Interactive Theory Paper

Wes Anderson: The Magical Realism of Frame and Mirror

By Ellery LeSueur

Introduction:

The question has often been asked: What makes a Wes Anderson film so unique? Perhaps the answer to this question has less to do with one specific element, and more to do with several. Though many theorists have often posited claims about whether cinema should hold itself to a standard of documenting reality or to expanding the world through creative fantasy, Anderson’s films are unique in the way that he uses different elements to evoke both fantasy and realism within his work. As we will see through the theory of Rudolf Arnheim and Sergei Eisenstein, Anderson uses the frame to create a sense of an expanded fantasy world, while the theory of Béla Balázs will help us understand how Anderson uses the concept of cinema as mirror to create a sense of realism. Ultimately, as Jean-Louis Baudry’s work will help us to discover, the convergence of these uses of cinema as frame and cinema as mirror create a unique tone of magical realism in his work. I argue that Anderson’s films evoke fantasy and magic through his particular use of the frame, while also evoking realism through the theories of cinema as mirror, combining to create a form of magical realism.

Justification of Approach:

My approach to Anderson’s work through the ideas of cinema as frame and cinema as mirror is inspired by Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener’s work in their book, “Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses” in which they discuss approaches to film based on the theorist’s argument regarding cinema’s relationship to the spectator. In Chapter 1, they discuss “Cinema as Window and Frame,” while in Chapter 3, they cover “Cinema as Mirror – Face and Close-Up”. However, Elsaeeser and Hagener’s division of approaches suggests that each is, to some extent, exclusive, and while it examines many interesting ways each approach can be used, it does not address the effect of a combination of approaches. For this reason, it is important to the field of cinema studies and film theory to ask whether or not several approaches to cinema can be used in a single work, and if so, what the resulting effect is. Wes Anderson’s body of work is an ideal candidate to prove to the field that not only a combination of theoretical and/or metaphorical approaches can be taken within a film, but also, that this combination of approaches can result in an altogether new element to exist within a work. In this case, the result of Anderson’s use of both cinema as frame and cinema as mirror is magical realism. Though all of Anderson’s work displays an extraordinary distinctiveness in style, tone and theme, his most recent films demonstrate most strongly Anderson’s unique ability to merge experimentation and commercial aspects. Because the tone of his work has evolved throughout his career to reach an increasingly high point using magical realism to appeal to a wide audience, this paper will reference his two most recent films, Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), as the most evolved artistic works in his capacity as a director, as well as the most recent and relevant examples of this magical realism in action.

Part I: Arnheim - Frame as Fantasy

First, let us turn to how Anderson’s work creates a sense of fantasy using the frame according to the theory of Rudolf Arnheim. Arnheim believes in a film’s ability to shape our perspective, or our perception, of what is shown, rather than actually capture reality. In his piece, “Film and Reality,” Arnheim defends film as an art form by arguing that the limitations of film are what give it its artistic properties. Arnheim says the frame is one of the ways which film departs from the human perception of reality because, “the picture space is visible to a certain extent, but then comes the edge which cuts off what lies beyond” (Arnheim 284). In this way, Arnheim argues, there is a fundamental difference between how we perceive with our eyes in real life and how we are allowed to perceive by film. This foundation suggests, in relation to Anderson’s work, that the frame is a way of guiding and shaping our perception by using the principles of a different, but related, form of art: photography. Arnheim argues that the camera has less in common with the human eye and has more in common with a still photograph. Despite the flatness of the screen, Arnheim describes the impression the viewer gets by explaining that a film “is always at one and the same time a flat picture post card and the scene of a living action” (287). His application of the principles of photography to film is useful because it captures the idea that the fundamental nature of film must be both real and unreal, life-like in the images that are seen, but unreal in the sense that the frame limits our vision.

Based on Arnheim’s arguments, I suggest that Anderson’s work is especially aware of the frame as a tool to shape how we perceive a film and that he uses the frame to communicate the exact paradox that Arnheim describes. Anderson shoots characters so that they are meticulously positioned and are often framed centrally (if not in the center of the frame, then certainly symmetrically on opposing ends of the frame) by the camera, creating a sense of unreality because of their positioning specifically for the spectator, constantly calling attention to the fact that this is an artificial medium. However, in addition to this scrupulous use of frame for positioning, Anderson often goes a step further by including recurrent motifs of double framing within a shot, adding another level of fantasy, and emphasizing film’s ties to art forms like painting and photography, and the artificiality of art in general.

For example, in The Grand Budapest Hotel, at the moment when the hotel concierge Monsieur Jean (Jason Schwartzman) notices that one of the guests in the lobby is choking, Anderson frames Jean in a stationary, eye-level medium close-up. In addition to this first framing with the camera, the production design adds a second level to the framing by having Jean standing directly in front of a large painting, so that it appears he could be a character in the painting as well. In fact, the very painting that is behind Jean in this shot becomes a major part of the plot later in the film, which is, in itself, a reference to the way the frame plays a significant role in Anderson’s cinema.

These kinds of examples of double framing occur repeatedly in his work. In Moonrise Kingdom, in the scene where Sam (Jared Gilman) first meets his love, Suzy (Kara Hayward), Sam walks into the dressing room behind the stage where a play is about to go on. He sees six girls sitting in front of a large, lighted mirror which is rectangular and mimics the frame of the shot as well as the frame of a painting (seen below). When he speaks to the girls, they all turn around, and Suzy, who is at the center of the shot, is double framed, both within the camera frame and by the outline of the lighted mirror.

Anderson knows, as Arnheim says, that the film picture has “a fixed limit whereas the field of vision of our eyes is practically unbounded” (Arnheim 288). Anderson is aware of the power of the frame’s limitations and maximizes it for its effect of displaying the picturesque creative possibility for film, and agrees that the camera is not a substitute for the real perception of the human eye. Because of this, his cinema argues that there is, ultimately, something more than reality present, which leaves the impression of a kind of fantasy in his work.

For more examples, see my blog post compiling gifs of many instances of double-framing as fantasy in Anderson's work: Wes Anderson & Double Framing.

Part II: Eisenstein - Frame as Fantasy

Eisenstein also conceptualizes how the frame of the shot can contribute to the impression of a different perception or world. In his piece titled, “Beyond the Shot”, Eisenstein argues that “conflict lies at the basis of every art” (Eisenstein 20). He asserts, as is typical of Eisenstein, that the way this conflict is achieved is through montage, the idea of a shot colliding with another shot in order to create an otherwise incommunicable meaning (Eisenstein 19). In this case, he also claims that conflict can happen at the level of a single shot as well as between shots, asserting that some of the possible ways that this can be achieved is through “the conflict of graphic directions (lines)…shot levels (between one another)… volumes… masses (of volumes filled with varying intensities of light)… spaces, etc.” (Eisenstein 20). His idea is that conflict can create meaning beyond what Eisenstein calls the “four-sided cage” of the frame and that this conflict forces the idea found within one shot to be transferred to another, creating “montage impulses between the montage fragments” (Eisenstein 20). Because of the conflict at the level of a single frame or a single shot, this creates a meaning over multiple shots and effectively asserts that the frame’s bias in one shot is as important as its positioning in the next shot as well. Importantly, Eisenstein also states that this idea of conflict within a shot, which he refers to as the “principle of optical counterpoint”, is created by the position which the camera is placed at, which “represents the materialisation of the conflict between the organizing logic of the director and the inert logic of the phenomenon in collision” (Eisenstein 21).

In terms of Anderson’s work, his consistent shooting style turns to a schema that Eisenstein would say expands the frame beyond its confines and thus expands the film world beyond the frame. While, as previously discussed, Anderson manipulates the space within the frame to achieve a highly stylized and organized aesthetic, he also implements this pattern of shooting in order to create a world that reaches beyond a single frame, even if that is all the viewer can see at a given moment. Anderson’s influence as the director is, as Eisenstein says, the way in which the frame is organized, what is within the frame, and how it is shot, and by creating a specific pattern of shooting, he expands his world to the beyond the frame. Although Eisenstein seems to think that strict opposites of conflict must be evoked, it is here where Anderson not only fulfills Eisenstein’s argument, but even goes a step further. Anderson often evokes the criteria which Eisenstein lists as creating conflict within the shot so that they collide in such a way that they, astonishingly, conflict to create harmony. While his shots are often balanced and symmetrical, it does not mean that objects are not still coming into conversation within the frame. In fact, Anderson often uses the space within the frame to negotiate a specific kind of unity through the confrontation of different objects.

For example, in The Grand Budapest Hotel, the unnamed Young Writer character (Jude Law) sits down at a dinner table to hear the elderly Mr. Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham) tell the story of his life. The Young Writer is framed in a mid-shot, in focus at the center of the shot. On the left and right of the frame, the viewer can see the relatively equally weighted empty space of the hotel dining room. Then, on the far left of the screen, we see Monsieur Jean lean into the shot, presumably checking that the diners have all that they need for the present moment, and then disappear quickly again out of frame (interestingly, this moment does not, as far as I am aware, currently exist in gif form online; could this suggest that this use of frame is more at home on a TV or cinema screen? More evidence would be needed).

This playful use of the frame not only evokes comedy, but does so in a way that acknowledges the artificiality of our gaze, reminding us that we are watching a film and that the limitations of the screen, and the conflict/interaction of the objects/characters with that frame, can be used in a way which gives the impression that life is bustling outside of the frame in the same way that it is inside of it. In this shot, the objects which collide, as Eisenstein says, are characters that accomplish this “principle of counterpoint” by bringing characters into unexpected spaces and doing so in a way that calls attention to the frame. This principle is also present in Anderson’s other works.

In Moonrise Kingdom, the first time the viewer is introduced to the summer camp called Camp Ivanhoe, Anderson uses several of his signature tracking shots to establish the morning routine of the camp. The scene is composed of eight shots, most of which are wide shots which track right as Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton), who is in charge of the site, walks through camp and encounters many obstacles before he finally gets to sit down for breakfast. During his journey, he ties his neckerchief on, does a latrine inspection, checks on a boy making lanyards, inspects the construction of a tree house, stops a boy who was doing “pest control” from burning ants, checks in with boys making fireworks, and cites a boy for doing reckless cycling on the camp grounds.

Or watch the entire scene below:

This sequence is a strong example of how Anderson allows the subjects of his framing to encounter other objects within a relatively continuously moving set of shots to create conflict, and though the conflict is more organized and fluid than usual, this is part of his style as an auteur. In this case, the continued movement of the shot and the continued encountering of obstacles for the character as they move in the direction which the camera moves suggests that if the camera were to move far beyond what we are shown in this scene, this pattern of continuing to encounter conflicts would continue indefinitely, thus expanding the world of the film beyond what is in the frame. Eisenstein’s principles are at work in Anderson’s films because of the way they create the idea of an expanded fantasy world happening outside of any given frame.

Part III: Balázs - Mirror as Reality

Having established that Anderson’s body of work relies on tactics which create the illusion of fantasy and an extended world, it’s important to investigate, through the theory of Béla Balázs, how Anderson also evokes the theory of cinema as mirror to create the impression of realism alongside the impression of fantasy. Balázs claims that the a foundational aspect of film is that it inherently reflects reality, saying that the “basis and possibility of an art of the film is that everyone and everything looks what it is” (“The Face of Man” 130). This art, in his theory, was not separate from humanity, for Balázs claimed that “every art always deals with human beings”, thus firmly grouping his ideas with other theorists who believe in the cinema’s function as a mirror to the individual self (“The Face of Man” 130). For Balázs, film’s real power is to show the details, facets and perspectives of life from a way previously unseen, because the exciting part of a film’s potential is that “film showed not other things, but the same things shown in a different way” (“The Creative Camera” 127). Both the faces of people as well as the anthropomorphic qualities he endowed objects with were, for Balázs, points of entry for understanding and reflecting the human soul, for he claimed that “the objects only reflect our own selves” (“The Face of Man” 130). A close-up or shot which features a detail has a powerful affinity with realism and grounds the spectator in reality by teaching them to see life in a new way, something which Balázs compared to our experience of music: “This is how we see life: only its leading melody meets the eye. But a good film with its close-ups reveals the most hidden parts in our polyphonous life, and teaches us to see the intricate visual details of life as one reads an orchestral score” (“The Close-Up” 130). Therefore, it is in details of both people and objects where we can find cinema working as a mirror of humanity, and thus, towards a sense of reality in cinema.

Anderson’s cinema often evokes Balázs’s theory by using details and close-ups, of both objects and people, to impress upon the viewer the sense of realism. Anderson tends to use these shots as a way to ground and/or orient the spectator within the highly organized worlds of his films. By focusing in on moments and objects, there is an undeniable sense that the details of this already detailed world are both a way of understanding an Anderson reality as well as a way of evoking our own experiences of objects and interactions with people in real life. Objects, however, seem to hold a particular significance in Anderson’s work.

For example, in The Grand Budapest Hotel, the first scene of the film takes place in a cemetery at wintertime where a monument for a deceased writer stands. A girl (Jella Niemann), who remains nameless for the entire film, approaches the monument holding only a pink hardcover book, which the audience learns later is by the author the monument has been erected for. Anderson then uses a cut-in shot of the book from a high angle, showing the title of the book: “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” In the same shot, the girl flips the book over and reveals a photo of the author on the back, a photo which matches the depiction of him on the monument she is visiting.

There are two things to note about this example: first, that Anderson often uses an overhead shot or a bird’s-eye-view perspective for his cut-in shots of objects, for his cinematography always favors frontal or profile framing. This, in itself, often mirrors more closely the way an average person perceives objects rather than from impossibly complex angles, giving his films another element of realism. The second thing to note here is the way that the cut-in of the book not only gives the viewer the sense of immersion, as if they, themselves, are holding the book and investigating it, but also prepares us for the ensuing story by guiding our expectations that the story will be grand and memorable, just as it has been for this unnamed girl.

Objects are also given prominent close-ups for realism in Moonrise Kingdom. For example, some of the most important objects in the film are the letters that Sam and Suzy (Kara Hayward) write to each other. The camera does a cut-in to a selection of letters, but the two letters which Sam and Suzy write to figure out a time and place to meet up and run away together are given even more special treatment. Anderson uses an extreme close-up on specific handwritten words within the letters as they are being read aloud in voice-over narration by the characters who have written them, giving them an even more immersive feel and imitating the feeling of having the letters in hand.

These close-ups do exactly what Balázs suggests, which is to give the viewer a sense of detail in ordinary things which connects us with objects by mimicking the way we can look at them in detail in reality.

For more examples, see my blog post compiling shots of objects in gif form from many of Anderson's films: Wes Anderson & Objects.

Part IV: Baudry - Convergence of Frame & Mirror = Magical Realism

Finally, we can now turn to the way these senses of both fantasy and realism converge to create Anderson’s signature tone magical realism by applying the theory of Jean-Louis Baudry. Using a psychoanalytic approach, Baudry theorizes, in his piece titled “The Apparatus”, that film has a distinct impression on spectators because of the process of cinema itself. Whereas previous theories had posited that it was what the spectator saw on the screen that made an impression, Baudry argues that “apparatus” of cinema is what influences spectators. He explores the idea of cinema as a dream, pointing out that dreams and cinema share a “capacity for figuration, translation of thought into images, [and] reality extended to representations” which makes cinema pointedly dreamlike (Baudry 181). It is during his discussion of cinema as dream that Baudry introduces his idea of “the more-than-real” as being present in film and in dreams, describing the more-than-real as “translating the cohesion of the subject with his perceived representations, the submersion of the subject in his representations, with the near impossibility for him to escape their influence” (Baudry 181). In other words, Baudry seems to be describing the phenomenon which disregards contrast between how one perceives and what is real, or “the relationship of the subject to his representations experienced as perceived and his relation to reality” (Baudry 181). This kind of experience is later described by Baudry as “a fusion of the interior with the exterior” or, as we might put it, a convergence of individualized perception with objective fact (Baudry 182). Clearly, this linking of film with the individual is, as Elsaesser and Hagener explain, a way that Baudry sees “a relation between film technology and the psyche” which places his work within the realm of theory which treats the cinema as mirror (Elsaesser and Hagener 72). Ultimately, he argues, cinema is set apart from a dream because “images are taken for reality but require the mediation of perception” but, at the same time, cinema “reproduces an impression of reality” and “releases a cinema effect which is comparable to the impression of a reality caused by dream” (Baudry 187). For Baudry, cinema is both real and unreal, both dream (fantasy) and reality, something which Anderson fuses in his work to create his signature magical realism.

While Anderson’s use of the frame allows that expanded fantasy world to exist, the artificiality of the world he organizes inside of the frame is used as a mirror to reflect realism and the imperfection of man. Together, these qualities fuse to create the impression of both realism and fantasy. Because Baudry’s arguments hinge on the idea that our perception is what creates both reality and dream qualities in cinema, it’s important to recognize how Anderson’s work simultaneously points out its artificiality in the interest of realism, and vice versa. Part of the magical realism which is evoked in Anderson’s work is a product of the clash of these reality and fantasy aspects and, for Baudry, it is the cinema’s “artificiality which differentiates it from dream or hallucination” (Baudry 187). Anderson’s films are crafted to evoke this fantasy through immaculately design sets, but they often evoke realism because it is within these organized design within which things which often do not fit into the narrative world of a conventional Hollywood film take place.

For example, in The Grand Budapest Hotel, when the police chief Henckels (Edward Norton) and his team of inspectors come to arrest the hotel’s proprietor, Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), on suspicion of murder, Henckels confronts Monsieur Gustave and tells him he’s under arrest. Then, without any warning, Monsieur Gustave simply turns around in the other direction and starts running away. It takes the police a moment to realize he’s actually just tried to escape despite have no chance to actually get away.

Or watch the entire scene below:

In a regular Hollywood film, a viewer might expect a main character like the lovable Monsieur Gustave to have some ingenious plan to outwit the police; instead, the film has a greater affinity with the humanness of the audience and the pitfalls of the protagonist tend to reflect what an average person might do in such a situation, however ridiculous it looks on screen. In fact, Anderson uses that for the humor; despite being set in places which appear otherworldly, the film acts as a mirror by reflecting how we may all react if we were placed in a similar fantastic situation, which evokes a peculiar realism.

Again, in Moonrise Kingdom, similar circumstances take place. When young Sam runs away from his khaki scout troupe, the head of Island Police, Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), and Scout Master Ward call to notify his parents. When they get in touch with his household, however, Sam’s foster father lightly tells the police that they’ve “come to a decision as a family” and that “unfortunately, we can’t invite him back at this time.” Sharp and Ward simply exchange glances of complete confusion. Then Sharp responds unbelievingly, telling Sam’s foster father that he doesn’t understand (again, this moment does not appear to be in gif or video form online).

The utter unpreparedness of the characters to deal with this turn of events makes the viewer laugh because one wonders what anyone else would do if you were in a similar awkward situation, however unlikely it may be. The absurdity of the situation is where the fantasy meets the characters, whose responses mirror reality. Anderson’s work excels at negotiating a space and aesthetic which nurtures the intersection of fantasy and reality to create magical realism.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, Wes Anderson’s work is an important example of the way that theories of cinema converge to create a new element in the film. Anderson’s use of cinema as frame, as discussed by Arnheim and Eisenstein, work together give the viewer an impression of fantasy in his film, and while Anderson’s use of cinema as mirror, as discussed by several of pieces by Balázs’s writings, are used to reflect reality. Together, these two approaches converge, as discussed by Baudry, to form a unique type of magical realism within Anderson’s work. While perhaps scholars shy away from admitting that two or more approaches can converge with a new result simply because of the complex and infinite nature of consequences, our goal should not be to name every single possible result of these many combinations. Instead, as we have proven here, theorists and scholars should, in the future, acknowledge that this is an exciting new horizon which could lead to the unshackling of cinema to a single access point, allowing us to approach this important medium with a greater understanding.

For Further Reading:

One of my favorite sources has been this wonderful and insightful article by David Bordwell on the world of Wes Anderson in Moonrise Kingdom, which is great further reading for anyone interested in Anderson's work. The article can be found here.

Additionally, anyone who can get their hands on this book called "The Films of Wes Anderson: Critical Essays on an Indiewood Icon", edited by Peter C. Kunze, should do so.

(above) The dancing man animation during the end credits of The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Bibliography:

Arnheim, Rudolf. "Film and Reality." Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White, and Meta Mazaj. New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 279-88. Print.

Balázs, Béla. "The Close-Up." Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White, and Meta Mazaj. New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 127-130. Print.

Balázs, Béla. "The Creative Camera." Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White, and Meta Mazaj. New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 126-27. Print.

Balázs, Béla. "The Face of Man." Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White, and Meta Mazaj. New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 130-35. Print.

Baudry, Jean-Louis. "The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in Cinema." Film Theory & Criticism. Ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. 7th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. 171-88. Print.

Eisenstein, Sergei. "Beyond the Shot [The Cinematopgraphic Principle and the Ideogram]." Film Theory & Criticism. Ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. 7th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. 13-23. Print.

Elsaesser, Thomas, and Malte Hagener. "Chapter 1: Cinema as Window and Frame”, “Chapter 3: Cinema as Mirror - Face and Close-Up." Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2015. 14-38, 61-93. Print.

The Grand Budapest Hotel. Dir. Wes Anderson. Perf. Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, and Mathieu Amalric. Indian Paintbrush, 2014. Film

Moonrise Kingdom. Dir. Wes Anderson. Perf. Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bruce Willis and Edward Norton. Indian Paintbrush, 2012. Film.