The Royal Tenenbaums

Plot:

Royal

Tenenbaum and his wife Etheline had three children – Chas, Richie, and Margot – they were a family of geniuses and then they separated. Chas started buying real estate in his early teens and seemed to have had a preternatural understanding of international finance.

Margot was a playwright and received a Braverman grant of fifty thousand dollars in the ninth grade. Richie was a junior champion tennis player and won the U.S. Nationals three years in a row.

Virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal, failure and disaster. Most of this was generally considered to be their father’s fault. The tale follows the family’s sudden and unexpected reunion one recent winter.

ForThe Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson understandably wanted to get his searing, personal love letter to his adopted home of New York just right, and to do that, he avoided filming any landmarks that could easily identify New York. In one scene filmed in Battery Park,, Anderson had Pagoda (Kumar Pallana) stand in front of the Statue of Liberty, effectively blocking it out of the frame. There are no references made to “New York”, the place apart from a couple of offhand comments to non-existent streets.

Instead, we get lobbed headfirst into a rich world of oak stairwells lined with boar heads and cherry-red tracksuits. We know where we are. It’s the home of the Tenenbaums – a dysfunctional farrago of personalities so definitive, each has his own uniform. For Chas, a real estate magnate, it’s an Adidas tracksuit. Champion tennis player and artist Richie lives in a headband and 70s porn star sunglasses. Ninth-grade playwright Margot prefers a Lacoste dress wrapped in a Fendi fur.

Many scenes of the film serve to point out the disappointing realities we all have to face growing up. No, you can’t always get what you want. The film is flush with backstory, gorgeously designed and run through with a sardonic, jaded wit. It is, in so many words, New York.

The Royal Tenenbaums was perhaps the film, Anderson’s third, no less, on which he cemented his reputation for style. He effectively fused with his quaint aesthetic, unable to shake it off. It trades in unfeeling deadpan surrounded by furniture; it’s a dichotomy. Above all, it’s a love letter that spools out to reveal essentially everything New York is –beautiful, but with deep-seated issues. And yet, The Royal Tenenbaums is one cinematic love letter that is worth every damn reread. If only to catch that thing you missed.