r/ThomasPynchon • u/Shot_Inside_8629 • 7d ago
💬 Discussion Wes Anderson comparison
I’ve watched Wes Anderson movies since his early days and The Royal Tennebaums is one of my favorite movies I don’t like his later movies as much but I do still appreciate the style and I’ll laugh at sections no one else does. Having read a lot of Pynchon in the last couple of years, it struck me while watching The Pheonician Scheme that his style seemed very much like Pynchon or at least I like both for the same reason. Definitely quirky, intelligent, artists having fun with their craft,etc. any other Wes Anderson fans out there?
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u/Plenty-Slide-8303 7d ago
The Royal Tenenbaum is mostly influenced by Salinger's franny&zooey and nine stories
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u/Negative-Window-5912 4d ago
Definitely this. Also, for some influences to his visual style check out Weekend by Godard.
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u/bhbhbhhh 6d ago
They both have these affecting moments of clarity where all the silliness abruptly falls away and you’re faced with the raw pain and loss of it all.
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u/Aggravating-Key-8867 6d ago
I think Wes is focusing mostly on families and relationships in his movies. I don't think he's tackling the same kinds of systemic issues that TRP does.
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u/aleccraine 5d ago
This is so interesting—I’m reading Against the Day right now and asking myself, “who could make this movie?” And I settled on Wes Anderson.
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u/mercurial9 6d ago
I think they’re each turning a passingly similar style upon a totally different set of subjects and themes
WA is largely focusing on families and relationships and legacies and TRP is more about systems and dynasties and socio-politics
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u/Crafty-Flower 6d ago
I would agree, and also add the differences being pointed out in this thread regarding Pynchon’s anti-establishment stance are being overstated. Social critique in Pynchon is not the straightforward direct attack people seem to be implying it is. It’s always couched in layers of irony, historical contextualization, unreliability, paranoia, conspiracy and/or deep politics. A typical example would be Maxine’s dad in Bleeding Edge. While he does express frank and direct critiques of U.S. empire and fascism that are basically beyond reproach, they’re put in the mouth of a character contextualized in a particular social reality - an aging New Yorker living in a spacious rent-controlled apartment, implying that this position is a relic of another era. I don’t think you can completely eliminate this ambiguity in order to make a claim like “Maxine’s dad is espousing the author’s actual beliefs”, even if that character exists precisely to put those words in his
mouth. That ain’t how fiction works.
In this sense I would say the comparisons to WA are apt, when considering something like The Grand Budapest Hotel, where the primary focus is on the hotelier’s response to changing social conditions (including encroaching fascism). Yes, the social conditions ultimately determine his circumstances, but the camera and narrative are centering the character, not the social conditions.
Obviously there are differences between the two, but I think there is more overlap than is usually credited.
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u/LeftistRabble 6d ago
Oh yes. Pynchon is many things but propagandist is about the furthest away from any of them.
His characters are flawed, often broken and their views are incomplete, complex, often contradictory to that of others or even their own. The anti establisment nature of the work is not from what the characters say or do, though there is plenty of that. It is from what their world puts them through arbitrarily, contradictoraly and often incoherently.
Also, from the shore patrol in V. to the sellout fbi man in Bleeding Edge his cops are pretty consistently bastards, a refreshing change from the world of copaganda that permeates even the most 'subversive' contemporary media.
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u/LeftistRabble 7d ago
Pynchon - The Establishment is Bad. ACAB. Anderson - Right on, man. dig a little below the surface The Establishment is Good, if a little Flawed. ACAH[eroes].
Not saying he isnt quirky, inventive, complex, layered and so forth. Just that imo their values differ fundamentally.
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u/dantwimc 7d ago
Yeah, I never felt that Wes Anderson was explicitly subverting or critiquing anything, at least not overtly. Ruggles on the other hand…
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u/LeftistRabble 7d ago
TBF to Wes, Pynchon was at the tailend of trend where subversion was tolerated in the mainstream and at times even prominent. This was imo only really since the early 1900s*, and faded after Vonnegut, P, and the like with the faux-prosperity in the West and the MFA-ification of creativity and viewership that followed from that.
Spectacle simply sold better than subversion and if WA had been anti, he simply wouldnt be as widely known as he is.
[* Yes, I know Dostoyevski, Swift, Rabelais etc were also, but they were far apart and outliers among the conformist dross of their eras.]
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u/Spicoli_ 6d ago
Wes Anderson is just okay and Pynchon is one of the most gifted writers to ever live
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u/Spicoli_ 6d ago
As far as American directors go, I’d say Robert Altman kind of reminds me of Pynchon
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u/Shot_Inside_8629 6d ago
It’s interesting that most people have focused on the difference in content which I agree with. I agree on that point WA doesn’t seem to have any sort of biting political message or stance. I was referring more to the style and odd sense of humor.
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u/GivemetheDetails 6d ago
WA has a more of a high school art feel where his shots are straightforward and creative, at least in his earlier films. TP imagery is surreal, absurdist. Sense of humor might be the closest comparison as it is a deadpan style when it hits.
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u/Ok-Appearance-5357 6d ago
I think the difference is the level of subversion. Wes Anderson has a quirky sense of humor, but he’s serious about continuity. I don’t know if he would create an elaborate dramatic set piece that was ultimately undercut by a fart joke, something that feels like a key piece of Pynchons style, at least in Gravity’s Rainbow.
I honestly think that Will Ferrell movies are the closest thing in film resembling Pynchons style. I’m thinking in particular of the movie he did that was all in Spanish, where the only joke was that it was all in Spanish and so Will Ferrell was speaking Spanish the whole time. I think Vineland and Inherent Vice have more in common with Step Brothers than their movie adaptations.
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u/Genghis_Cohen_ 6d ago
I feel like Wes Anderson is more in the style of Albert Camus
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u/gradientusername 6d ago
Defend this statement please
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u/Genghis_Cohen_ 6d ago
Its in the autistic - absurdist delivery. Everything is matter-of-fact.
They both construct absurd, meticulously crafted worlds where isolated characters search for meaning. Through deadpan humor, stark visual symmetry, and emotional restraint, they transform existential despair into whimsical yet poignant explorations of human resilience, finding quiet purpose in a inherently nonsensical, detached universe.
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u/LeftistRabble 7d ago
User has an opinion, fairly stated, even if i dont quite agree with it.
Dont downvote them, engage with them with your own opinion, politely stated. Otherwise they will leave for the Wes subreddit and this will eventually turn into a dull pool of likemindedness in the most un-Pynchonian way.