"i didn't save mine."
I'm becoming aware that I can't be remotely objective about Wes Anderson. I just rewatched The Darjeeling Limited and Ebert's right about it, and he's even more right about The Life Aquatic, but that's just part of it. Wes Anderson writes these emotional situations I can relate to, but they're abstracted and intellectualized. And it makes me see how that doesn't work. The result feels cheapened, all the emotional pregnancy turned into a string of awkward gags. The fact that overintellectualizing emotional scenes doesn't seem to work (when done by Anderson) worries me, because that's what I do. Definitely not in the same way, but still.
On a side note, I have to admit that Hotel Chevalier is the first thing I've seen him do that I feel like I might have or could have or even would have made. Which is interesting. Not that my version of that story would be anything like that.
In all honesty, it steals a little thunder out of one idea I had for a possible #6 storyline.
Still, all of this is meant as a prelude to admitting that I legitimately like The Darjeeling Limited, hundreds of times more than the flimsy cardboard cartoon The Life Aquatic. This (Darjeeling) has depth, soul, pain. It doesn't feel like it's aping it... much. Okay, it feels like it's aping it quite a bit, but it feels like it's trying not to ape the feelings. It feels like it wants to be sincere. Life Aquatic doesn't have that sense.
But what Ebert says ("I can't recommend it, but I would not for one second discourage you from seeing it") is dead-on, and underlines that I'm no longer capable of treating Wes Anderson's films with any objectivity.
"Can't it just exist?"
Struggled to write four lines of text, less than thirty words, in a textedit file. Told Jeff one idea I have, the main one I'm flirting with right now. Not sure yet how it sounds out loud.
Tomorrow I work. I should be asleep. I want to stay up all night writing.
Fuck.