Rushmore (1998, Wes Anderson) (Patreon)

85/100

Fifth viewing (last seen 2004), up slightly from 83. Mistakenly thought that I'd never written about this film at length—it screened very late at NYFF 1998, and I ran out of steam in my gratis coverage—but turns out it was the subject of an article that I penned for Entertainment Weekly in early '99, paired with Varsity Blues (simply because they were high-school movies released on video around the same time). That demanded an "angle," and while I won't inflict the whole piece upon you, here's the relevant second half: 

Things are a lot less clear-cut in Wes Anderson’s delightfully offbeat Rushmore, which fulfills (and then some) the promise of his quirky, little-seen 1996 debut, Bottle Rocket. For one thing, the film’s protagonist, doghouse-occupying Rushmore Academy student Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman, another member of the Coppola clan), is considerably less idealized. Max, unlike Mox [Van Der Beek's character in Varsity Blues], is no paragon of virtue; on the contrary, he’s vain, arrogant, utterly self-absorbed—a fairly typical teen, in other words. Nor is he the usual outsider looking in. In fact, Max’s world is borderline solipsistic; he’s apparently the founder or president of every extracurricular organization on campus, and we see virtually nothing of the student body apart from his chapel partner and obedient servant, Dirk (Mason Gamble). Max doesn’t need to find his own drummer to march to—there isn’t another percussionist anywhere within earshot.

Where Rushmore abandons years of high school-movie tradition is in its depiction of parents and teachers as essentially benign. Max’s father (Seymour Cassel), a barber, is as kindly as can be, if occasionally a bit distracted. Miss Cross (Olivia Williams), the young teacher with whom Max falls desperately in love (his attempts to woo her, which eventually get him expelled, make up the film’s sketchy plot), is almost preternaturally patient and understanding. And Bill Murray turns in the best performance of his career (for shame, Academy members!) as millionaire Herman Blume, a middle-aged, unhappily married corporate tycoon who’s still a 15-year-old brat at heart.

Rushmore is the only movie I can think of in which an adult and a child truly behave as peers; there’s even a hilarious best-pals montage, with the pair popping wheelies together to the tune of John Lennon’s goofily ardent ”Oh Yoko!” Kids may well prefer the soothing, your-misery-is-not-your-fault worldview of Varsity Blues, which grossed about as much in its opening weekend as Rushmore has earned in its entire theatrical run to date. But Rushmore dares to imagine a world in which people of all ages exist on roughly the same emotional and intellectual plateau—and that, to my way of thinking, is the true blow to conformity. 

None of that is wrong, exactly—apart from the final sentence; see below—but it's quite specific to Varsity Blues (by way of stark contrast), and not at all what I'd have emphasized in a review of Rushmore alone. Admittedly, there's no context in which EW would've allowed me to gush for an entire paragraph about Anderson's compositional magnificence, nascent in Bottle Rocket yet somehow fully-formed here. People understandably cite Max's yearbook montage as a standout, but I'm equally enamored of the way it's introduced, with Blume initially standing alone at frame left, then moving to frame right as Guggenheim crosses behind him to frame left, followed by a match cut (as Guggenheim removes his pipe) to both men seen from head-on, Blume slightly out of focus in the distance and just barely forming a half-smile in response to "He's the worst student we've got" before Anderson cuts to the montage. That match cut in particular, shifting from a horizontal two-shot to an alternate angle highlighting depth (and swapping the characters' visual prominence), is very simple and just ridiculously satisfying, yet for some reason rarely seen.

There are a zillion other examples of chef's-kiss precision I could mention, some of which are so damn Wes that it's hard to imagine them in anyone else's work. A knock from offscreen; slight beat; Ms. Cross looks up from her grading, in the knock's direction; another slight beat; "Miss Cross?" Max asks (still offscreen); some random kid in the foreground facing the opposite way turns in his seat to look toward Max...and CUT TO: Max and Ms. Cross standing side by side before the fish tanks. That shot is all of three seconds long and has literally no function apart from the timing and layout of the twin reactions, which aren't really funny or anything...just pleasing. The care taken is its own reward. 

Of course, Anderson has demonstrated such care in every film since, some of which I nonetheless like considerably more than others. For the past 17 years, I've considered Rushmore my very slight technical favorite by virtue of its being the most thoroughly entertaining, while thinking of The Life Aquatic as my stealth favorite due to its uncommon depth of emotion. Every time I revisit Rushmore, though, I get a little weepier, which is why it's gradually gone from not appearing at all on my original 1998 top 10 list (!) to #2 on the current version. Part of that may have something to do with the fact that I'm now five, possibly six years older than Murray was at the time, and better appreciate how wonderfully odd it was for guys as young as Anderson and Wilson, in writing a semi-autobiographical reminiscence about their teen years, to make Max Fischer an initially unwilling (nay, hostile) vector for two lonely adults to find each other. That AMPAS ignored Murray's sublime performance remains a travesty*—there is arguably no finer moment in his entire film and TV career than the way his face softly changes when he learns that this barber is Max's father. A whole world of tender comprehension, barely discernible. (The verbal equivalent, spoken just beforehand: "I'll take Punctuality.")

Still, it's Max's story, and as much as I laugh at his overweening ambition ("Frank, you enter stage right with the bag of cocaine"), it's become more and more clear to me why Anderson chose "Ooh La La" for the ending, with its refrain of "I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger." That sentiment annoyed the living shit out of me when I was younger, but it proves more true with each passing year, and it gets a lovely sort of fantasy workout here. Rushmore is an unusual coming-of-age story in that's about Max acknowledging his actual chronological age, i.e. finally accepting that he's still a child (which is why my EW review, with its "this film doesn't see age" thesis, now seems a bit off to me). Way back when, I remember being unexpectedly sucker-punched by Faces + slo-mo dancing, without fully understanding why; this time, I was properly wrecked by

MAX: At least nobody got hurt.

MS. CROSS: Except you.

MAX: No. I didn't get hurt that bad.

Again, that's a fantasy moment, allowing Max a perspective that in real life he'd likely acquire only many years later, in hindsight. Doesn't make it any less moving, though. A slightly lesser film would have ended with Max's epiphany upon learning from Margaret Yang that she'd faked her science-project results; the moment in which he regains his extracurricular mojo, accompanied by Cat Stevens, initially feels like the culmination of his emotional journey. But Mr. Blume and Ms. Cross are equally important, as foils, and one could argue that maturity is to a large degree the process of recognizing that other people may be suffering a lot more than you are, however miserable you may feel at the moment. Ms. Cross, as an act of kindness, tries to let Max play the martyr...though Williams** delivers "Except you" with a faintly interrogative tone/expression, suggesting that she hopes he'll reject the offer. And the entire joint celebrates when he does. Close curtain.

* To be fair, while Murray would have been a Skandies "nominee," he placed only 4th in Supporting Actor, behind runaway winner Billy Bob Thornton (A Simple Plan), Dylan Baker (Happiness), and Steve Zahn (Out of Sight). I can't even claim that I did my part, as I'm pretty sure that I threw most of my voting weight behind another comedian's change of pace: Steve Martin in The Spanish Prisoner. Who's terrific, no question, but c'mon dude. 

** Who somehow placed only 16th in the Skandies for Supporting Actress. No offense to that year's winner, Joan Allen (Pleasantville), but there's really no comparison.