FFS Movie #1: Bottle Rocket

For my study, I'm focusing on the three highest rated films directed by Wes Anderson on Rotten Tomatoes (that I haven't seen). Bottle Rocket is his first feature film, released in 1996, and has an 85% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, falling in third place out of three movies I've selected to watch. I decided to watch the movies from lowest to highest rated so that I can see the development and progression of his style through his most popular movies and what makes each one "better" (or more popular) than the last. 

This was really interesting to watch because it had inklings of what would become Anderson's own distinctive style, but it was a little rough around the edges. I guess it was sort of like a Wes Anderson prototype. I still really enjoyed it!

Like I mentioned in my FFS #1 post, a key part of his style is symmetric (or glaringly asymmetric) arrangement or composition within the frame. It fits into the storybook style of his, because each frame could be snapped as a still photo and put in place as a page within the book. A good specific example of this would be when Anthony (Luke Wilson), Dignan (Owen Wilson), and Bob (Robert Musgrave) are all hiding out in a motel and Bob drives away with all of his stuff in the middle of the night. When Anthony and Dignan wake up in the morning, Dignan's hand is seen hovering over a table (looking for the missing car key) with what looks like an I-Spy picture book table covered with random crap: various colors of paper hole punch circles, keys, a lighter, and more. It's a close up of the table and perfectly aerial, so it feels so manicured. Again, like we're looking at a page in a picture book. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a picture to show this. 

There was also a fantastic scene when the three men are in a car driving down the road, and Anthony is criticizing Dignan's plan. In the car, Anthony sits in the back, Bob drives, and Dignan sits in the passenger seat. The camera shots are mediums shots in the sense that we can see the top half of Dignan and Bob, but they're inside the car. For the whole scene, Anthony is the only one talking, and yet we never see him; the shots flip between Dignan and Bob, either of them taking up a third of the frame while their side of the car and the outside road beside the car fill the rest of the frame. It was really interesting that we never even saw Anthony, and I think this was to emphasize the reactions of the other two over Anthony's. Anthony was always sort of the voice of reason (even though they're all idiots), and the fact that he was relaying the hard truth to Dignan was less important than seeing Dignan's grinning face and Bob's totally-clueless-but-generally-disgruntled-by-life expression. It was pretty telling in terms of their individual character personalities. 

There's this one scene that doesn't last too long, but it's just so great. It's when the team goes to buy guns for their heist later on, and they test them out on a shooting range. 

Bottle Rocket (1996) - Shooting Scene

First, in terms of composition and the rule of 3rds, there's green grass filling 2/3 of the bottom of the frame and a blue sky lining the top. We see this striking lack of balance between grass and sky (normally it seems like sky takes up more space than grass on screen) that reminds me a lot of a shot from JoJo Rabbit, shown on the right. A car rolls in similar to how the bikes roll in in this image.  

What proceeds is a montage of them unpacking the guns and putting on earmuffs to the tune of that guitar picking plucky-strummy music that's in like every Spongebob Squarepants episode. Then there's quick cuts to each character shooting a gun a few times in a row, with eye room and everything to fit their outstretched arm holding the gun. Each of these moments are spliced together, and then there's a shot where all three of them and the gun seller are lined up slightly diagonally so we can see them all and they're all shooting their guns together. I think what really makes the scene is that their expressions are squinty, maybe from the sun, but they seem to have no reaction to shooting these guns. They're just these three duds shooting guns like it's any other day, and it's great. Then the camera zooms in more so it's just various people's forearms shooting the guns, and there are less gun shots between splices. There's one frame where it's just the gun in someone's hand zoomed even closer, and then a shot from over Dignan's shoulder as he shoots the final shot. He turns over his shoulder to the others offscreen so that his face takes up the righthand 1/3 of the rule of 3rds, he holds the gun up, and just nods repeatedly and mouths something, indicating that that gun suits his fancy. 

Something that really did surprise me was that this movie lacked his normal use of color and vivid visuals. For the most part, the characters were surrounded by barren grayish brown roads, brown dirt or not overly exposed green grass (so it didn't particularly stand out), and grayish white buildings. I guess this struck me because it was very un-picturesque and picturebook-like in this way. Aside from the team's matching yellow jumpsuits, there really wasn't much color in the characters' clothing throughout the movie (these jumpsuits only made their appearances in the last few scenes; for the rest of the movie, they wore khakis and white shirts and the like). In the landscape shots, there wasn't much saturated color, either. Aside from a relatively muted sunset and green grass, the colors were fairly bleak. This photo of Dignan firing a gun was one of the prettiest shots, color-wise. 

Something that was ABSOLUTELY there and maybe one of my favorite aspects of Wes Anderson movies was deadpan, dry comedy delivered through earnest dialogue filled with ridiculous content. A really good example of this would be Anthony's little kid sister telling him he's a failure for being locked up in what Anthony and Dignan call the "nuthouse," and Dignan talking to Anthony later with this huffy and indignant tone, saying "She say's you're a failure?? what has she ever accomplished with her life that's so great?" Just knowing that they were talking about a little girl in prep school who was really the only reasonable or "normal" person in the movie (again fitting with the Anderson theme of having children be the voices of reason and sanity while the adults spiral) made it so goofy when Dignan asked what she's ever done with her life. There was another moment when Dignan was interviewing Bob to be part of the team and Bob insists that he'll be a great addition and that "[he] really want[s] to be a part of this team. Also [he's] the only one with a car." (Obviously they're gonna need a car if they're planning a series of heists.) Dignan doesn't even really process what Bob's saying, he just nods like "you're in" with a grin on his face, acknowledging what a good point Bob made but almost underplaying the part about the car. It sort of sets Dignan apart as something of an idiot, and in the goofiest and subtlest way. It's just these really subtle moments of humor that don't bring about a cackle, more of a chuckle, but you find yourself chuckling contentedly throughout the whole movie. 

One last note: according to Wikipedia, "Scorsese praised Wes Anderson for his ability to 'convey the simple joys and interactions between people so well and with such richness.'" I think this is such a perfect way to encapsulate what it is that is so great and touching about Anderson's movies. They cover ridiculous plotlines often involving dummies of characters, but he finds ways to make you smile and feel touched with the little things. A good example of this in Bottle Rocket would be when Anthony calls Inez, the housekeeper for the motel he stayed at who he fell in love with during his stay, after months of being apart. He asked if it was her on the other line and she said "Anthony?" really excitedly after a moment. He took the phone away from his face, covered the receiver, and celebrated momentarily to the people around him (he was at a large get-together, and no one acknowledged it -- he didn't care), saying "aw yeah, she recognized my voice!" Then he got right back on the phone. It was so quick but such a sweet little stupid moment, and it's these inclusions in his movie that make them relevant and touching.