Wes Anderson is a director for Isle of Dogs (2018) and Fantastic Mr. Fox. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) is an early stop-motion animated feature film by him before the Isle of Dogs (2018). It was released in the year 2009 and it was based on a children’s novel with the same name written by Roald Dahl in 1970. Similar to the Isle of Dogs (2018), this film had also portrayed the unique filmmaking style directed by Wes Anderson.
Mr Fox promised his wife Felicity to stop being a theft and get a new job if they could escape from the cage they trapped while raiding the Berk’s Squab Farm. Yet, Mr Fox was unhappy with his new life without stealing for 12 years and he had returned to his thieving ways. Him and his friend Kylie went to steal some produce and poultry from the three mean farmers Bean, Boggis and Bunce who live near to his new tree house and triggered their anger. The three angry farmers were trying to kill Mr Fox and they camped out near to Mr Fox’s home. Mr Fox, his family and Kylie tried to escape from the farmers attack by digging down from his home. They had also met other animals which claimed that they home was being destroyed by the farmers. Then, Mr Fox led them to steal all of the produce and poultry of the three farmers. Meanwhile, Ash and his cousin Kristofferson who was staying with him for a couple of days started to get along well. They wanted to steal back Mr Fox’s tail which were shot by the farmers from Bean’s farm but Kristofferson did not managed to escape from Bean’s wife. The farmers flood the tunnel with Bean’s cider to trap them in the sewers after realizing that their products were stolen. Once again, Mr Fox led the animals to save Kristofferson and the mission was successful. The animals latter live in harmony inside the sewer and Mr Fox had found a new source of food for all the animals, which is the three farmers’ supermarket connected from the sewer.
As mentioned in my blog about the Isle of Dogs (2018), I was truly amazed by the film-making style of Wes Anderson. In my opinion, a director is the artist of every film, and the film-making style always shows the identity of the director. If the film is iconic enough, we could immediately guess who is the director behind the film. For instance, when I first saw the film, I immediately know that this film is produced by Wes Anderson because of that unique film-making style he has. It is not easy for a filmmaker to achieve this and that is why I am inspired by Wes Anderson.
By comparing the two stop-motion animated feature film by Wes Anderson that I had watched, we can find the similarity of his film-making style in terms of mise-en-scene, cinematography, and audio. First of all, the most iconic symbol of Wes Anderson’s films is the staging of the frame. The composition of the mise-en-scene are often symmetry and balance. Even for the design of the sets and environments are always symmetrical. In terms of acting, we can see that the characters will always talk either face directly at or face perpendicularly from the camera. This is his most unique style that I had seen only in the films he made, which had already been a good representation of his identity.
Moreover, Wes Anderson’s cinematography style is also really iconic. I do not remember seeing any over the shoulder (OST) shot when the characters are having a conversation in both of his films. Instead of using OST, he often uses camera pan to show the front view of every character when they are talking to each other. Speaking about camera pan, I think Wes Anderson’s camera pan is also quite iconic. I noticed that Wes Anderson always use panning with a constant speed in both of his stop motion animated films and I had never seen any other filmmaker uses camera pan in such constant speed.
Furthermore, I think that the audio used by Wes Anderson are also pretty unique. I found some background music that Wes Anderson used in both of his stop motion films have a repetitive rhythm. Besides, there are also some iconic trademark sounds by the characters. For example, in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Mr Fox have this really iconic trademark whistle and sound he made several times in the film; In the Isle of Dogs (2018), there is also an iconic whistling by Atari, which he often whistle it to his dog Spot. I think that these sounds could be really brainwashing and also very easy to relate whenever we hear.
In a nutshell, I think that Wes Anderson is one of the most successful directors who could effectively portray his identity in his films. His mise-en-scene, cinematography and the uses of sounds are really iconic to the extent where people can immediately identify his films whenever they see or hear.
Comments
Post a Comment