Our celebration of the late, great Gene Hackman concludes with one of Wes Anderson’s trademark films.
Two Cents is a Cinapse original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team curates the series and contribute their “two cents” using a maximum of 200-400 words. Guest contributors and comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future picks. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion. Would you like to be a guest contributor or programmer for an upcoming Two Cents entry? Simply watch along with us and/or send your pitches or 200-400 word reviews to [email protected].
The Pick: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Gene Hackman was truly one of the greats, and in honor of his life we’re working our way through a sampling of his filmography – from old favorites, to some that we may be catching up with for the first time.
This week we look at one of Hackman’s last performances in film; despite only recently passing, he took a very public retirement in the early 2000s. He left behind a legacy of incredible performances, and a reputation for both doing incredible work and being a giant pain in the ass on set. Which is precisely why he attracted the attention of a up and coming director named Wes Anderson.
Following his cult hit Rushmore, Wes Anderson mounted his most ambitious film yet: a huge ensemble family dramedy that drew from his own life as well as the works of JD Salinger and French filmmaker Louis Malle. He assembled some former collaborators in the Wilson brothers and Bill Murray, but mostly filled the cast with new faces. For the role of the family patriarch, he only had one name in mind; as he later put it, Anderson wrote it for Hackman “against his wishes.”
It would end up being a career defining success for Anderson, and a unbeknownst to people at the time a career-end highlight for Hackman. But how has this early career highlight held up over two decades later? Let’s discuss.
The Team:
Spencer Brickey
It’s with a heavy heart that I close out our run on Gene Hackman. Spending the last two months with this genuine master of the craft has been not only illuminating to the strength of his abilities, but the overall berth of his career. We could do a totally new series on Gene, and pack two more full months of other substantial performances. He was just that good.
Which is why it feels kind of perfect to end on The Royal Tenenbaums, as both a showcase to one of his best final performances, and a glimpse into who he was as a performer, both good and bad.
Released in 2001, The Royal Tenenbaums was Wes Anderson’s third feature, after Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. While his films had been well casted before, The Royal Tenenbaums felt like a step up, as he brought on both young up-and-comers and seasoned performers to bring his idiosyncratic vision to life.
The biggest name, of course, being Gene Hackman. Hackman, recovering from a bit of a slump in the ‘80s, had a hell of a run through the ‘90s, winning an Oscar and being in countless classics. He was also getting older, and his method of “follow the paycheck” job acceptances seemed to be catching up to him, as well as his age.
It’s that type of energy that Gene plays Royal Tenenbaum; a man who has spent a lifetime lapping up luxuries, but is also starting to face his twilight years with a sense of dread and panic. Royal is a man with a laundry list of mistakes in his life, who is trying to figure out what he can still fix in his final years. At first, it is just a money scheme, to get himself back to level. But, soon, it becomes a realization of the life he left behind, of the people he abandoned, and the buried pain he wants to mend, for both himself and his loved ones.
Gene puts it all on the line with Royal; he is charming, and snarky, and booming with anger when the time calls for it. He is also a wounded man, trying to navigate the broken pieces of the family he left behind, hoping to find forgiveness from people who don’t really owe him anything. It is a funny, touching, and heartbreaking performance, one of his genuine best.
Unfortunately, many people know about Gene in The Royal Tenenbaums not for his performance, but for his attitude on set. Famously, director Wes Anderson and Gene Hackman did not get along, with Hackman routinely chastising the young director. It apparently got so out of hand that Bill Murray had to play sheriff on set, keeping Gene in check.
It’s admittedly not a good look, from an actor who had famously been known to be a bit “hot-headed”. Personally, what I always viewed it as was an actor from a different generation coming up against the new generation. What had been the norm, on set and in direction, was changing, rapidly. A man who had come up in the old studio system was now being directed by an indie scene darling who didn’t do things the way it used to be done. It isn’t an excuse, mind you, but a possible perspective of what was occurring on set.
I think there was an internal writing on the wall that Gene discovered on the set of The Royal Tenenbaums; it was time to call it quits. The exhaustion was starting to outpace the passion. There were a few more roles after this, but this always felt like the last time his heart was truly in it. As such, I’ve always come to view The Royal Tenenbaums as the last true, great Hackman performance, and, on rewatch, I can conclude it is still very much great.
Goodbye, Gene. You were the best to ever do it.
Spencer Brickey on Letterboxd
Frank Calvillo
Even though Wes Anderson had had plenty of success on the arthouse scene with Bottle Rocket and dipped his toes into mainstream-lite with Rushmore, for many The Royal Tenenbaums is the writer/director’s arrival. It’s easy to see why this is. The film introduced him to his widest audience up to that point and put many of his now-signature trademarks on full display. The intricacies of his characters, the museum art feel of his aesthetics that somehow feel both timeless and vintage, and the quirkiness of his humor with its hidden dashes of pathos all appear in The Royal Tenenbaums. For the longest time, the film was considered to be his most popular and acclaimed entry until it was dethroned by The Grand Budapest Hotel. The movie garnered Anderson his first Oscar nomination and put him fully on the map.
The Royal Tenenbaums still holds up thanks to the aforementioned timelessness of the world Anderson created and the willingness of the all-star cast to surrender themselves to the filmmaker’s curious, yet undeniably potent storytelling sensibilities. But the film wouldn’t be the classic it is today were it not for the participation of Gene Hackman. Although the actor had played around with comedy in the past, not many would have thought him suitable for the world of Wes Anderson. And yet it’s hard to picture any other actor taking on this role and being as successful with it as Hackman was. The actor embraces the many flaws Royal has, showing him to be a rather rough around the edges sort of character trying finally to make right all that he did wrong. His habit of saying something inappropriate or callous without even meaning to makes for a series of head-shaking laughs. This includes his criticisms of a young Margot’s play, and the infamous visit to the cemetery. Throughout it all, however, Hackman gives Royal a real air of tragedy and a humanity that shows that even later in life, he isn’t totally what the world knows him to be.
@frank.calvillo.3 on Instagram
Justin Harlan
Let me start by saying that I know I’m the weirdo but… Wes Anderson is, at best, a mixed bag for me. I find moments in most of his films quite fun and endearing, but I’m not sure there’s a full film I love… or even really like. I find them all rather inoffensive and I enjoy them alright, but have little to no desire to rewatch any of them. Tenenbaums, I thought, may be the exception. It was one I really liked for a period in college, but hadn’t revisited in years since.
So, with this rewatch, I found that the Wes Anderson shrugfest continues. While not even this film can make me truly love an Anderson-phile, I do believe it’s my favorite of his films… either this or Rushmore. What makes this one mostly work for me – to no one’s surprise after a month of films celebrating his life – is Hackman. More than the fact that I really love him in this, it cemented something for me. Gene Hackman was a glue guy.
In sports, a player who isn’t always the standout but always manages to keep things together is sometimes described as a “glue” guy. That’s Hackman. No matter whether he’s the star, part of an ensemble, or in a relatively small role – he is largely what holds many films together. This is something that needs to be celebrated and cheered, as many films feel disjointed and films with Hackman rarely ever do.
So, I wrap our nearly two months of the Hack Man with a newfound appreciation of the man. He can surely chew scenery as a compelling leading man, but even when that’s not what he’s called to do, he’s the glue that holds so many films together. To me, that may be his truest legacy.
@thepaintedman on BlueSky
Julian Singleton
The faded, wood-paneled and concrete world of The Royal Tenenbaums is stuck in a 70s-era arrested development. There’s a nostalgic splendor on the periphery of its sprawling urban decay, the kind of infrastructure we depend on even though we’ve given up on any sort of change. It’s the same sensibility Wes Anderson evokes in his fallen family cast, a family of geniuses who abandon any sense of progress after Dad Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) abandons them.
Everyone responds to that stunted growth differently, whether it’s depression, detachment, or overbearing overprotection. But altogether, they freeze like the world around them, clinging to habits like fashion and decor even as time continues to chip away at them. Those caught in their orbit – children, friends of the family, fading spouses, potential new ones, even complete strangers – fall victim to the same seemingly irreparable stillness.
As much as life has dimmed the fire within the Tenenbaums, it seems like everyone else can see the individual embers still glowing in everyone but themselves. But in true Andersonian fashion, it makes sense that the prodigal patriarch is the one to get these fires going again, the unwitting, debatable savior of the same family he once wrecked.
It makes sense that a sonofabitch like Royal would try to bluster his way back into his family in the almost the same way he left it, like no time has passed at all – save for the big thing that awaits all of us, and even then that aspect is another tall tale. What remains true, though, is Royal’s universal desire to reconnect with those he loved and lost despite clinging to the flaws that drove them away. It’s a Hackman performance that belongs on the actor’s Mount Rushmore for how, like so many of his characters, he clues audiences into the contradictions the character can’t see in himself. He’s a riotous charmer despite being a total dick. We can’t help but want to get into some scrapping and yelling with him, even as he suggests “swinging by another grave” of a loved one at the local cemetery. It’s as much his habit to extend an olive branch even if the branch just so happens to be falling from the tree it sprouted from.
That earnest sense of hope and benevolent acceptance of damaged, dour souls is an ethos that powers a ton of Wes Anderson’s work–whether it’s a mentor like in Rushmore, a world like in The Grand Budapest Hotel, or this small family in some aged corner of not-quite-New-York. Even if Royal left this world again with such suddenness–as did the titanic actor who played him–the impact he leaves sincerely sears us as much as this family of reawakened geniuses.
@juliansingleton on BlueSky
Jay Tyler
I would argue that Royal Tenenbaums is the quintessential Wes Anderson film. That isn’t to say I think it is his best (that would still be Rushmore), but I think it is the best distillation of his whole aesthetic as a director: obsessively meticulous cinematography, lush and eye-popping set and costume design, a sprawling and game ensemble cast, and a center of delicious regret. It helps that this is the first time that a Wes Anderson movie had this feel in full force, but every film sense has felt to one degree or another a riff on the zone that Anderson found with Tenenbaums.
Those visual qualities are the thing that oft people gesture towards as the Wes Anderson “thing,” but I do think that cast is the secret to a lot of his films’ successes. And this movie is no exception. From Ben Stiller as the brilliant but hapless Chas, to Gwyneth Paltrow as the poetic and birdlike Margot, to the delightful deadpan of Kumar Pallana as the trusted valet Pagoda.
But it is our subject, Gene Hackman, that really makes the film sing. As disgraced patriarch Royal Tenenbaum, Hackman is magical, a truly singular performance in Anderson’s canon. He is a bristly mixture of brashness and warmth, a figure you can immediately see the magnetic animal charisma of, but also have a certain level of clarity of the misery he leaves by his actions. He’s selfish, but at least knowingly so, and his journey to become a better man to fix the mess he made gives the sprawling story a center that holds it together.
Very rarely has Anderson’s influences been as clear as in Tenenbaums. His riff on JD Salinger’s Glass Family stories, about the struggles of child prodigies into adjusting into adulthood, really seems like a rich vein for Anderson to tap. In some ways it is a companion piece to Rushmore, a story of what happens when three Max Fischer’s find themselves colliding with the real world.
But Royal holds the center, showing warm maturity and clarity. Hackman would only appear in two more films, across the next three years, before retiring. But you can add Royal to a lifetime of remarkable performances, a career that rivals just about any other name you could think of.
Austin Vashaw
The Royal Tenenbaums is Gene at his best. It’s easily my favorite performance from Hackman, and falls just shy of being my favorite Wes Anderson film – that honor belongs its thematic partner The Life Aquatic, which for context happens to be my all-time favorite film.
Tenenbaums is the film where, in my opinion, Anderson solidified his style, adopting the familiar hallmarks and pulling in an incredibly huge and stacked ensemble cast of both stars and character actors and playing well known comedians like Bill Murray and Ben Stiller decidedly against type, even trusting an unusually morose Stiller to deliver the film’s most memorable and soul-shattering line of dialogue (which he did, perfectly).
I guess it’s well known now that Anderson and Hackman clashed a lot while making the film, and that the grumpy actor made no effort to conceal his contempt during the filmmaking process – only to reverse his opinion after seeing the finished product.
There’s absolutely no hint of this in the film, though. For any personality flaws, Gene was a consummate performer and he’s putting on an absolute showstopper here, adroitly embodying a difficult character that’s rotten, hilarious, despicable, charming, relatable, and even tragic, as Royal Tenenbaum, the disgraced and estranged patriarch of the faded and deeply hurting Tenenbaum family. Like The Life Aquatic, the film is essentially about a bad father trying – far too late – to make amends (and in both films, outmatched by a long-suffering, more deserving wife portrayed by Angelica Houston).
It’s a film I love unreservedly, and I’m glad for Hackman’s role in its success, even if he didn’t appreciate it at the time.
We are taking next week off from Two Cents, but keep an eye open for our theme for June. Suffice to say, it’s going to be a RIOT.
