Rushmore (1998)

Director: Wes Anderson

After re-watching and enjoying The Darjeeling Limited, the wife and I decided to go back to an earlier Anderson movie which neither of us had seen in quite some time: Rushmore, Anderson's second full-length feature and his first with a significant budget.

This one holds up really well, and my wife and I actually picked up on things which we didn't remember catching on previous viewings (which were probably close to a decade ago).

The story follows Max Fisher, a 15-year old student at the Rushmore Academy, an elite prep school where Max excels in creating, running, and joining countless extracurricular clubs while failing miserably at anything academic. He falls in love with Ms. Cross, an attractive, young new teacher at Rushmore, but he hits a serious wall when confronted with the realities of their age differences and with a "rivalry" for her affections in the form of Herman Bloom (Bill Murray). Bloom is a self-made man who is miserable with his family life, but finds some rejuvenation with Ms. Cross. A jilted Max begins a series of retaliations against Bloom that soon spiral out of control, resulting in some rather serious consequences.

By now, just about anyone interested in films knows Wes Anderson's entire style. It is a very meticulously-crafted and curated visual style, coupled with a very dry, quirky sensibility in terms of character and dialogue. Stories often center on one or more people, young and old, who are in privileged economic positions but who deal with severe family dysfunction. Rushmore features some of those elements, though in a relatively grounded story. Max Fisher certainly fits the archetypal, precocious young person who is in plenty of Anderson's movies. In certain ways, he's way ahead of his peers, even if he's woefully immature in other ways. As usual with young people in Anderson's movies, a lot of the humor comes from just how dead seriously the young people take themselves.

This touches on one thing that both my wife and I realized upon this recent viewing: that for the first two acts of this movie, Max Fisher is an absolute monster. On earlier viewings, for whatever reason, I found him more charming and misunderstood, even as he was actively and aggressively seeking to destroy other people's lives. This time, though, I felt that I was truly seeing the emergence of a psychopath. Fortunately, the movie really is about Max eventually understanding the damage that he's done, atoning, and starting to move beyond the wildly egocentric stage of his life.

Along with 1994's Ed Wood, this was one of Murray's earliest
forays into quirky, very well-drafted "independent" type
comedies. The man was all but made for these roles.

The humor holds up really well, and is quite timeless. Anderson has never been one to rely on pop culture references, and it takes some fairly sharp writing to get dry humor to hit as well as he always has. That said, his is a particular brand of humor which isn't necessarily for everyone. I remember when I first saw Rushmore over two decades ago that I didn't completely "get it," though I found it amusing. Only after a few more viewings over the succeeding years did I start to really appreciate the more understated gags and the style, to go along with the broader humor.

Rushmore really is a great starting place for someone who's never seen a Wes Anderson movie but is curious. It's probably his most grounded, accessible work, aside from his first film Bottle Rocket, but the overall production value is far higher in this sophomore effort. Anderson's later movies are mostly bigger, zanier, and more cartoonish in ways, which may or may not be to some people's liking. Start here, then check out The Royal Tannenbaums. That should be a good gauge for whether you're a "Wes Anderson" person or not.