By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff
Auteur Wes Anderson first came to audiences’ attention with Bottle Rocket and Rushmore in 1996 and 1998, respectively, but his 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums cemented his place as a major director with a singular vision.
Garnering an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, Tenenbaums is the inimitably quirky portrait of the family of eponymous patriarch Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman), his estranged wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston) and their adult children, all of whom are thwarted geniuses.
Anderson established his talent for assembling A-list ensembles with Tenenbaums, pulling together Ben Stiller and Luke Wilson as biological brothers Chas and Richie and Gwyneth Paltrow as their adopted sister, Margot. (That’s in addition to Bill Murray, Owen Wilson and Danny Glover as an assortment of love interests, erstwhile husbands and frenemies to members of the family.)
The core of the film is the trauma and dysfunction of the Tenenbaum clan — its younger members feeling the disappointment of the unrealized aspirations of their brilliant childhoods and failing to deal with the longtime abandonment by their self-absorbed, rakish dad Royal.
Suffering various personal crises, the Tenenbaum kids converge on their stately though slightly worse-for-wear family home at the same time as Royal — down on his financial luck — fakes a terminal cancer diagnosis in order to claim an unearned position as head of the family.
On paper, that plot setup might seem like the recipe for a real downer of a film, but Anderson and his cast infuse every scene with wry humor and deftly crafted emotional beats that make Tenenbaums a deeply felt and genuine comedy-drama about love, loss and forgiveness.
Sponsored by La Chic Boutique and the Pend d’Oreille Winery — and featuring a Sandpoint High School student art show — The Royal Tenenbaums will screen Thursday, Feb. 12 as part of the Wes Anderson film series at the Panida Theater (300 N. First Ave.). Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and the show starts at 7 p.m. Tickets are $5 and available at the door or panida.org.
