If You Love Something - “The Royal Tenenbaums”- Grant Hiskes
Picture From Amazon.com
I have not tried to tackle analyzing a Wes Anderson film since The Grand Budapest Hotel. He is one of my favorite directors and perhaps the best auteur in the business, but it is hard for me to decipher a lot of his movies after just one sitting. Admittedly, I just watched The Royal Tenenbaums, the 2001 film that was Anderson’s first to receive serious critical acclaim, for the third time … and fresh off a back-to-back for times 2 and 3. I am so drawn to this film for reasons I don't really know, but I think I have finally cracked the code of the message of this work of art.
Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) is the estranged father of three genius children …
Chas (Ben Stiller): A teenage entrepreneur with great knowledge of “international finance” who now spends his days dressing in matching jumpsuits with his two sons Ari and Uzi and running mock fire drills as he suffers from the loss of his wife in a plane accident just a year before
Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow): The adopted child “known for her extreme secrecy” and performing her own play for her 11th birthday. After a string of serious flings, Margot now seems to spend most of her days smoking cigarettes and watching TV in the writer and neurologist and writer Raleigh St. Clair’s (Bill Murray) bathtub.
Richie (Luke Wilson): The tennis protege “Baumer” who Royal seemed to enjoy the most out of all the children. His career ended in the championship match when he committed 72 unforced errors the day after Margot married Raleigh.
… and Royal is also the estranged husband of Etheline (Anjelica Huston).
Royal, who is now broke, wants to come back to the family with a ploy to fake that he has six weeks to live as he dies from stomach cancer.
This film seems to unravel itself to say that you have to halt the denial of your feelings if you want to salvage your happiness.
Two key motifs illustrate this message throughout the film’s duration.
The first motif I would like to draw attention to is Mordecai. Mordecai is Richie’s hawk that he started taking care of as a child. The first time we see the hawk is in the scene following Margot’s 11th birthday where she performs her own play, almost as if the hawk is a symbol of Richie’s love for his adopted sister Margot dating back to their childhood. The next time we see the hawk is when Richie gets back to the old Tenenbaum house with Margot and the rest of his family to be with their “dying” father. This time though, Richie decides he is going to free Mordecai and send him on his way. I can’t help but think of the proverb “If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, it’s yours to keep. If it does not, it never was”. Except Mordecai is not the “something” in this instance but again a representation of Richie’s love for Margot. From Richie’s letter to his childhood best friend Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), we know at this point in the movie that Richie is pondering whether he is in love with Margot or not. Richie now seems to have some qualms that he can’t have Margot, especially now that they are all back together at home and Margot’s husband Raleigh is still in the picture. At this point, he is attempting to let go of his feelings for Margot, in other words, denying to himself that he loves her.
Richie goes through a rough phase before Mordecai’s next appearance. This interim is when Richie has a breakdown in the bathroom, he cuts off his hair, shaves his beard, and then takes the razor blades to his arms in an attempt to kill himself. Worth noting as well, as Richie has his episode, we see flashbacks play in his mind. Alternating shots of Margot coming off the bus to greet him, and what else? You guessed it. Mordecai. That night Richie finds Margot in his tent. They have a heart-to-heart, and he finally opens up to Margot that he loves her. The burden, the animal eating up Richie’s insides, is now out of the bag. A few scenes after Richie signs himself out of the hospital, we see him on the roof of the Tenenbaum house with Royal. It is here that Richie admits to his father that he has romantic feelings for Margot. Royal is a bit taken back at first, but then he says that he does not blame Richie. Richie has tod Margot he loves her, and he has told his father now too. Just as it seems like Richie is starting to come to terms with this attraction is when Mordecai returns. Richie has a hard time believing it’s really Mordecai at first, he thinks it’s whiter than it was, just like how he is still wondering if he really loves Margot.
Richie is in much better spirits then leading up to Mordecai’s final appearance. We see Margot and Richie sitting side by side on top of the roof with Mordecai perched on Richie’s arm. Richie suggests to Margot that humans sometimes get white hair after a traumatic experience and maybe that’s what happened to Mordecai. I’d say nearly killing yourself over suppressing your love for your adopted sister is a pretty traumatic experience. Yet now that Richie has stopped the denial of his uncontrollable love and affection for Margot, he lives a much happier life.
The second motif I would like to point out is the epitaphs of the gravestones. When Royal returns to the house and has his first conversation with all three kids, the first thing he mentions is that he wants to go out to the cemetery where his mother is buried. While they are at the cemetery, Royal points out an epitaph to Richie, which Richie does not seem to understand, that reads, “Veteran of Two Wars. Father of Nine Children. Drowned in The Caspian Sea”. This is not the only time Royal stresses the importance of the epitaph either though. As he talks to Etheline about his will, the first thing he brings up in this conversation as well is the epitaph. He wants her to proofread it. And then, of course, the movie’s closing scene has a similar resemblance to the epitaph Royal pointed out to Richie earlier. The epitaph on Royal’s grave reads “Died Tragically Rescuing His Family From The Wreckage Of A Destroyed Sinking Battleship”. I had to think about this for hours. There’s just no way Wes Anderson puts this epitaph here aimlessly, especially after stressing the epitaph throughout the movie.
In the film’s resolution, Royal’s actions really do save his family from the “destroyed sinking battleship” they seem to be helplessly aboard. Before Royal comes back into the picture, none of his family really seems to be too happy with themselves. His wife, Etheline, says she has not loved a man since Royal or slept with one in 18 years, she is now at a loss as to what to do about her co-worker Henry Sherman (Danny Glover) professing his love for her. Chas is beating himself up still over the death of his wife in the plane crash, he is wildly anxious and uptight. Margot admits that she is depressed and seems unfulfilled by her relationship with Raleigh St. Clair, we also know she has not written a play in seven years. And Richie has spent the last part of the year adventuring at sea but as we learn in his letter to longtime friend Eli Cash, he also seems to be struggling with the void he has by not having Margot.
So how does Royal save them necessarily? Well, remember the part of this article about Mordecai representing the importance of transforming the denial of your feelings into acceptance of them? That seems to be exactly what Royal did to start the film. Sure, Royal is broke, but Royal also has to finally admit to himself that he misses his Etheline and the kids dearly. Throughout the film, Royal makes great progress in rekindling the relationships with his kids and grandkids. He has a ball of an afternoon with his grandkids Ari and Uzi, he ends up getting ice cream sundaes with Margot, and he provides support to Richie after his suicide attempt. By the end of the movie, the endearing “son of a bitch” is doing anything to make his family happy and that makes him happy. He buys a new dog for Ari and Uzi after a trippin Eli runs over their old hound Buckley. Even though he still has feelings for Etheline, he gives her a divorce, so that she can marry Henry Sherman.
The film’s happy ending then is that all of the Tenenbaums now seem to be happy although not having the success one may expect out of geniuses. However, all of this happiness occurs because they stopped denying their feelings. Chas finally admits that the past year has been rough for him and that he needs help. Eli Cash admits he has a drug problem and checks himself into a rehab facility in North Dakota to get his drug problem in order. Richie and Margot seem to finally be at peace now, they have each other, and they both picked their old passions back up. Margot’s play ran for two weeks and got “mixed reviews”, and Richie runs tennis lessons at the 37th Street Y for “8 to 12-year-olds”. These are probably not the places that they imagined themselves being in their days as young geniuses, but because they are true to themselves and open with their emotions, they are happy.
And that is the message to be learned from the movie. As I have written in past posts, humans tend to struggle with understanding their emotions. Our conscience tries to make sense of and justify why we feel certain ways, and most of the time we can’t explain it because it’s simply natural. When we attempt to combat these emotions though, we internalize our pain and suffering, and the result is that we put unruly stress on ourselves and also on others. A key component to our happiness then is not fighting or suppressing these emotions, but being open with ourselves and learning how to deal and cope with the ebbs and flows of life.
