Wes Anderson’s films often stand for a single striking image. This taste for the visual has asserted itself from The Tenenbaum family (2001), when Margot descends from the bus, a scene that has become emblematic. Since then, this singular aesthetic has conquered many fans, who track down the “Anderson style” in the smallest corners of their daily lives.
The accidentally Wes Anderson Instagram page, created in 2017, was a dazzling success by publishing photographs of real places which, by chance, correspond to the visual universe of an American filmmaker’s film.
See this publication on Instagram
For example, a train from the Milanese metro seems straight out of its imagination, with its symmetrical arrangement, its pastel blue walls and its bright yellow bars. On social networks, Internet users “romanticize” their daily lives like Wes Anderson films. It all started with Ava Williams, who published a video on a train journey on Tiktok, with this legend: “You have an interest in not doing like you’re in a Wes Anderson movie when I arrive.”
@AVAWILLYUMS With a good imagination, Everything is symmetrical. Let a girl day dream! #Wesanderson ♬ Wes Anderson -Esque Cute Acoustic – Kenji Ueda
With the release of a new film, The Phoenician Scheme (Presented in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, then released on May 28 in France), social networks will undoubtedly be flooded new attempts to imitate. But all these pastiches are not necessarily successful. The Wes Anderson style that these Internet users are trying to reproduce is an elusive aesthetic, which takes shape only by a specific combination of elements.
The ingredients of a Wes Anderson film
Thinking about Wes Anderson’s aesthetics as a combination of elements amounts to considering it as a recipe. When you make a cake, it is not enough to have the list of ingredients: you also need the right proportions. Many cinema researchers have identified the main characteristics (ingredients) of the Andersonian style. We find there:
- A front camera angle;
- Tablet plans;
- A symmetrical framing (often centered);
- A diving view (view from above);
- A fixed camera or a camera movement highlighted;
- Idle;
- A sequence in mounting accompanied by a soundtrack (rock or quirky instrumental music);
- Harmonious color pallets.
But to imitate Wes Anderson, these ingredients must be combined in the right proportions. This typical stylistic combination emerges in its third feature film, The Tenenbaum family (2001). This film is distinguished by its constant use of table plans, where the characters are arranged in the formally, on the same level, facing the spectator. These images are immediately recognizable by their striking composition and their dramatic effect.
Take the sequence where the American director presents her “Gallery of characters (22 years later)” (as the success cardboard indicates). All the characters are shown in front of a mirror. Here, the camera takes the place of the mirror, which leads them to look directly at the goal.
These table-tables are reinforced by a fixed camera and a centered framing (the characters are positioned in the center of the image), which accentuates symmetry and immobility.
Wes Anderson varies the combinations of these table plans. The film opens onto a symmetrical and static plan of a library book (The Royal Tenenbaums), filmed in diving (top view), the camera being perpendicular to the counter. This first plane therefore combines no less than five elements: front angle, tabletable, centered framing, diving view and fixed camera.
The originality of the Andersonian style does not reside in each of these elements taken in isolation, but in their specific combination.
Margot descending bus
Another emblematic example, always in The Tenenbaum familywhen Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) finds Richie (Luke Wilson) after her sea trip. She goes down from the bus and walks towards the camera, therefore to Richie, who is behind the lens. This plan once again combines frontal angle, table-table and centered framing. But this time there is a moving camera (which backs up to follow Margot) and a slow motion, all accompanied by the song “These Days” interpreted by the German singer Nico.
The systematic use of table plans in The Tenenbaum family (and in the following films) combines with other stylistic elements to create a coherent aesthetic. The features that Wes Anderson combines in his films are not arbitrary. All fulfill the same function: draw attention to the form and establish a distance between the spectators and the characters.
Wes Anderson rejects classic narrative techniques (those known as “invisible”) in favor of a reflexive cinema, where the viewer’s gaze is guided towards a clinical and distant observation of eccentric characters evolving in equally unique universes.
So, if you want to transform a moment of your daily life into the Andersonian scene, think of the story you want to tell, then carefully combine the eight ingredients that make all the magic of a real plan signed Wes Anderson.
