If Hotel Chevalier is any indication, Wes Anderson's forthcoming The Darjeeling Limited should be a welcome return to form after the disappointingly flat and oddly uninvolving Life Aquatic. Anderson's stamp is all over the film, from the judicious use of obscure pop music to the ornately framed shots, from the allusions to unseen past events to the precision taken in selecting every prop and piece of wardrobe, and it is a stamp which has regained its credibility and its luster.
One of Anderson's myriad stengths is building and sustaining a feeling of emotional repression. The awkward stagey-ness which too many viewers are too quick to criticize works in Chevalier for the the same reasons it worked in The Royal Tenenbaums; there is a sense of history, of a past which is both memorable and regretable. There is arguably no director better at creating those beautiful, heartbreaking moments of both joy and sadness, of both hope and regret, and it is in films like Chevalier and Tenenbaums where this strength is put to its best use. In moments where past and future collide in an uncertain, pregnant present, Anderson excels where few other filmmakers even tread.
Recall Gwyneth Paltrow stepping off of the bus in Tenenbaums: about to see her step brother, with whom she is secretly in love, for the first time in years, Paltrow and Luke Wilson's trepidatious, awkward reconcillatory embrace is loaded with thoughts unspoken. Now consider Hotel Chevalier, in which two former lovers share an increasingly awkward several minutes before erupting into the throes of passion. One of Anderson's calling cards is his ability to portray those moments when the past comes rushing back to us with such immediacy that we can no longer recall if we miss it or regret it, and for good reason. His protagonists are almost always at a crossroads at which they must reconcile their past and their future, face their regrets, and decide if they will be defined by their failures or press on in spite of them.
In Hotel Chevalier, the protagonist, played with masterful reserve by Jason Schwartzman, awaits an unexpected reunion with an ex girlfriend (Natalie Portman). Such an encounter is rife with pyschosexual tension, especially in Anderson's hands. We do not know why they parted, nor why he is on what appears to be a self-imposed exile in a posh Parisian hotel. But when Schwartzman answers his phone and hears Portman's voice, you can feel his world freeze. His gentle resignation to his conflicted emotions is illustrated with beautiful economy:
"Wait a second."
"What?"
"Where are you?"
"I'm here."
"I didn't say you could come here."
"Can I come there?"
(silence)
"Okay."
The rest of the scene plays out in a fashion that will be familiar to anyone who has found themselves still in love with someone who has hurt them beyond repair. The masochistic, self-spiteful, self conscious, pageant that plays out does not scar, nor does it heal. It's damaged individuals hoping to put themselves back together by revisiting the traps which broke them in the first place.
The paradox of nostalgia is that as much as it is a celebration of beauty and of happiness, equally is it a reminder that everything we know will one day disappear, ourselves included. Could there even be beauty if the world were not temporal? Surely, the salvation that Anderson's characters seek would be meaningless if they were immortal; with eternity, they could be everyone they ever wanted to be.
All lovers of the cinema should rejoice in the works of Wes Anderson. That a director can create films of such sincerity using tools of such blatant artifice is reason enough, but to speak so directly to the often conflicted inner torments of those individuals who are stranded in their own lives is a true cause celebre.