The Instant Expert's Guide to Wes Anderson

Cinema Paradiso's Instant Expert series introduces the world's great film-makers, past and present. With Asteroid City currently in cinemas, the focus this time falls on Wes Anderson.

Although he's only made 11 features since debuting in 1996, Wes Anderson has established himself as one of America's most distinctive directors. 'I do feel kind of like I've got my own style and voice,' he conceded in one interview. 'I've done a bunch of movies. And it's a luxury to me that they're all whatever I've wanted them to be.' But for fans of the 54 year-old Texan, he has developed such a signature approach to storytelling and style that his pictures are instantly recognisable.

Clever critics will tell you that everything you see in a Wes Anderson film is meticulously planned, whether it's the design and colour of the sets, props, and costumes, the placement and movement of the camera, or the positioning and pacing of the actors. Regular collaborator Tilda Swinton declared Andersonland to be 'an inspired molecular universe created by an immensely visionary and technologically crack team'. And she should know.

Yet if formal rigour and aesthetic exactitude was all there is to Anderson's method, he would not have produced such winningly engaging tales that reveal hidden depths with each viewing. Often adopting an outsider's perspective, he has an insight into human nature that enables him to empathise with characters whose quirks and antics are depicted with wit and warmth, no matter how quixotic they may seem.

Even in the most harmonious setting, chaos is never far away and, in this regard, the milieux into which Anderson pitches his protagonists are not dissimilar to those found in the equally punctilious pictures of Jacques Tati and Swedish near-namesake, Roy Andersson. Yet, while several Andersonian characters seem to behave like adult-sized kids, they are never judged, because they are usually striving to come to terms with a death or loss that has shaped their personality and/or circumstances. As a result, no one could begrudge them finding redemption though a connection with someone who accepts them for who they are, as this is surely the ultimate happy ending.

The Eight Year-Old Auteur

The second of three boys, Wesley Wales Anderson was born on 1 May 1969 in Houston, Texas. Father Melver worked in advertising and public relations, while mother Texas Ann was a real estate agent and archaeologist. She raised Mel, Wes, and Eric after divorcing in 1977, with the boys spending weekends with Melver, who bought Wes the Yashika Super 8 camera with which he made numerous short films featuring his siblings, While he couldn't dictate what happened in everyday life, he could control all aspects of these 8mm enterprises. 'I think the first one was a library book,' he reminisced, 'that was probably not a very good story called The Skateboard Four.'

Unsettled by his father's departure, Wes started misbehaving at school and he remains grateful to the fourth-grade teacher who found a way to keep him in line. 'My parents were getting divorced,' he later explained. 'It was kind of horrible. I couldn't accept it for the longest time... I was having a problem with self-discipline. So this teacher who knew I liked to write plays made this deal that every two weeks that went by that I didn't have this self-discipline problem I got to put on another play.'

In addition to versions of the Headless Horseman myth and the Battle of the Alamo, Anderson also based plays around the popular TV series, Starsky & Hutch (1975-78), which starred Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul. He also played an otter in a school production of Noye's Fludde. But his burning ambition was to become a writer.

Leaving Westchester High School for the prep school, St John's High School, Anderson found himself something of an outsider and later channelled his experiences into his sophomore feature, Rushmore (1998). Indeed, he even filmed part of the action at his alma mater and claimed that teenager Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) was 'like me, except he's not shy'.

Graduating in 1987, Anderson enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin. 'I chose philosophy,' he later recalled, 'because it sounded like something I ought to be interested in. I didn't know anything about it, I didn't even know what it was talking about. What I really spent my time doing in those years was writing short stories. There were all sorts of interesting courses, but what I really wanted to do was make stories one way or another.'

When not working part-time as a projectionist at the Hogg Memorial Auditorium, Anderson forged a friendship with Owen Wilson, whom he had met at a playwriting class. They became roommates and gained access to the equipment at a local cable-access channel in order to make a few videos. In 1992, they decided to make a comic caper called Bottle Rocket, with each borrowing $2000 from their fathers. Realising they didn't have enough money to complete a feature, they settled on a short and began trying to get it shown.

Wes the Whizz

The idea for Bottle Rocket came about after Anderson and Wilson staged a break-in at their apartment in a bid to shame a landlord who had repeatedly ignored their complaints about a broken window. Although the ruse failed in real life, it helped set the comic tone for the story of two friends (Owen Wilson and his younger brother, Luke), who pull off a few practice burglaries before attempting a major heist.

Among the people who saw the short was L.M. Kit Carson, who had made his name as an actor in Jim McBride's David Holzman's Diary (1967). He had reunited with the director to co-script Breathless (1983), which reworked Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle (1960), before teaming up with Wim Wenders to write Paris, Texas (1984). Kit Carson submitted Bottle Rocket to the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, but it rather got lost in a busy shorts schedule.

Eventually word of the scenario reached Polly Platt, the ex-wife of director Peter Bogdanovich, who had served as a production designer on Targets (1968), The Last Picture Show (1971), What's Up, Doc? (1972), and Paper Moon (1973). She had also earned an Oscar nomination for designing James L. Brooks's Terms of Endearment (1985) and played a key role in the evolution of The Simpsons (1989-) by introducing Brooks to cartoonist Matt Groening. Now, she showed Bottle Rocket to Brooks and he was sufficiently impressed to lobby Columbia Pictures to give Anderson $6 million to make a feature-length version.

The Wilsons reprised their roles as small-timers Dignan and Anthony Adams in Bottle Rocket (1996), while James Caan (who had been Oscar nominated for Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, 1972) was cast as Abe Henry, a local gangster who dispatches the pair to steal a safe from a cold storage facility. But, while critics were enthusiastic in making comparisons with Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Kevin Smith's Clerks (1994), some lukewarm test screenings presaged a disappointing tilt at the box office. Not even the endorsement of Martin Scorsese could sway punters. He would rank it among the best films of the 1990s, calling it 'a movie without a trace of cynicism, that obviously grew out of its director's affection for his characters in particular and for people in general. A rarity.'

Idiosyncratic and subversive, the film put a postmodernist spin on the crime genre, while also managing to be deftly nostalgic. In conjunction with cinematographer Robert D. Yeoman (who remains a key collaborator), Anderson also established his trademark penchant for visual symmetry and the striking use of colour and flat camera movements. Moreover, this treatise on faded idealism and friendship in extremis hit upon the recurring Andersonian notion of being content with your lot.

Undaunted by the meagre business, Brooks was convinced that Anderson saw the world differently from 'the billions of other ants on the hill' and did his bit to ensure that Disney's Touchstone arm took on Rushmore (1998) after New Line Cinema had failed to close a deal. Drawing on their own school experiences, Anderson and Wilson initially envisaged the motherless Max Fischer as a teenage version of Mick Jagger. However, after auditioning 1800 youths, they decided to model him more on Benjamin Braddock, Dustin Hoffman's character in Mike Nichols's The Graduate (1967), after casting Jason Schwartzman, who was the son of Talia Shire and the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola (for more details, see Cinema Paradiso's article, The Coppola Clan: Hollywood's Most Creative Family ). Other influences on the action included Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude (1971) and Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), while the early montage sequence owed much to the nouvelle vague.

The pair had written the part of Herman Blume with Bill Murray in mind and were delighted when he took on the challenge of playing the businessman who competes with Max for the affections of first-grade teacher, Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams). Indeed, Murray would receive a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Golden Globes, while both he and Anderson emerged triumphant from the Independent Spirit Awards.

Noting the use of red, blue, and green to create a heightened sense of reality, critics raved about the sophistication of Anderson's style and the deadpan precision of his dialogue. Filled with tracks by British artists like The Kinks, The Who, John Lennon, and Cat Stevens, the soundtrack was also commended, with Mark Mothersbaugh's score being complemented at one point by 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing' from Bill Melendez's A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), and all subsequent Anderson features would include a reference to Charles M. Schultz's Peanuts cartoons.

Having scooped $17 million at the box office, Anderson embarked upon The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), which was to take around three times as much. The head of the clan in this study of comic dysfunction is Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman), a rogue who had abandoned wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston), and their sons, Chas (Ben Stiller) and Richie (Luke Wilson), and adopted daughter, Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow). They had respectively excelled at business, tennis, and playwriting in their youth. But adulthood is proving harder to navigate when Royal re-enters their lives claiming to be suffering from a grave illness.

Along with episodes from Anderson's own domestic travails, the storyline drew on such literary sources as J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey and the Glass family stories, as well as E. L. Konigsburg's From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and Helen Cresswell's 10-strong series of children's novels, The Bagthorpe Saga. Among its cinematic antecedents were Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons (1945), Jean-Pierre Melville's adaptation of Jean Cocteau's Les Enfants terribles (1950), the Louis Malle duo of Le Feu follet (1963) and Le Souffle au coeur (1971), John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969), and William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971). All are available to rent on high-quality disc from Cinema Paradiso.

Gene Hackman was reluctant to do the film, as he didn't understand his character. Michael Caine and Gene Wilder were considered as replacements before Hackman's agent convinced him to sign on. He was rewarded with the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, while Anderson and Owen Wilson's screenplay was nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA.

Production designer Carl Sprague was unlucky to be overlooked, as Anderson used 250 sets during the shoot. Ben Stiller's performance is also underrated, as Chas comes across as a hypochondriacal doofus in his red tracksuits. But he is suffering from both the break-up of his parents' marriage and the death of his wife and his attempts to protect his children from the traumas that had blighted his own youth is actually quite touching.

Watch With Wes

Although he's not sure, Wes Anderson thinks the first film he saw in a cinema involved Inspector Clouseau. This means it was one of either The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), or Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), which were all directed by Blake Edwards. He's more certain about the first movie he ever walked out of, which also starred Peter Sellers, Piers Haggard's The Fiendish Plot of Dr Fu Manchu (1980), which was released after the actor's death at the age of 54.

Fortunately, it's easier to determine the films that have shaped his cinematic sensibility, as he has published two very useful lists. Dating from 2010, the first was compiled for the US home video label, Criterion. French titles feature prominently, with Max Ophüls's Madame de... (1953) being joined by Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar (1966), Claude Sautet's Classe tous risques (1960), and Murice Pialat's L'enfance nue (1968)

All four features are available to rent from Cinema Paradiso, as are Shohei Imamura's Pigs and Battleships (1961) and The Insect Woman (1963), Luis Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel (1962), and the American trio of Martin Ritt's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965), Peter Yates's The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), and Paul Schrader's Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985). The only one to elude our grasp is Roberto Rossellini's The Rise to Power of Louis XIV (1966), although (irksomely) the historical dramas the Italian auteur made towards the end of his career have been largely ignored by DVD distributors.

When asked to contribute to Sight and Sound's 2022 Greatest Films of All Time poll, Anderson noted, 'Like most of us (I think?), I don't actually have ten favorite movies. I thought I would pick ten favorite French ones (because I am listing this list in France). ' This selection again offers insights into the inspiration for the content and form of Anderson's own pictures.

Only Madame De... makes both lists and it finds a companion in Olivier, Olivier (1992), as director Agnieszka Holland is Polish, just as Ophüls was German. The other eight directors were French born and their films range from Jean Renoir's pacifist classic, La Grande illusion (1937), and Henri-Georges Clouzot's noirish thriller, Quai des Orfèvres (1947), to dramas that all bear the imprint of the French New Wave: Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa vie (1962); François Truffaut's The Man Who Loved Women (1977). Maurice Pialat's Loulou (1980), Agnès Varda's Vagabond (1985), Bertrand Tavernier's It All Starts Today (1999), and Arnaud Desplechin's Kings and Queen (2004).

He's also a fan of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, as well as Brian De Palma (see Cinema Paradiso's Instant Expert's Guide). Moreover, if he could resurrect some Golden Age greats, he would love to write roles for William Powell, Barbara Stanwyck, Clark Gable, and Chester Morris, who earned an Oscar nomination for Roland West's Alibi (1929) before finding a niche as B-movie troubleshooter, Boston Blackie (1941-49). Type his name into the Cinema Paradiso searchline to discover titles like William H. Pine's Aerial Gunner (1943) and Edward L. Cahn's The She Creature (1956).

In addition to these formal lists, Anderson has often also mentioned films he admires in interviews. As before, French features abound, with Renoir's Toni (1934), Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959), and Barbet Schroeder's Terror's Advocate (2007) all being cited. Japan is also well represented with Akira Kurosawa's Drunken Angel (1948) and Stray Dog (1949), Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953), Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro (1988), and Hideaki Anno's Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-96) making the cut, while Sweden slips in with Ingmar Bergman's From the Life of the Marionettes (1980), which was actually made during his period of tax exile in West Germany.

The preponderance of titles hails from America, however, with venerable gems like Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise (1932), Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St Louis (1944), Alexander Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success (1957), and Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960) ranking alongside New Hollywood classics like Mike Nichols's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1965), Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Tenant (1976), Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), Hal Ashby's The Last Detail (1973), Coming Home (1978), and Being There (1979), Paul Mazursky's Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), Costa-Gavras's Missing (1982), Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Norman Jewison's Moonstruck (1987), and New York Stories (1989), a portmanteau containing segments directed by Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Francis Ford Coppola.

Work through this lot from Cinema Paradiso and you'll be well on your way to directing like Wes Anderson. In case you need a few more pointers, however...

Westhetics

Wes Anderson's visual style has been the subject of much academic and aficionadic discussion. Such is its recognisability that social media sites are strewn with pastiche snippets, as fans apply the Anderson aesthetic to everyday situations. He's not enamoured of these memes, apparently, but they often show a keen appreciation of his technique.

Anderson's compositions are often symmetrical, as he seeks to provide balance and harmony to the visuals in order to heighten the sense that the action is taking place in a story world and not everyday reality. In order to achieve this, he employs what is called 'Planimetric staging', which requires him to place the camera at a 90° angle to the shot's principal subject so that the background appears to flatten. The resulting two-dimensionality of this tableau vivant effect allows Anderson to draw the audience's attention to the conscious creation of the image. Some have dubbed this method 'direct directing', as he seeks to dictate what the viewer sees, knows, and feels during each scene.

This fascination with self-reflexivity derives from his love of the nouvelle vague, which disregarded the classical notion of invisible technique in order to draw the viewer's attention to the artificiality of the filmic process. Anderson's naysayers claim that such calculated construction makes his films feel artificial and pretentious. Yet, rather than distancing the audience from the action, such visual gambits coax them into dispensing with passive perception and engage with both the narrative and the characters on new levels. They also persuade them to accept abrupt tonal shifts that would seem jarring in other contexts.

Anderson's use of colour also forms part of this schema. In addition to employing hues to draw attention to specific details, such as a prop or an item of clothing, Anderson also relies on it to signify character traits and establish the emotional mood of a scene. He often uses red, for example, to convey mourning or a sense of loss, while yellow is associated with innocence and nostalgia. This exacting use of the palette also generates an aura of otherness that separates the film milieu from the everyday and, thus, allows Anderson to indulge in storylines that have their own cockeyed logic.

Along with ever-present cinematographer Robert Yeoman, production designers David Wasco, Mark Friedberg, and Adam Stockhausen, set decorators Kris Moran and Rena DeAngelo, costumiers Karen Patch, Milena Canonero, and Kasia Walicka Maimone, and editors David Moritz and Andrew Weisblum have all played pivotal parts in helping Anderson achieve a living storybook vision that is rooted in his own psychology. Similarly, his novel form of team auteurism also depends his choice of writing partners, with Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Roman Coppola being regular collaborators - although Anderson is keen to point out that he is the one 'who does the physical writing; I'm putting it into words. The rest of the collaboration is endless talking.'

Three of the first 10 films make use of voiceover narration, while all but Bottle Rocket and the two animations discussed below contain slow-motion sequences. Taking a leaf from his nouvelle vague heroes, Anderson often includes homages to scenes that have lingered in his memory. However, he never simply copies them, but imparts his own spin to make them part of his storyverse, which often feels like it has been dreamt up by an adolescent boy in the 1980s.

His key characters also lack maturity, as they eschew responsibility in order to maintain the independence they feel they need to pursue their adventures and dreams. Often single-minded to the point of folly, Anderson characters are eccentric and contradictory. Moreover, they often do things that risk alienating viewers. Yet, by frequently casting the same performers who deliver their lines in the same deadpan manner, Anderson reassures the audience that, for all their flaws, his characters are essentially decent and genial and that they will find a way to work things out for the best.

If you still need convincing that we're in safe hands, the music of Mark Mothersbaugh and Alexandre Desplat is invariably complemented by pop songs by familiar artists (many of them British) from the 1960s and 70s, which offer a sense of familiarity, while also providing emotional cues. And you thought you were just watching amusingly oddball movies!

Downturns and Detours

The critical consensus would have it that Anderson went through a bit of a downturn in the noughties, which only ended with a detour into animation. This premise depends, of course, on whether one agrees that The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004) and The Darjeeling Limited (2007) were underwhelming films.

Inspired by such literary tomes as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons, and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, the former also drew on the adventures of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, who won the Academy Award for Best Documentary with both The Silent World (co-directed Louis Malle, 1954) and World Without Sun (1964). Cousteau also hosted a successful TV series that is parodied by Anderson and co-writer Noah Baumbach and Cinema Paradiso users can compares the styles by renting Philippe Cousteau's epic, Jacques Cousteau: Journeys Into the Unknown in a Voyage to the Edge of the World (1976), Jérôme Salle's biopic, The Odyssey (2016), and Liz Garbus's documentary, Becoming Cousteau (2021).

Those familiar with Cousteau's ship, Calypso, will realise that Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) has named his craft Belafonte because actor, singer, and Civil Rights activist Harry Belafonte made his name with Caribbean calypsos. The entire film is replete with such throwaway gags, right down to the names of the marine life that was created by stop-motion maestro Henry Selick, whose credits include The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), James and the Giant Peach (1996), and Monkeybone (2001).

Also aboard the ship searching for the jaguar shark that killed Zissou's longtime partner are loyal lieutenant Klaus Daimler (Willem Dafoe), bond agent Bill Ubell (Bud Court), British reporter Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett), and pilot Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), who may or may not be Zissou's son. With Anjelica Huston, Jeff Goldblum, and Michael Gambon also in the ensemble, this is a deep dive whose reputation has grown over the years, if only because of the brilliance of Seu Jorge's Portuguese selections from the David Bowie songbook.

From the red beanie hats to the largest stop-motion puppet ever made, the design work is impeccable and gives the audience the impression of being submerged in Zissou's crazy world. There's even a yellow submarine! Yet, for all the buffoonery, Anderson touches upon weighty topics like grief, abandonment, parenthood, and obsession. It doesn't all come off, but when it does, the effect is disarmingly poignant.

Having moved into commercials with 'My Life, My Card' (2004) - in which he appeared as an action director in a long take to promote American Express - Anderson produced Hotel Chevalier (2007), a Parisian encounter featuring Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman that served as a prologue to The Darjeeling Limited.

Schwartzman would return as Jack Whitman, who arrives in India with Peter (Adrien Brody), at the behest of their brother, Francis (Owen Wilson), whose face is the worse for wear after a motorcycle accident. They think they are embarking upon a journey of self-discovery following the death of their father. But Francis hopes to reunite them with Patricia (Anjelica Huston), the mother who had deserted them as boys. Nothing goes to plan, however, as the wilful Whitmans still behave like bickering boys.

In some regards a Tenenbaumesque road movie, the story centres on a trio who were named after Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, and Jack Nicholson. The action was filmed on location in India and in two scale sets of train carriages (in order to maintain visual consistency depending on the direction of travel) and devotees of Parallel Cinema will recognised the nods towards Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali (1955) and Charulata (1964). But not all were convinced by Anderson's cultural appropriation or the

presentation of the Indian characters, even though it's the American interlopers who are made to look ignorant and foolish before jettisoning their emotional baggage. Others put the poor box-office performance down to the fact that punters felt uneasy about watching Owen Wilson in a comedy so soon after he had attempted suicide in August 2007.

Wilson was back in the fold to voice Coach Skip in Fantastic Mr Fox (2009), a stop-motion animation based on a 1970 story by Roald Dahl, which was the first book that Anderson ever owned. 'I loved the character of Mr Fox,' he later divulged, 'this sort of heroic and slightly vain animal.'

George Clooney was hired for the role of the inveterate poultry thief who becomes a newspaper columnist to please his wife, Felicity (Meryl Streep). But, when the temptation of a final raid on the farms of Boggis (Robin Hurlstone), Bunce (Hugo Guinness), and Bean (Michael Gambon) proves too much to resist, Mr Fox quickly comes to regret his lapse.

Just as Meryl Streep replaced Cate Blanchett, Mark Gustafson took over animating duties after Henry Selick went off to make Coraline (2006). Many of the team at the 3 Mills Studio in London had worked on Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005) and production designer Nelson Lowry and cinematographer Tristan Oliver took inspiration from the countryside around Great Missenden near Dahl's home. Indeed, in order to make the characters sound more authentic, Anderson insisted on recording a cast that included Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, and Michael Gambon in the great outdoors, as well as in barns and underground.

Despite enthusiastic reviews and Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature (losing to Pete Docter's Up ), the film struggled to make back its $40 million budget. But it did much to boost Anderson's standing, although admirers would have to wait three years for their next trip to Wesworld.

Wes Today

Returning to live action, Anderson drew on boyhood memories of first love for Moonrise Kingdom (2012), although he admitted that his short time in the Boy Scouts had not been a success. 'I think I only got through a couple of meetings,' he recalled. 'I didn't earn any rank.' However, he had more luck with the Indian Guides, a YMCA variation on scouting whose troops had Native American names. As he proudly told an interviewer, 'Mine was Leaping Jaguar.'

Co-writer Roman Coppola also contributed some family recollections, as the pair viewed charming childhood studies like François Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Small Change (1976), Waris Hussein's Melody (1971), and Ken Loach's Black Jack (1979), as part of their research. Having decided to centre the action around the elopement of 12 year-old Khaki Scout Sam Shakusky and classmate Suzy Bishop, Anderson spent eight months auditioning hopefuls before casting Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward.

Bill Murray and Frances McDormand signed up to play Suzy's lawyer parents, with the latter having an affair with the local police captain. Although Anderson had James Stewart in mind when he created this character, he was sure that Bruce Willis could carry it off. Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, and Bob Balaban rounded off the ensemble, with the latter acting as the on-screen narrator. He also fronted Moonrise Kingdom: Animated Book Short, which Anderson made with Christian De Vita to bring to life passages from the novels that Suzy reads to Sam during their nights under the stars.

The maps of Penzance Island were also animated to enhance the film's sense of escapist adventure. In order to offset the whimsy, however, Anderson sought to examine darker aspects of childhood by making Sam an orphan and having Suzy considered 'troubled' by her parents. By setting the story in 1965, he was also keen to show how rare idealism has become in recent times. Clearly, the themes struck a chord, as the $16 million project raked in $68.3 million at the box office. Moreover, Anderson and Coppola received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, although there was disquiet in some quarters about the scenes in which Suzy and Sam let their physical urges slightly get the better of them.

By now, Anderson was in a relationship of his own with the Lebanese writer and costume designer, Juman Malouf, whose mother is the novelist Hanan al-Shaykh. An episode from their traumatic experience during the 1980s civil war informed the story that bellboy Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori) confides to concierge Monsieur Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes) in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).

Set in the fictional Mitteleuropean state of Zubrowka, the action flits between three time zones and Anderson had Robert Yeoman shoot in different aspect ratios in order to help the audience establish whether scenes were taking place in 1932 (1.33), 1968 (2.35), or 1985 (1.85). Anderson and British artist Hugo Guinness had started collaborating on the scenario in 2006, but they had stalled after producing a 12-page treatment. Eventually, Anderson was inspired by Austrian Stefan Zweig's 1939 novel, Beware of Pity, which had been filmed by Maurice Elvey in 1946.

In the story, Monsieur Gustave is accused of murdering Madame D., a wealthy dowager who had changed her will to benefit her clandestine lover. As Angela Lansbury was unable to break a Broadway commitment, Tilda Swinton took on the role and joined other Anderson regulars in a cast that also included Mathieu Amalric, Léa Seydoux, and Saoirse Ronan, who was daunted by the prospect of the director's deadpan delivery style.

She needn't have worried, of course, as Anderson brings out the best in everyone, whether they are creating miniature sets, pastiching Renaissance painting styles, or fashioning the graphic look of a fake country's banknotes, newspapers, and official documents. He also borrowed ideas from Edmund Goulding's Grand Hotel (1932), Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be (1942), Ingmar Bergman's The Silence (1963), Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain (1966), and Francis Ford Coppola's One From the Heart (1982) and so beguiled critics, audiences, and peers that the film grossed almost $175 million worldwide and received nine Oscar nominations. Anderson was commended in the Best Picture, Director, and Original Screenplay categories, as the film won for its production design, costumes, hair and make-up, and score. It also landed five BAFTAs and the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy.

Four years were to elapse before Anderson hit cinema screens again, however, with his second stop-motion outing. The arrow death of Snoopy in Moonrise Kingdom had led one journalist to accuse Anderson of hating canines. So, he responded with Isle of Dogs (2018), which depicted man's best friend in an entirely heroic light.

A road sign to the Isle of Dogs in East London sparked the idea for this cautionary tale set in 2038. But Anderson also drew inspiration from the films of Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki, as well as Disney's 101 Dalmatians (1961) and Martin Rosen's adaptation of Richard Adams's Plague Dogs (1982). Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, and Kunichi Namura also worked on the story outline, with the latter also voicing Kenji Kobayashi, the mayor of Megasaki, who exiles all hounds to Trash Island following an outbreak of dog flu that threatens to cross to the human population.

However, the guard dog belonging to Kobayashi's nephew, Atari (Koyu Rankin), is also banished and the plucky 12 year-old flies across the inlet to rescue his pet, with the help of a gnarled stray named Chief (Bryan Cranston) and his motley crew. Several Anderson dependables voice these underdogs, while Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber came aboard as newcomers. Greta Gerwig also appears as Tracy Walker, an American exchange student who mounts a civil disobedience campaign against the mayor, while Frances McDormand amuses as the interpreter translating the Japanese dialogue. There's even a cameo by Yoko Ono as a lab assistant named Yoko Ono.

In all, 1085 animatable puppets were produced by a team of 12 sculptors, as well as 20,000 faces and 2000 background figures. But, while the reviews were largely favourable, a debate broke out about whether the Japanese characters were stereotypes and whether Tracy was a culturally insensitive 'white saviour'. The Academy still nominated the film for Best Animated Feature, while also feting the Alexandre Desplat score that included songs from Kurosawa's Drunken Angel and Seven Samurai (1954).

Such was Anderson's status by now that his style was being spoofed on American television. In 2013, Saturday Night Live borrowed telltale tropes for a cod horror film entitled, The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders. Family Guy followed suit in Season 16 with 'Three Directors', in which segments riffed on the trademark styles of Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, and Michael Bay. Not to be outdone, The Simpsons joined the fun with 'The Dad-Feelings Limited', an episode in Season 32 that reveals the origins of Comic Book Guy.

After a seven-year gap, Anderson returned to live action with The French Dispatch (2021). He had known as a boy that he would one day live in Paris and now owns an apartment in Montparnasse. Despite spending so much time in La Patrie, however, he doesn't speak the language. 'One day, I want to convince myself I can learn it, but there's just no guarantee,' he once joked. 'Some people don't have the gift.'

Fortunately, Anderson excels in other ways and this latest treatise on the subject of loss turns around the death of Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (Bill Murray), the longtime editor of the French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun. In order to mark his passing in the town of Ennui-sur-Blasé, a special edition is put together featuring an obituary and three classic reports on the incarceration of a troublesome artist, the May Days of 1968, and the abduction of the police chief's son.

Rooted in Anderson's love of The New Yorker magazine, this paean to print is also a billet doux to nouvelle vague classics like Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon (1956) and Jean-Luc Godard's Bande à part (1964). Switching between monochrome and colour and the Academy Ratio and widescreen, Robert Yeoman also referenced Richard Brooks's adaptation of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood (1967), while production designer Adam Stockhausen and set decorator Rena DeAngelo sought to recreate the France of Jacques Tati.

As one has come to expect, every visual was perfect down to the last detail, although there was a new gravitas about the discussion of topics like xenophobia, toxic masculinity, prison conditions, and the plight of the printed word. However, the Covid pandemic caused the release to be delayed and few people got to see the film on the big screen. The reviews were cordial rather than ecstatic and The French Dispatch was overlooked by the Academy, even though the design, Milena Canonero's costumes, and Alexandre Desplat's score were nominated for BAFTAs.

We wait to see how Asteroid City will fare during awards season after its mixed critical reception. Set in 1955 in a remote south-western town, it harks back to the heyday of Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando, and Marilyn Monroe, while also bearing traces of Paris, Texas. At its heart is war photographer Jason Schwartzman, who is taking his four children to grieve with grandfather Tom Hanks after their mother's death. Also in town, however, is film star Scarlett Johansson and a convention of Junior Stargazers. But, just to complicate matters, the main characters are also actors in a New York stage production of an Edward Norton play that's being hosted on television by Bryan Cranston. Oh, and there's also an alien on the loose, played by Jeff Goldblum.

Having previously disliked Anderson's 'relentlessly stylized music-video-meets-Salinger-meets-indie-hipster-absurdist sensibility', Variety's Owen Gleiberman had been won over by Mr Fox and Hotel Budapest. However, he fears that Anderson has become too clever for his own postmodernist good by ramping up 'the visual wizardry, the debonair lapidary cleverness' and becoming the 'fashion-victim fetishist of his own aesthetic'.

Cinema Paradiso users will get to judge for themselves later in the year. They may even get to see Anderson's latest venture, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, a 37-minute adaptation of four Roald Dahl stories that stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, and Richard Ayoade. But we'll all have to wait for Anderson's 12th feature, a yet untitled espionage thriller that stars Benecio Del Toro, Michael Cera, Bryan Cranston, and Jeff Goldblum, and is slated to start shooting this autumn.