The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Wes Anderson

USA

109 min, color, English

The Tenenbaums are an island in themselves. They live in a spacious house in New York and the children are all prodigies. Chas (Ben Stiller) is an incredibly successful business guy who seems to do something involving real estate, Richie (Luke Wilson) is a champion tennis player, and Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), the adopted daughter, is a prize-winning playwright. It is not the genes, obviously, that make this family they way it is, and yet for all its apparent glamor, it disintegrates when the patriarch Royal (Gene Hackman) has to leave his wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston) citing something that sounds like her being unhappy because of lack of attention.

The story kicks in twenty years later. Nothing remains of the astounding successes of the children. Chas has two kids and his wife has recently died in a plane crash. Richie travels the world sporting a beard and pathetic tennis paraphernalia. Margot is married to Raleigh (Bill Murray), a cross between an anthropologist and a shrink who knows a lot about the oddball natives of obscure islands and even the incommunicado Dusty than about his own wife who spends most of her time locked in the bathroom, secretly smoking and watching TV.

One day Royal gets kicked out of the hotel where he has spent the last 20 years on credit and he invents an elaborate ruse to get himself back into the family house: He pretends to have cancer and supposedly wants to reconcile with his kin before he dies. When he finds out that their accountant Henry (Danny Glover) has asked Etheline to marry him, he resolves to wreck that possibility as well.

Anderson's film walks a thin line between laughter and sadness, sometimes veering in one direction then another. Maybe it is the sadness that makes us laugh, however uncomfortably, at the screen, perhaps nervously recognizing certain parallels between the story and ourselves. The simple fact is that each character is utterly lonely from the very beginning.

The self-absorbed Royal who has no time for his family and is devoid of tact of good sense when dealing with his children. Chas has been neglected because his father never took him anywhere preferring to spend time with Richie. Richie, who has been in love with his step-sister forever but who has never had the strength to admit it. Margot, who has tried to suppress her feelings for Richie, and who has never been able to feel more than an appendage to the family. Etheline, whose time is at first absorbed by the children, trying to compensate for the loveless marriage she is in.

Ironically, Richie's best friend Eli (Owen Wilson), is the one who sees the Tenenbaums from the outside, who longs to be one of them without realizing what their lives really are. Always trying to prove his is worthy of admission to this elite club, he writes books that generally receive terrible reviews, and he tries to deal with the recognition that he may, after all, be an utterly talentless hack by indulging in drugs, buying ever more expensive clothes (perhaps quite suited for the social circles where he might be a celebrity) and cars. When he can, he also sleeps with Margot.

The Tenenbaums try to deal with their anxieties and solitude in different ways, but each an every one of them is on the verge of collapse out of sheer exhaustion. The first to snap is Richie, who attempts to commit suicide when he finds out that Margot has been whoring for years, lately with his best friend who is aware of his feelings for her. Eli is the next to go and he crashes his car into the Tenenbaums' house, ending up in the living room painted like a clown. Chas loses it next and goes after the first trigger he can see, which happens to be Eli. Only Margot holds back, with her usual secretiveness, perhaps unable to allow herself to experience abrupt emotions overtly.

Like the teutonic plates adjust themselves following a pressure-relieving earthquake, the Tenenbaums (and Eli) settle into their new lives, not much changed, but perhaps happier.

The inscription on Royal's grave, like everything in his life, is a beautiful lie. It presents a perfect picture of something far short of that distinction yet utterly human anyway.

February 18, 2003