Fantastic Mr. Fox
Directed by Wes Anderson
Three and One Half Stars
It seems like an ambiguous moment, or at least it seems like it’s meant to be ambiguous. What’s strange is that it isn’t. It’s a flat moment, relatively void of meaning. I was frustrated with this at first, but quickly realized that this moment isn’t about mysterious themes or hidden meanings. It’s a send-up of those same moments in other films.
Understanding this conceit is central to appreciating “Fantastic Mr. Fox” which relies on flat compositions and deliberate actions to achieve a dry and wildly audacious style of humor that Anderson has made all his own.
He occupies his films with characters who are either bored stiff with the roles they are meant to play or relish them with the enthusiastic thrill of classical theater. Consider the way two relatively similar characters inhabit this world.
Kristofferson (Eric Anderson), a wildly talented white fox with speed, brains, and a budding romance, trudges through the film with relative disinterest. It’s not that he’s bitter, he’s just, I don’t know, indifferent?
Mr. Fox, on the other hand, has the same athleticism and smarts, and a loving and devoted wife, and he walks upright and speaks in an assertive matter-of-fact enthusiasm that is most certainly on the smug side. His suave confidence lends the film much of its wit.
Mr. Fox, having sworn off chicken thievery at the request of his wife, Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep), moves his wife and son Ash (Jason Schwartzmann) out of their lowly hole-in-the-ground hole in the ground and into a lavish tree after assuming an occupation as a newspaper journalist (who nobody reads).
But his identity cannot be denied. He is a fox, after all, and foxes steal chickens. Mr. Fox plots to rob the three heavyweight famers nearby, Boggis and Bunce and Bean. He succeeds, of course, and the three outraged farmers plot to steal his hide in return.
Fox and his family burrow deep beneath their tree, meeting up with other members of the local animal population. Their misfortune is held against Mr. Fox, who seems unfazed, and tensions mount as the farmers try first to blow them out then to starve them out then to wash them out then…
Much of the humor in “Fantastic Mr. Fox” comes from moments outside the narrative, or at least moments that exist within the narrative that are not well-suited to its continuity. I can think of no better example than the poor bloke playing his banjo and improvising a song. The song itself is funny, but the response it garners is one of the biggest laughs of the year.
And what a deliberate movie this is. When the camera races in on a face you can almost hear Anderson somewhere off screen shouting “Aaand CLOSEUP!” The characters all say their lines matter-of-factly, their expressions artificial but strangely human. It’s almost as if they’re trying to slip the jokes past us.
But that moment with the wolf is still haunting me. It is a funny moment, over the top and obvious in its intentions, so what’s with the staying power? The secret to the film can be found here. That secret may well be that there is no secret at all, that the movie is what it is and should not shy away from its clichés, a theme that digs deeper than it seems.
Rollan Schott
December 2, 2009
Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan
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