Critical analysis of authorship: Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom

 (Carl Muircroft, 2012)

The debate of film 'authorship' began in post-war France, as Pam Cook explains in The Cinema Book; after Nazi occupation ended, “French intellectuals and filmmakers were able to see previously unavailable Hollywood films at the cinematheque in Paris”. (Cook, 2007: 390) This extended exposure to the 'best of Hollywood' allowed film magazine critics to rethink how film should be appreciated. Of all the concepts created, one in particular had a resonating impact on film analysis and critical debate.

The auteur approach

 The auteur approach found its origins in the 1940s through the writings of Alexandre Astruc. “The cinema is quite simply becoming a means of expression… it is gradually becoming a language. By language I mean a form in which and by which an artist can express his thoughts, however abstract they may be, or translate his obsessions exactly as he does in the contemporary essay or novel”. (Astruc, 1948: 9) The young, politically radical writers championed this idea of the camera being used in the same capacity as an author’s pen. The concepts started to form into a 'manifesto' of filmmaking appropriately coined 'la Politique des auteurs’, which attempted to steer the culture of film, preaching; "the film-maker should act as a passive recorder of the real world rather than a manipulator of it". (Cook, 2007: 390) As a notion in this early form it was similar to the Italian 'Neo-realist' movement that was also emerging at the time. (1) The ideas were quickly developed beyond this though, with an opposing emphasis on 'expression' by certain writers of Cahiers du Cinema; most notably, Truffaut’s 1954 article A certain tendency of the French cinema. In the article, Truffaut, according to Edward Buscombe in Ideas of authorship “defines a true film auteur as one who brings something genuinely personal to his subject instead of merely producing a tasteful, accurate but lifeless rendering of the original material.” (Buscombe, 1973: 23) This article helped create a manifesto of sorts that critics could use as a basis for judging films. Truffaut encouraged critics to dismiss the lifeless "tradition of quality" directors who often work from novels, and appreciate the directors who reject "psychological realism" claiming, “that they are auteurs who often write their dialogue and some of them themselves invent the stories they direct”. (Truffaut, 1954: 8)

Obviously it would be easy for an auteur to fulfill his desires if he were to create his own subjects for film. However the auteur approach had to work its way around a specific hurdle before it was given proper consideration. Cahiers focus of auteur identification was in the Hollywood system after all. Earlier, Pierre Kast had argued that any “auteur who thinks that, in the current system of production it is possible to express himself is… deluding himself”. (Kast, 1951: 38) The ‘current system of production’ he refers to was the major problem. Peter Wollen would later refer to this aspect of filmmaking as “Noise”(2). The problem was, if directors are given scripts to work on by screenwriters and producers, and are given large teams to work with then how would an auteur personalize the film? Feredoyn Hoveyda writing in Cahiers would express displeasure with his colleagues apprehension; “with the regularity of a clock, some critics keep harping back to how necessary it is not to neglect the… production system. While they are about it, why not take into account as well the influence of celestial bodies?” His answer to critics that thought true authorship was impossible highlights a key factor in Auteur identification; “What constitutes the essence of cinema is nothing other than mise en scène… transforming, as if by magic, a screenplay written by someone else and imposed on the director into something which is truly the film of an auteur”. (Hoveyda, 1960: 42) Truffaut had earlier explained how traditional scriptwriters and non-auteur directors work together; “When they hand in their scenario, the film is done; the metteur-en-scene, in their eyes, is the gentleman who adds the pictures to it”. (Truffaut, 1954: 7) According to the critics of Cahiers, a mise-en-scene (derived from the theatrical term; to ‘frame a stage’) outshines a metteur-en-scene (a phrase coined in Cahiers to describe ‘lifeless’ directing practices) through the choices he/she makes in his role as director, going beyond simply adding ‘pictures’ to the script.

Modifications in the approach – Auteur vs. Subject

 The differentiation between the two types of directors explains how in any circumstance a director can add his personal identifiable touch to a subject. However, It also illustrates the biased approach the critics took when classifying the works of both types of filmmaker, as Rivette put it in Cahiers no. 126; an auteur “who has made great films in the past may make mistakes, but his mistakes will have every chance of being, more impressive than the successes of a ‘manufacturer’.” This evolution of the concept would be a stretch too far for some critics; in 1967, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith would write that authorship in this original state “is manifestly absurd” describing it as “a set of empirical assertions”. (Nowell-Smith, 1967: 137) Earlier however, certain Cahiers critics tried to steer thought away from such dogmatic attitudes; after publishing Truffauts ‘manifesto’, Andre Bazin, then editor of Cahiers expressed trepidation regarding the scale in which critics were relying on the approach. Buscombe points to a “tendency in Cahiers to make a totem of the personality”; quoting Bazin in issue no. 70 of the magazine: “the evolution of Western art towards greater personalization should definitely be considered as a step forward, but only so long as this individualization remains only a final confection and does not claim to define culture”. Bazin downplays the auteur approach in reading film reminding his readers that “the individual transcends society, but society is also and above all within him”. (Buscombe, 1973: 25-6) The idea of ‘society’ residing within the auteur would help create a new modified approach to criticism in Britain and America.

Charles Eckerts explains the direction film criticism took; "In the late 1960s, just when the politique des auteurs began to look shopworn and foxed at the edges, a group of English critics... Refurbished it with a bright new critical material called structuralism." (Eckert, 1973: 152) The critic Andrew Sarris, writing through the British magazine Film Culture labelled Truffaut’s ‘manifesto’ as a theory (3) and outlined the problems that meant the theory should be modified; “All directors… are imprisoned by the conditions of their craft and their culture”. This new approach to ‘craft’ led to earlier metteur-en-scene classified directors to be reclassified, as auteurs. Sarris described how the smallest amount of personality could show signs of an auteur; “Even the pacing… can be emotionally expressive when it is understood as a figure of style”. (Sarris, 1963: 66) Sarris’s mention of ‘culture’ outlined a key focus in the strategy of film analysis; the psychoanalytical concept of the 'subject' was developing as the key tool for film analysis in relation to these cultural constraints. Almost a decade before, Bazin had complained of his contemporaries, about the lack of focus on 'subject', stating "all they want to retain in the equation auteur plus subject = work is the auteur, while the subject is reduced to zero". (Bazin, 1957: 45) In this sense, and the sense in which auteur-Structuralism refers to it, the concept of ‘subject’, as explained in the book New vocabularies in Film Semiotics “suggests a whole range of determinations (social, political, linguistic, ideological, psychological)... Refusing the notion of self... the subject implies the process of construction by signifying practices that are both unconscious and culturally specific.” (1992: 124) In other words, along with the inescapable ‘noise’ emanating from the production team, an auteurs work is formed by many cultural factors, wether he is aware of these or not, he will be influenced by them, in turn so will his films. The auteur can personalise his/her films, or at least try to, but because he/she is so influenced by culture, his personal stamp is secondary to the overall meaning of film that resides in the ‘subject’. Peter Wollen summarises this by saying; "It is possible to speak of a film auteur as an unconscious catalyst". (Wollen, 1972: 147) So, to comparatively reformulate Bazins aforementioned equation; subject plus work = auteur.

Applying Analysis

 To understand this further, consider how the auteur and 'subject' can be found in contemporary films, specifically, through Moonrise Kingdom (2012). Directed by Wes Anderson and co-written with Roman Coppola, one could argue that it shows elements of joint authorship, however for the sake of using this film as an illustration of the technique it would be simpler to assume Anderson as the auteur and disregard any ‘noise’ Coppola produced after his role as scriptwriter finished. As a ‘work’ it not only shows auteur expression, but also shows the cohesive relation between an auteur and 'subject'. It is poignant to note beforehand, that directing films outside the major studio system through the ironically named ‘American Empirical Pictures’ gives Anderson a clear advantage as an auteur. Allowing him the easy route of creating his own projects and avoiding the issues regarding metteur-en-scene misclassification. Both Anderson and Coppola’s previous projects show personal expression, with links to childhood experiences (4) and moments of self-reflection (5) found in their bodies of work. However, it is important to analyse important themes of the film and their application to truly understand the inclusion of ‘subject’.

The film follows the story of two young teens, which escape their respective symbols of authority. Set in 1965, on the island of Penzance, their journey ends when they reach their destination, a remote uninhabited part of the island. Here, they stay and live in freedom and begin to explore love, adolescence and sexuality. However this is short lived as the aforementioned authorities find them and try to separate them. A main theme of the film is this escape of authority; for the girl ‘Suzie’ this resembles her estranged parents and her home, aptly named ‘Summers End’. For the boy ‘Sam’, the symbolic nature of authority is perhaps more important in our analysis, it resides in the form of the ‘Khaki Scouts’ firstly; later it is revealed he is an orphan and social services become his main concern. Interestingly, the boy is almost constantly pictured with a crockett-esque ‘Coon skin’ cap; harkening back to the early founding values of the ‘frontiersmen’ America. He clearly considers himself as similar to his ancestors and is obsessed with self-support; we can see this in the practices he learnt in the scouts, which he applies along his journey. The remote paradise location he takes the girl is clearly labelled as ‘the old Chickchaw harvest migration trail’ referencing New Penzance as once home to a tribe of American Indians (see fig. 1). His disdain of the ‘institutions’ that dominate his life and his escape to a simpler time in existence is reminiscent of the American Indians domination by ‘the combine’ found in Ken Keseys novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. (6) His safety is even threatened later by the mention of electro-shock therapy, when his pursuers contact social services.

Anderson’s renowned fast cutting not only provides whimsical comic timing, but works on another level when cultural subjects are included in the analysis. The scout troop; deputised by the local police chief and heavily armed, find the two lovers and threaten them with force if they don’t return. Thirsty for violence, they are pleased at the couple’s refusal and begin to attack. Lead by their appointed leader on a motorbike, they begin to charge (see fig. 2). At this moment of the film, a pair of scissors is shown, separate from the action, for a mere six frames. Auteur style is here illustrated perfectly and with this moment perhaps we also see a huge amount of personal expression. It can be thought that Anderson decided to simply include this as a way of avoiding a shot of a protagonist delving a pair of scissors into a minor antagonists side. Or, with this inclusion, he is breaking the forth wall; consider the symbolism attached to a director and his scissors. It comes across in a second viewing as representative of that choice, communicating directly with the audience a moment of pure auteur expression. Briefly returning to the theme of the ‘institution’ we can see another inclusion of direct audience communication when social services are contacted. ‘Social services’ is asked if Sam will go to an orphanage, which she confirms. To illustrate the harsh conditions Sam will be subjected to, Anderson quickly includes a still from a newspaper with the headline ‘Christmas Goose for Disadvantaged Orphans’ and provides the sound of marching in unison.

Brecht’s ‘forth wall’ is continuously broken in another work of a particular auteur. Jean-Luc Godard, the Cahier critic-turned-director’s Pierrot le Fou (1965), includes moments where his protagonist talks directly to the audience. In Moonrise Kingdom the audience is directly talked to at key moments through the narrator, Sam’s cartography teacher, who introduces the Islands. Anderson’s influence through Godards work is extremely significant; both films concentrate on a couples escape from authority. In the case of Pierrot le Fou, they escape the mafia, and more importantly, their listless lives in bourgeois society. In parallel, the two films show the lovers escaping to an uninhabited paradise (see fig. 3). Coincidently, both couples reach their destination at the 40^th minute mark. But looking at the visual similarities of the ‘paradise’ location and costume in the case of both female characters it seems more than simply coincidence. The fact that Moonrise Kingdom is set in 1965, the same year Pierrot le Fou was released, is the final straw; this discovery could show Anderson as the ‘unconscious catalyst’, or this could have been decided upon beforehand, it seems more probable it is the latter assumption. (7)

 In briefly covering the ‘subject’, cultural aspects including history, literature, performing arts and film can be seen as applicable. This level of analysis looks impressive as a modification of the auteur theory; Sarris would call the search for “interior meaning, the ultimate glory of the cinema as an art”. (Sarris, 1962: 64) As bold a statement as this was, there was more room for change in critical technique, as John Caughie points out;  “Only rarely does ‘auteur-structuralism’ move beyond this… It is largely held within the ‘Eureka syndrome’, dominated by the search”. (Caughie, 1981: 128) But really, as critical debate continues to evolve over time, at what point should critique stop and appreciation and creation begin? Critics are curious creatures after all, existing in the purgatory plain between filmmakers and cinemagoers. Pondering on his role as a film critic Christian Metz considered himself as “someone who likes to go to see them in inverted commas… with an accepted ambivalence between anachronistic affection and the knowing sadism of someone who wants to break open the toy in order to see how it works”. (Metz, 1976: 227)

Figures

Footnotes

(1) "Now it has been perceived that reality is hugely rich, that to be able to look directly at it is enough; and the artists task is not to make people moved or indignant at metaphorical situations, but to make them reflect... On what they and others are doing, on the real things, exactly as they are"

Cezare Zavattini: Some Ideas on Cinema, 1953

(2) “Of course, the director does not have full control over his work; this explains why the auteur theory involves a kind of decipherment, decryptment. A great many features of films analysed have to be dismissed as indecipherable because of the noise from the producer, the cameraman or even the actors.”
Peter Wollen: The auteur theory, 1969.

(3)  “Truffaut has recently gone to great pains to emphasise that the auteur theory was merely a polemical weapon for a given time and in place, and I am willing to take him at his word”.

Andrew Sarris: Notes on the auteur theory, 1962.

(4) “At the school, Anderson became known for his large and complex play productions. Often these productions were based on well-known stories, films, and even TV shows”. (A+E Networks, 2012: 1) One can immediately see the comparison to Rushmore (1998), Anderson’s first release through the independent company ‘American Empirical Pictures’ (AEP). Further search shows Anderson’s fixation on the break up of family life, seen in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), The Darjeeling Limited (2007) and The Squid and the Whale (2005), which he produced through AEP. This theme mimics his own experiences growing up; “Anderson would… describe the divorce as ‘the most crucial event of my brothers and my growing up’.” (A+E Networks, 2012: 1) His real life brothers (‘Eric and Mel’) show how even character dynamics in his films are influenced by personal experience, The Darjeeling Limited (2007) follows the quest of three brothers reuniting and Moonrise Kingdom (2012) shows the heroine to have three brothers, living happily as an inseparable unit. Further intense searching would probably find more consistencies of personal expression through Anderson’s body of work.

(5) Having previously worked as second and assistant director on projects directed by his father and sister, Roman Coppola has a unique view on the world of filmmaking that is reminiscent of the concepts surrounding the original Auteur theory. His directorial debut CQ (2001) focused on the difficulties of creating personal films inside the studio system. It centers on Paul, an editor working in France in the late 1960’s. According to Eric Mitchell of the New York Times, the film “is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of ‘Dragonfly,’ a femme-fatale spy movie … similar to ‘Barbarella’.” The fictional project is plagued with problems; “The temperamental director… wants to shoehorn radical politics into the airy conception, and is fired.” (Mitchell, 2002) Eventually Paul takes the directors chair and finds the experience complicated, with difficulties including a fear of personal expression. During a dream sequence, Paul is interrogated by other members of the production team; “Where is the story, where is the structure” asks one member, “I don’t care about this person.” Paul is directly questioned in a heavy French accent; “Do you think you’re clever?” To this he replies; “I just wanted to make something that would reflect who I am.” Having also written the script, Coppola’s intention in filmmaking and his influences are illustrated in this clearly self-reflective work.

(6) The narrator, Chief Bromden, speaks of the tyrannical nurse Ratched: “She’s too big to be beaten… She’ll go on winning… because she has all the power of the Combine behind her”. Later he reveals what he will do after escaping from the mental institution “Mostly, I’d just like to look over the country around the gorge again, just to bring some of it clear to my mind again. I been away along time”. (Kesey, 1962: 108/310)

(7) Although I will strongly stress that the links I have made to Pierrot le fou came from my own visual analysis, it is important to note to avoid accusations of plagiarism; that according to Criterion.com, “Some critics have picked up on references to it in Wes Anderson’s recent Moonrise Kingdom “. (Criterion, 2012)

Bibliography

Books:

-Caughie, John. (1981) Theories of Authorship. London: Routledge.
            - Part 1. Auterism. Introduction.
            - Chapter 3. Buscombe, Edward. ‘Ideas of authorship’.
            - Chapter 4. Cahiers Du Cinema.

                        - Kast, pierre. ‘Des confitures pour un gendarme’.
                        - Hoveyda, Fereydoun. ‘La repose de Nicholas Ray’.
                        - Bazin, Andre. ‘La politique des auteurs’.

            - Chapter 6. Andrew Sarris.
                        - Sarris, Andrew. ‘Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962’.

                        - Sarris, Andrew. ‘Toward a theory of film history’.

            - Part 2. Auteur-Structuralism. Introduction.

            - Chapter 16. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. ‘Visconti (Extract)’

            - Chapter 17. Wollen, Peter. ‘The auteur theory (extract)‘

            - Chapter 18. Eckert, Charles. ‘The English cine-structuralists’

            - Chapter 26. Metz, Christian. ‘History/discourse : a note on two voyerisms’

-Cook, Pam. (2007) The Cinema Book. Third Edition. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
            - Part 6. Authorship and Cinema. For a New French Cinema: The Politique Des Auteurs.

-Stam, R. Burgoyne, R. Flitterman-Lewis, S. (1992) New Vocabularies In Film Semiotics. London: Routledge

-Kesey, Ken (1979) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Second Edition. London: Pan Macmillan

Web Sources:

Biography.com. 2012. Wes Anderson - biography. [Online] A+E Entertainment. Available at: <http://www.scribd.com/doc/8791/Cesare-Zavattini-Some-Ideas-on-the-Cinema> [Accessed 18 Nov. 2012].

Criterion, 2012. Sight & Sound Poll 2012: Pierrot le fou. [Online] The Criterion Collection. Available at: <http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2432-sight-sound-poll-2012-pierrot-le-fou> [Accessed 21 Nov. 2012].

Mitchell, Elvis. 2002. FILM REVIEW; How Contradictory Parts Go Together. Online] The New York Times. Available at: <http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/24/movies/film-review-how-contradictory-parts-go-together.html> [Accessed 17 Nov. 2012].

Truffaut, Francois. 1954. A Certain Tendency in French Cinema. [.Pdf download] School of Media Arts. Available at: <http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/DaVega/FILMST_101/FILMST_101_FILM_MOVEMENTS/FrenchNewWave/A_certain_tendency_tr%23540A3.pdf> [Accessed 19 Nov. 2012].

Zavattini, Cesare. 1953. Some Ideas on the Cinema. [.Pdf download] scribd. Available at: < http://www.scribd.com/doc/8791/Cesare-Zavattini-Some-Ideas-on-the-Cinema> [Accessed 19 Nov. 2012].

Filmography

Moonrise Kingdom

American Empirical Pictures, 2012

Director: Wes Anderson
Producer: Wes Anderson

Screenplay: Roman Coppola & Wes Anderson

Pierrot le Fou

Films Georges de Beauregard, 1965

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Producer: Georges de Beauregard

Screenplay: Jean-Luc Godard

CQ

American Zoetrope, 2001

Director: Roman Coppola

Producer: Francis Ford Coppola

Screenplay: Roman Coppola

The Darjeeling Limited

American Empirical Pictures, 2007

Director: Wes Anderson

Producer: Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola
Screenplay: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola & Jason Schwartzman

Rushmore
American Empirical Pictures, 1998

Director: Wes Anderson

Producer: Barry Mendel

Screenplay: Wes Anderson & Owen Wilson

The Royal Tenenbaums

American Empirical Pictures, 2001

Director: Wes Anderson

Producer: Barry Mendel

Screenplay: Wes Anderson & Owen Wilson

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

American Empirical Pictures, 2004

Director: Wes Anderson

Producer: Barry Mendel

Screenplay: Wes Anderson & Noah Baumbach

The Squid and the Whale

American Empirical Pictures, 2005

Director: Noah Baumbach

Producer: Wes Anderson

Screenplay: Noah Baumbach