talgia for a world he was never part of but

noting his cinematic vision endlessly. There’s

would like to be,” says Fiennes. He also has

no pithy response to questions regarding

the kind of wanderlust exhibited by Zweig,

aesthetics. He’d never say he’s going for

who regularly found himself far from home

neo-baroque with undertones of Americana.

in Zurich, Calcutta, London and Moscow.

Instead, a painting made expressly for the

The invented world of Wes Anderson de-

movie—by the fictional Johannes Van Hoytl

pends very much on travel and real immer-

The Younger, and in real life by the artist Mi-

sion (The director and his longtime girlfriend,

chael Taylor—triggers a riff on Old Masters.

the writer Juman Malouf, call New York

“Our reference was kind of Flemish painters.

home, though Anderson also owns an apart-

And Hans Holbein; I don’t know if it’s the

ment in Paris and will gladly stay on set

younger or the elder. I like Brueghel, and

abroad for long stretches. “I never actually

another one that’s maybe connected to this

know how long I’m there for,” he says, “time

is a Bronzino at the Frick. We were trying

just becomes meaningless to me in that situa-

to suggest that it wasn’t an Italian Renais-

tion.”) Anderson shot The Darjeeling Limited

sance painting. That it was more northern.”

on a moving train in India. The Life Aquatic

And then there’s the matter of another early

With Steve Zissou features scenes filmed on

“

I tend to want to make a movie some place because I want to know about that place

inspiration for the script, the work of the

”

Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (1881–1942), whose temperament calls out to both Gustave H’s fictional life and to Anderson’s actual one.

Like H, Zweig was both a grandiloquent dandy and a moralist force. He owned Beethoven’s writing desk, hung out with Rilke in Paris and even looked a little like Fiennes’s character. (“The mustache and the big nose,” says the actor. “I suppose that’s right.”) Like Anderson, Zweig mourned the end of a certain European era (titles, thermal baths) in

a World War II–era minesweeper off the Italian coast. And Grand Budapest could not be completed without footage from inside a fin de siècle bathhouse (amazingly, one was discovered in Görlitz during production).

“I tend to want to make a movie some place because I want to know about that place,” says Anderson, before hanging up to watch a final print prior to submitting Grand Budapest to the Berlin International Film Festival.

“There’s something to do with the characters and with the story, but there’s something that has to do with the world they live in.

“I’m not quite sure where the next one will be,” he says. “I will say I’m interested in Japan.”

Taken from (original text): online.wsj.com/ articles/SB10001424052702304914204579 393040751770278

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key style elements 1. Composing the subject exactly in the middle of the frame

taken from lemoncakes.co.vu

2. Using the Rule of Thirds

taken from cameracamp.net/compose-like-wes-anderson

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3. Attention to the details

pin by Eliesha Rae taken from pinterest.com/pin/133841420145410474/

4. Specific color palettes for each film

taken from wesandersonpalettes.tumblr.com

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5. Actors moving only in straight lines

pin by Erin Williams taken from pinterest.com/pin/16184879881487607/

pin by Jade Park taken from pinterest.com/pin/504332858245379614

6. Bill Murray anyone? Same cast in Mr Anderson’s films

pin by Martha Keller taken from pinterest.com/pin/203506476886910028/

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pin by Amy Sauceda found on pinterest.com/pin/277112183295592738/

7. Fine dialogs and phrases

8. Nostalgia of the past time

pin by Mumrikken taken from pinterest.com/pin/512214157592775798/

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pin by Gemma Spickernell taken from pinterest.com/pin/190417890466234377/

9. Main theme - family issues From Rushmore to Moonrise Kingdom

Nabokovian procedure with the families or

(shamefully neglected by this year’s Acad-

quasi families at the heart of all his films,

emy voters), Wes Anderson’s films readily,

from Rushmore forward, creating a series of

even eagerly, concede the “miniature” qual-

scale-model households that, like the Zem-

ity of the worlds he builds, in their set design

blas and Estotilands and other lost “king-

and camera-work, in their use of stop-motion,

doms by the sea” in Nabokov, intensify our

maps, and models. And yet these miniatures

experience of brokenness and loss by com-

span continents and decades. They comprise

pressing them. That is the paradoxical power

crime, adultery, brutality, suicide, the death

of the scale model; a child holding a globe

of a parent, the drowning of a child, mo-

has a more direct, more intuitive grasp of the

ments of profound joy and transcendence.

earth’s scope and variety, of its local vast-

Vladimir Nabokov, his life cleaved by exile,

ness and its cosmic tininess, than a man who

created a miniature version of the homeland

spends a year in circumnavigation.

he would never see again and tucked it,

Grief, at full scale, is too big for us to take

with a jeweler’s precision, into the housing

it in; it literally cannot be comprehended.

of John Shade’s miniature epic of family

Anderson, like Nabokov, understands that

sorrow. Anderson—who has suggested that

distance can increase our understanding of

the breakup of his parents’ marriage was

grief, allowing us to see it whole. But dis-

a defining experience of his life—adopts a

tance does not—ought not—necessarily imply

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a withdrawal. In order to gain sufficient perspective on the pain of exile and the murder of his father, Nabokov did not, in writing Pale Fire, step back from them. He reduced their scale, and let his patience, his precision, his mastery of detail—detail, the god of the model-maker—do the rest. With each of his films, Anderson’s total command of detail—both the physical detail of his sets and costumes, and the emotional detail of the uniformly beautiful performances he elicits from his actors—has enabled him to increase the persuasiveness of his own family Zemblas, without sacrificing any of the paradoxical emotional power that distance affords.

Taken from (original text): nybooks.com/ blogs/nyrblog/2013/jan/31/wes-anderson-worlds/ Written by: MICHAEL CHABON

pin by ElisaBoettger found on pinterest.com/pin/126100858289879924/

pin by Derek Hyland taken from pinterest.com/pin/546694842238865136/

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taken from grandbudapesthotel.com