Rushmore - 1998
Updated: Jul 2, 2023
Confessionally, I've never really "gotten" the whole Wes Anderson thing. Life is not a neat and linear thing, to be sure. We need voices to show us realities a touch aslant, characters perfectly imperfect in their idiosyncratic wonder. But films which drive the "weird for the sake of weird" notion into the ground are no more authentic than the stereotypical archetypal pictures they seek to correct. In the best of Anderson's pictures, he walks this thin line with grace, human depth, and wit aplenty. In the worst...well, those are caricatures nested in other caricatures of people behaving oddly like some sick set of plastic matryoshka dolls.
Fortunately for all of us, this is one of the former. So, we welcome you to Rushmore - a world where the nerdy do-gooder is somehow both simultaneously failing every class and running every social club in his private school world. (These clubs are revealed, in sequence, in a typical, dry-witted montage of shots so common in Anderson pictures).
All his playwrighting and social gymnastics with his classmates come grinding to a halt when he meets one particular first grade teacher and falls head over heels. Olivia Williams is a standout here for the way she depicts sadness, long suffering, and her own quiet grace. She's extremely patient with Max (Schwartzman) and somehow every bit "the catch" he finds her to be.
The third wheel here is of course none other than the deadpan king himself, Bill Murray. Murray is particularly riveting as a sort of depressive maniac who has all the money in the world, and yet goes home each night to a-hole twin sons and a marriage crumbling to the ground. He at first funds Max's high falutin projects and takes a private joy in all his absurdist brainstorms. But, it all goes belly up when both men (well, I should say one man and another teen) fall for the same leading lady.
Speaking of such things, I do find Max and Mrs. Cross' relationship to be not only odd but rather inappropriate in the 2020's. I don't recall hearing many teachers referencing "fingering' and "handjobs" to their students, even if as a scolding mechanism. I think today we call that...mmm a short path to prison. Still, I believe Wes is trying to capture the painfully awkward phase of life that is high school and our teen years.
In this way, he gives the audience a rare gift. Perhaps even the first of its kind. A teen coming of age story which doesn't seek to paint with colorful tones or glamorize youth, but instead opts to show the sometimes gut-wrenching, sometimes soul-soaring, but always cringe-worthy years of becoming our adult selves. In this light, the teacher crush and the rivalry with Murray not only make sense, but are transported to an impressive expressionistic piece of high art. Can't believe I'm saying it. Wes (and Owen Wilson) got a good one here.
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