Film Notes

The Royal Tenenbaums

Oh Tenenbaums, Oh Tenenbaums: 
examining a house divided

In lieu of sugar plums this holiday season, The Royal Tenenbaums offers us visions of cigarette butts, repressed emotions and scarred psyches which serve as the basis for  dark humor told with a light touch.  

Director Wes Anderson (Rushmore) and cast member Owen Wilson co-wrote this tale of the Tenenbaum family, each member brilliant yet struggling with years of emotional baggage, much of it supplied courtesy of family patriarch Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman).

The film takes place in what seems to be the New York City of the not-so-distant past, but the costumes and art direction keep the time period elusive, enhancing the sometimes dream-like quality of the story.

Oldest son Chas (Ben Stiller), is an international financier who began investing in real estate as a teenager.  He and his two boys survive a plane crash which kills his wife and leaves Chas a walking bundle of neuroses.  Younger son Richie (Owen's brother, Luke Wilson), is a washed up tennis star traveling the globe to escape his romantic longings for adopted sister Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), an unsuccessful playwright whose eyeliner is as dark as her mood.   It seems Margot has the same feelings for Richie, and is trapped in a loveless marriage to prominent neurosurgeon Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray in a subdued role that is much too small).   Also thrown into the mix is family friend and hanger-on Eli, a historian and best-selling adventure novelist, who sports a cowboy hat and spends most of his time spaced-out on illegal substances.

Then there is stalwart Etheline Tenenbaum.  Angelica Huston is warm and convincing as Royal's estranged wife, mother over this brood of has-been geniuses.  Strong, intellectual, and soft-spoken, her manner is weary but self-assured. 

But it is Hackman who shines brightest here as the free-wheeling, self-absorbed  Royal, conniving to reinsert himself into both home and family after years of absence.   Anderson and Wilson wrote the part with Hackman in mind, and he seems to relish this tailor-made role.  Royal is unabashedly hedonistic and selfish, his callousness seeping into every conversation.  ("I'm sorry about your mother," he solemnly intones to Chas's two young sons upon their first meeting, "She was an extremely attractive woman.")  

What pulls the characters and the film together is Royal's intrusion upon their lives, at first, seemingly, as an act of desperation and/or turf warfare -- he's been kicked out of his hotel residence and Etheline is falling for longtime family accountant Henry Sherman (Danny Glover).  Yet gradually Royal discards his selfish motives.

The Royal Tenenbaums  takes a witty, off-kilter look at the evolution of a family from disfunctional to at least somewhat cohesive.  Put it down as a must-see on your holiday viewing list.  (The Royal Tenenbaums, a Touchstone Pictures Production, rated R, opens 12/14/01)  

 

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