Some filmmakers become adjectives: after them, a certain way of being or doing takes on their name or that of their characters (Hitchcockian, Felliniesque...), Wes Anderson, on the other hand, is the first one who managed to modify the locations and furnishings that existed before him. Just like his visual style is clear and exact, maniacal is the way in which he chooses pieces of furniture inspired by precise periods (usually the ‘70s but often also the ‘60s or the ‘80s). Now those real furnishings are often described as wesandersonian, as showed by the Accidentally Wes Anderson Instagram profile, in which you can find photographs of interiors and furnishings (but also facades of buildings) that seem to unintentionally imitate Wes Anderson’s style. However, Fondazione Prada’s Bar Luce isn’t unintentional at all - it was designed and furnished by Wes Anderson himself. Well, it’s safe to say that it looks like it came right out of a Wes Anderson movie.
Wes Anderson’s uniqueness explained through 5 movie sets
The American filmmaker is undoubtedly unique in the history of cinema - thanks to the precision and consistency of his furnishings and buildings. What would his films be without them?
There are elegant antiques, African artifacts, and bright '70s colours. The best thing in the movie, however, is the iconic Scalamandre zebra wallpaper in the ballroom.
And it is very interesting to see how Wes Anderson then recycled this experience for the short film Come Together created for H&M, all set on a train but clearly with H&M costumes.
View Article details
- Gabriele Niola
- 23 March 2020
Wes Anderson was the first filmmaker in the history of cinema to start with absolute precision and coherence from furniture and buildings to create his movies, to narrate his characters and to create unique moods and sensations. Not even Almodovar’s style, with all the saturated colors and smooth surfaces, is similar. Wes Anderson’s movies not only look like catalogues of a vintage furniture factory, but in those showrooms, he places perfectly coherent characters who can neither exist nor have ever existed, yet are capable of such recognizable, human and delicate impulses. What surrounds them is no longer furniture, but the world around them, which at the same time oppresses them (pushing them to be always the best) and exalts them (giving them a reason for living). See how the first scene of his next movie, The French Dispatch, already says it all.
Think of Hotel Chevalier, the short film with Natalie Portman set almost entirely inside a yellow hotel, and what happens when at the end Anderson juxtaposes those narrow, closed, over-furnished rooms with the blue exterior. We were paying too much attention on the love cocoon of the couple to realize that, outside the windows, there was Paris.
The Royal Tenenbaums was the first of Wes Anderson’s movies to focus so closely on costumes and locations in order to tell the story of a particular family. The aim was to show everyone that the protagonists are exceptional, and they all have excelled in their field. To immediately show that they are not like the others, Anderson places them in a maniacally furnished house. This is exactly the way cartoons work: the characters' objects resemble the characters and are a way of describing them.
There are elegant antiques, African artifacts, and bright '70s colours. The best thing in the movie, however, is the iconic Scalamandre zebra wallpaper in the ballroom.
The scenes inside the Belafonte, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou's research vessel, were filmed at Rome’s Cinecittà studios. Even the furnishing of the vessel follow a coherent pattern, with a precise colour palette and details (obviously from the 70s) such as red carpets or wooden panels. It's an incredible mix of industrial design and a toy, in which all the characters are required to wear the same specific clothing. It's a requirement of the movie that is also stated in the plot, when Steve Zissou makes sure that the newcomer is provided with a Speedo costume like everyone else.
The only one of Wes Anderson's movies to follow this approach also for the exteriors is Moonrise Kingdom. The escape of two young children in love to a kind of far-away Eden takes a grotesque and paradoxical turn: the fantastic world they reach seems to be furnished like a house, or rather like a world inhabited by dolls and puppets toys. Again, just like in a cartoon, each character of this very bizarre melodrama is characterized by a uniform, as if they were the characters of The Flintstones: everyone is defined by what they wear, and their clothes never change. The uniform is the character.
One of the best movies, however, is perhaps The Darjeeling Limited, in which we find ourselves in the Indian 1970s. In particular the interiors of the trains are designed as to resemble an illustration, at the same time realistic and impossible. To make it, a real Indian train was taken and redecorated with very strong colours, each wagon with a precise chromatic dominance and in several cases even adorned with portraits of the icons of the time.
And it is very interesting to see how Wes Anderson then recycled this experience for the short film Come Together created for H&M, all set on a train but clearly with H&M costumes.
Finally, when Wes Anderson started working on The Grand Budapest Hotel, his latest film with real-life actors, he ventured into one of the most ambitious and risky productions of his career. The protagonist of the film is an unknown actor, Tony Revolori, but all the rest of the cast, all the actors and even those who only appear for a few minutes, are famous actors. The exact opposite of what usually happens. In addition, the story of the movie takes place in two different times, with two different styles of decor but in any case, magnificent, majestic and of exceptional size. The views of the interior of The Grand Budapest Hotel are among the most complex compositions ever made (the movie was awarded an Oscar for best production design), all Art Nouveau with a red interior recreated in a former German warehouse. And after actually making an animated movie (Fantastic Mr. Fox) he also learned how to make the actors move as if they were characters from a cartoon: they peep their head through the door and run as if they were in an episode of The Looney Tunes.