Bottle Rocket
I love seeing first films by directors I like. “Permanent Vacation”, “Knife in the Water”, “People on Sunday”, “A bout de souffle”, “Blood Simple”, “Brick”, “Metropolitan”, “Pitfall” – all of them hold a special place in my heart. But I don’t know what it is about first films by moviemakers, people have the strange tendency to forget about them (Truffaut excluded, as critic-turned-filmmaker he is an exception). When I read articles on Wes Anderson, it seems like people never notice “Bottle Rocket” and few have seen it, but I was intrigued by the fact that it was his first. There is some sort of raw beauty about these first movies, where you often only get a glimpse of the genius, packed into a comparably low-budget Kammerspiel piece which I often prefer over the big-shot titles (think “Looper” over “Brick”).
However, I have to admit that “Bottle Rocket” is not really what I expected. The love I usually have for first films is not really happening here. All the elements of a lovely first film are here, but it is not really clicking with me. It reminded me of “Slacker” which I really disliked and then never even finished watching. Maybe it’s the world the characters are living in – the life of people who don’t really have anything to do and don’t really know where to go. I have never been able to relate to that and probably won’t in this lifetime. Without a connection to these characters, I had a hard time understanding why some people love this film so much.
Speaking of love, I do agree with one thing. There is an unusual warmth in this film, which is much like Wes Anderson’s other films. He certainly loves his characters. Even when they are deeply troubled, or rude, or just plain strange, everybody is incredibly warm and loving. From this perspective, it is quite shocking that the king of movie hipsterdom is someone who makes such loving movies, for all we know hipsters are pretty much the exact opposite of love. The warmest thing is the blossoming love between Anthony and Inez – they meet in a shabby motel, can barely communicate with each other but have the most innocent romance ever. Or take the robbing of Bob’s house. Bob never seems to care for his wealth and after it’s all gone, he is still friends with Dignan and even came to the realization that it brought him closer to his brother. As much as Wes Anderson is about style and appearances of wealthy people, he presents characters who ultimately care little for what they have materialistically, and that is so damn cute.
If you expected the stylish Wes Anderson of his recent, stylistically polished movies like I did, you are in for a big disappointment. But if you like what you read in the summary of this film, then you will enjoy the execution.