We all have our kinks. Mine is grim whimsy – grimsy. Give me a deadpan asshole in a fanciful mess and I’ll give you loins so moist you’d think you were eating cantaloupe.
The Phoenician Scheme
Wes Anderson movies are divisive. They should not be. Here is my case:
Idiotic Point / Handsome Counterpoint
In this dialogue I will be playing the role of Socrates, and you will be playing the role of burping doofus. We commence:
You, a moist diaper of a man, meager at all things, weeping eternally: The dialogue in a Wes Anderson movie is insufferably formal! It stifles characterization!
Me, flawlessly alive, zesty with passion: You fool, you dolt, you absolute clown! How facile your mind, how weak your constitution! Wes Anderson’s use of contrived dialogue is a form of characterization! By denying his characters the complexity of language necessary to adequately express themselves he stresses their emotional isolation, the stultifying consequences of imperiousness! We see how difficult connection can be in an impersonal world! You wretched toilet goblin, a taint could see this!
You, at the grocery store, trying to work up the nerve to buy the spicy mayonnaise: The direction in a Wes Anderson movie is too much, too precious! I feel like I am watching a life-sized diorama, not a believable world!
Me, in a voice not unlike that of God: You ass! You turd! You absolute donkey! How can you not see, you fully-nude butt jockey, that mise-en-scène in a Wes Anderson film is merely prelude to the fall, the false hope of safety under the guise of something beautiful?! And how it is in these moments of visual upheaval that characters are rendered raw, relatable, real?! Torn so violently from the womb of their superficial splendor, cast out of their arrogant Eden, they become human to us, forever cut off from the warmth of their delusions! How can you not see, you inveterate chud, that there is nothing more vulnerable than being made expatriate to your own dreams? My grandmother understands this perfectly, and she’s dead! It was your rancid movie opinions that killed her!
You, waiting in line for Nickelback tickets: Nothing in a Wes Anderson movie resembles reality!
Me, teaching myself differential geometry while preparing a flawless consommé: If I wanted reality I’d open a fucking window! You salty dumpster-monkey, the thrill of a tale is in the displacement, the invitation to another realm in which the only common factor is the universality of emotion! Only a dildo could fail to notice this!
Lord of the Rings is a pretty jaunty romp, wouldn’t you say? An imaginative journey? But no eyebrows are raised when smelly half-humans bump uglies with ancient wizard-queens! Because the emotions are the same! Can you not hold the Andersonian oeuvre to that same standard? Is your mind so closed to experience, so incompatible with growth, that it will deny the validity of a story, any story, simply because that story asks you to rely on the shared passions of the human heart? Open your mind to experience, you cinnamon queef!
You: Can’t we at least agree to disagree?
Me: No.
The End
Wes Anderson movies are good. Don’t be weird about it.