My Personal 100 has taken a bit of a back seat of late. I have been picking them off slowly (summer a good time for that because all the outdoor cinemas pick up the classics) but I don't get around to writing them up.
They're all just backing up in my drafts folder. I've got four sitting in there at the moment.
That's a real shame because they are usually the films I most want to write about. Whether anyone wants to read about them is a different matter. I'm starting to look upon these posts as a kind of film therapy, part cinematic dissection, part self-dissection.
I guess I want to figure out why these are the films I connect with where I don't connect with others that are more widely loved (I'm looking at you The Shawshank Redemption).
With Rushmore, I think my fierce and abiding affection for it comes down to my long personal association with Peter Pan. I wouldn't go as far as saying I have (or had) a Peter Pan "complex" per se, but I will admit to having felt a lifelong affinity with J.M. Barrie's character and his "never grow up" ethos. Now, with me pushing 40, I've finally capitulated and grown up a tad, but the fascination is still there.
The connection between Peter Pan and Wes Anderson's second feature probably isn't immediately apparent. There is certainly no magical boy child flying around, no tinkering fairies and no hook-handed pirates but there are a good many characters who obstinately refuse to grow up.
And that is/was me to a tee. I spent a lot of my life being told to "act my age" as if acting "grown up" is something inherently good instead of how I see it: blindly toeing the line. I've spent a lot of my life sticking to my Peter Pan guns, idealising the man-child. For me, Rushmore was very much the refutation of that ideal. It was the cinematic kick in the arse that most definitely needed at that point in my life.
For those of you who haven't seen it, and I'm surprised of the number of film lovers who haven't gotten around to it yet (not that I'm one to judge; I still haven't made the time to see Anderson's first film, Bottle Rocket), Rushmore is essentially the story of a mediocre private school student, Max Fisher, who struggles in his own precocious way to weasel aroung the academy's principal and to ingratiate himself on the object of his infatuation, a recently widowed pre-school teacher named Miss Cross.
The young adult's name is Max Fisher and he's played to the teeth by Jason Schwartzman (his first feature film role). Max presents as every bit the blue ribbon student. He's well spoken, persuasive, and self-assured to the point of being unbearably conceited. Max is not the most liked kid at Rushmore, or the smartest; he's accomplished but only insofar as he's the instigator of most of the academy's extra-curricular activities.
Max works the system rather than working within it. Every measure of worth at Rushmore is targeted at his weakest attributes - his academic ability, his romantic prowess and his socio-economic status. He feels his inadequacy keenly but he buries it deep and covers it over with bravado and antagonistic cock-suredness. That, he is very good at. Were he an adult, he'd be able to coast through life on the back of that skill alone, but he's not, and that is what makes him so compelling a character.
Max is trapped in that netherworld between childhood and adulthood and he kind of revels in it. Right there with him is his partner in crime, Herman Blume (Bill Murray in his pre-Lost In Translation acting rebirth), a hideously jaded, overgrown man-child who catches Max's attention after he gives an hilariously cut-throat speech in Rushmore's chapel.
Blume indulges Max's precocious eccentricity because he's reached about the same level of maturity. Unfortunately for them (but very fortunately for Wes Anderson's narrative) Blume becomes enamoured of Miss Cross himself, thereby setting up the film's exceptionally warped love triangle.
Miss Cross, played wonderfully straight by Olivia Williams, makes a fantastic foil for both boy-men. At first seems like the level headed one. She takes their misguided attention in her stride. She's polite and patient, even caring to a point. But as the movie goes on she reveals her self to be just as crippled as the others, if not developmentally, then at least emotionally. She is the one who eventually untangles it all though and when she does her bluntness is devastatingly incisive.
For me, rewatching Rushmore is a curiously unsettling experience. It whisks me back to a point in my life where I was desperately trying to shelter myself from the big wide world, when I was too raw to expose myself too it. A time when I took shelter in the things that didn't have any real life consequence (my imagination and my fantastical romanticism) and those places I knew well, even if I didn't particularly enjoy them, namely school. My fear of the unknown and my insecurity about looks, my sexuality and my relationship to those around me kept me from pursuing more adventurous occupations. And so, I became a teacher, because, well, I didn't need to leave school.
I saw Rushmore about the time I came out of the closet and had started to toughen up a little. It was the perfect pill for my situation, a cinematic spectre of exactly what I was afraid of turning into. At the same time, the film held a tantalising promise of personal growth that I clung to almost religiously. There is a certain catharsis in watching (and watching, and watching over and over again) someone being taught the lessons your still wrestling with yourself. Even now it still hurts me a little to see Miss Cross crush Max's romantic illusions with her real flesh and blood sexing. My inner Peter Pan is still there, I suppose, but Wes Anderson helped me reason with him and negotiate a more appropriate manifestation for him in my life.
For all this, you might imagine I'm a massive Anderson fan, but no. I like his films a great deal and he's dear to my heart because of this film but I can't say I'm an unwavering devotee. The beauty of Anderson's touch in Rushmore, what makes it so endearing (when its subject matter is actually rather creepily depressing), is that he has put his fey spin on proceedings without getting too caught up in the intricate cinematic gesticulations. I've struggled with just about every Anderson film since this one (except Fantastic Mr Fox, which I loved) because although they looked the part, they never found the emotional hinge that this film had. I've come to look on our connection here as fortuitous happenstance. I do hold out hope though and I hear good things about Grand Budapest Hotel...
Anyway, I'm about done. I'll leave you with my favourite scene from the film. Never gets old.
Much like our good friends...
Max Fisher: I didn’t catch this young gentleman’s name. I like your nurse’s uniform, guy.
Peter: These are O.R. scrubs.
Max Fisher: “O.R.” they? Well, they’re totally inappropriate for the occasion.
Peter: Well, I didn’t know we were going to dinner.
Max Fisher: That’s because you weren’t invited.
Mr. Blume: Take it easy, Max.
Miss Cross: You were the one that ordered him a whiskey and soda.
Max Fisher: So what’s wrong with that? I can write a hit play. Why can’t I have a little drink to unwind myself? So, tell me, curly, how do you know Miss Cross?
Peter: We went to Harvard together.
Max Fisher: Oh, that’s great. I wrote a hit play and directed it. So I’m not sweating it either.
Rushmore is #41 in my Personal 100, a journey back through my hundred most beloved films.
You can track my progress here.
No comments:
Post a Comment