Another Anderson Gem

I've got quite a bit of catching up to do, but I have more real work than even that, so this entry will probably have to do for the time being. I stayed late at Canary last night to watch The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, a film I've been anticipating since last October or November which came out in the States just as I was leaving.

I'm sitting on the DLR at 10:45 at night on the way back from this movie date with myself, enrapt in the beauty of the city at night, yet quietly amused by the antics of a trio of drunken, opera singing Latins sitting across from me (Italian perhaps?). I have yet to really wander around the Docklands, the former dockyards that are now a major corporate area (where I work at Canary Wharf), but today I delved a bit further into that territory and went over to West India Quay, setting out shortly after dark and caught up in the magic spell of well, what really is a corporate office park--but O! how it sparkles, the pretty thing! Sadly, my camera doesn't handle night mode very well, so a true glimpse for all my readers will have to wait. Just think of quiet cafes and delicate bridges, all surrounded by water glittering in the cool moonlight and walled in by soaring towers of gleaming glass.

But let's get to the point. The film was ANOTHER masterpiece by Wes Anderson. I can already feel it will be a good year for that strange dark comedy genre I have truly come to love--tragic, teary, dramatic, laugh out loud, exposing the whole human character--a faintly optimistic heart of darkness, if you will. We're talking Woody's Annie Hall or Manhattan, Reiner's When Harry Met Sally, or any other Anderson film (Royal Tennenbaums, Rushmore) as well as pieces like Lost in Translation. In the midst of all our humanity and imperfection, we carve out a living with glorious bits of happiness and strange beauty, shared with friends and loved ones. I guess my week has been filled with the whole span of those moments, but perhaps more on that later. But yes, WOody's next number, Melinda and Melinda, is due out here while I am traveling. Next on the film list for sure.

The movie had a stellar cast--Bill Murray, Angelica Huston, Jeff Goldblum, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett...not to mention Willem Dafoe as a hilarious EMOTIONAL German character (spin the stereotypes a bit why don't we?). All I can say is that Murray has truly found his new profile--between Translation, Rushmore, and this, he plays a sort of musty, washed up, Death of a Salesman mentality, past his glory days middle aged former dreamer. And he plays it amazingly well--you begin to wonder how much of it is an echo of his own present life. He plays wounded, cracked men, disillusioned with life and fundamentally depressed yet still caught up in the remnants of their own arrogance and past success. Along with that, Seu Jorge is an amazing musician, Portuguese is O so Beautiful (as I already felt after the gritty but beauteous City of God), and wow is David Bowie amazing, particularly in that blessed Brazilian tongue.