USA, 2001
Richie [holding Mordecai]: "See, now he has more white feathers on his neck."
Margot: "I wonder what happened to him."
Richie: "I don't know. Sometimes, when people have a traumatic experience, their hair turns white. "
Leo Strauss famously surmised that "the problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart of things." If this is true (and I am wholly convinced that it is), then there is no better way to approach a film than by examining what is most obvious about it. "The Royal Tenenbaums" is, at its most obvious, a "family film" - but what kind of family is it?
Families are not a Biblical invention, but they are certainly a Biblical preoccupation - one could argue that the Bible is little more than an ornate family history. In recent years, the Moral Majority has espoused a so-called "Biblical" definition of "family," a nucleus that often consists of an authoritarian father, submissive mother, and 5.5 children. Any thoughtful examination of the Bible reveals a very different portrait; and though the Tenenbaums are a highly dysfunctional family by any contemporary definition (not exclusively that of the Christian Right), they are, from a Biblical perspective, fairly normal.
I've never made a secret of my antipathy toward the films of Wes Anderson. No one can deny his talent, both as a writer and a filmmaker, but this talent seems either too great or too small for the projects he tackles. "Bottle Rocket" and "Rushmore" were accomplished failures; "The Royal Tenenbaums" is a flawed success.
In "The Royal Tenenbaums," Anderson achieves what he'd been striving for in his first two films - a truly sympathetic character. The character is Royal, a grand patriarch in the Biblical sense, the film's center. As A.O. Scott of the New York Times observed, "the only one [of the film's characters] who bursts off the page into three dimensions is Royal. Everyone else has defining tics, but [Gene] Hackman is an actor of such explosive inventiveness that no mannerisms can contain him."
Anderson's second great accomplishment is Richie (an understated performance by Luke Wilson). In Richie we see Royal's image, both as a double and a doppelganger. Yes, Royal is corrupt where Richie is innocent; Royal is brash where Rich is subdued. But when the film ends, it is Richie who has inherited his father's role as family caretaker, and there's a sort of Biblical logic to this. Throughout the film, they have reflected each other the way Abraham and Isaac, or Isaac and Jacob, reflect each other.
These Biblical allusions may seem farfetched, but when one examines "The Royal Tenenbaums" closely, one finds a whole slew of Biblical situations. Spirituality may not run particularly deep in this film (it's more P.G. Wodehouse than J.D. Salinger), but there remains something inescapably religious under the surface.
Allow me to provide a quick (and barely comprehensive) inventory of the Biblical situations in the film:
Two sons, one unashamedly favored by the father (Gen. 25:28). A brother in love with his sister (2 Sam. 13), and a father who approves (Gen. 11:31). A haircut that is more than a haircut (Num. 6:5, Ezek. 5:1). A compulsively lying patriarch (Gen. 20, Gen. 26) who is known for his scheming nature (Gen. 25, 27 - 33). A matriarch whose verbal and intellectual power over the patriarch is apparent (Gen. 27:5, Ex. 4:25). A grieving widower with two beloved sons (Gen. 35:18-20). The pains, joys, and complexities of this family are all Biblical in scope.
Yet these situations, in and of themselves, are not what give "The Royal Tenenbaums" its religious tone - it is instead the way the characters interact within these situations that gives the film its Biblical atmosphere. These characters, in all of their warmth, cruelty, aloofness, and absurdity, seem like characters from the Bible. The film's narrator (Alec Baldwin) speaks with a voice that is factual and grim, if not slightly ironic, much like the Biblical narrator (especially where the Torah is concerned).
It is also the characters' sense of themselves, and their own situations, that so strongly recalls the characters in Genesis. Consider the way Royal plots his schemes, the comic way he makes his plans, and compare it to the Biblical portrayals of Jacob or Abraham. Think of the way Richie loves, honors, and yet silently (and astutely) examines his father, and think of the portrayal of Isaac in Genesis 22, or Joseph (after the business in Egypt).
My favorite line of dialogue from the film, spoken between Royal and Henry, could easily serve as the famous confrontation between Jacob and Esau, after Jacob has returned home:
Royal: "Can I say something to you, Henry?"
Henry: "Okay."
Royal: "I've been considered an asshole for as long as I can remember - that's just my style. But I'd feel pretty blue if I didn't think you were going to forgive me."
Henry: "Well I don't think you're an asshole, Royal. I just think you're kind of a sonofabitch."
Royal: "Well I really appreciate that, Henry."
Such an exchange may seem too vulgar and bizarre for the scriptures, but only if you never really read the scriptures. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the style and substance of the Hebrew Bible will recognize it as...well...strange, subtle, and very, very quirky.
Above all, there are the trips - the voyages, the pilgrimages, the disappearances. Characters come and go from each other's lives, for a variety of reasons, each obscure and vaguely religious. Royal has been gone for years. Margot (who slips away countless times) leaves her husband after Chas and his two sons have returned to their mother. We first encounter Richie on a ship, having traveled across the globe (and hardly for the purpose of sightseeing). Eli disappears late in the film, reappearing at Henry and Ethel's wedding. Mordecai disappears, only to reappear with new feathers on his head (Ex. 34:29-35).
In the Bible, journeys are both common and profound. Every time a character goes on a trip or disappears from the text, they return utterly changed. From Cain's aimless exile to the Israelite's 40-year wandering, from the journey to the Promised Land to the journey to Babylon and back, from Christ's sojourns in the desert to Paul's mission trips, one could analyze all of scripture based solely on "the comings and goings."
This is how the characters in "The Royal Tenenbaums" move - they are marked not so much by their psychology or their behavior as by their distance from home (both literal and figurative). It is the image of the journey, coupled with the homecoming, that gives this film its Biblical flair.
Like so much of the Hebrew Bible, we are uncertain if "The Royal Tenenbaums" is playing as comedy or tragedy. It's best to approach either text as an uneasy hybrid of both; a strange composite of human experience. The film does not seem overtly spiritual - but then again, neither does the Old Testament, at least so far as we've come to understand "spiritual." In the Torah, God is not a Divine Being who sits in Heaven so much as a character, a personality who interacts with the other characters in the most unusual stories. I could imagine God waltzing into "The Royal Tenenbaums" and talking to Royal very much the way he spoke to Abraham or Moses, if only because I can so easily imagine Royal talking back.
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It was Roger Ebert who first noted the similarities between "The Royal Tenenbaums" and the works of P.G. Wodehouse. To read more about the film, see Kent Jones' essay on the film (featured in the Criterion DVD), as well as the reviews by J. Robert Parks of the Phantom Tollbooth, Nathan Rabin of the Onion AV Club, Stuart Klawans of the Nation, and A.O. Scott of the New York Times.
