Image and Word

Comedy Central this weekend screened a pair of movies whose celebration of the outcast and carefully orchestrated quirkiness make them relatives of a sort. The Royal Tenenbaums and Napoleon Dynamite do share a certain aesthetic and similar subject matter. Wes Anderson and Jared Hess have both made finely detailed examinations of the lives of tortured misfits. And both films display a meticulous aesthetic: each shot is a painstakingly created composition of character, costume, and setting.

But beneath the carefully observed surfaces are two entirely different cinematic experiences. Where Anderson evinces an actual affection for his characters, Hess is cold–even cruel–to his creations. Anderson is the enthusiastic child, scripting dramatic scenarios that he will later act out with his stuffed animals and action figures; Hess is the boy who zealously skewers live butterflies then watches, studiously, as they wriggle on the pin.

The (radically oversimplified) reason we–or at least I–enjoy the quirky geek movie, is that we can identify with the central characters. Perhaps, like Luke Wilson’s Richie Tenenbaum, we know the pain of hopeless love. Or maybe, like Napoleon, we simply don’t fit in. The satisfaction in seeing our angst-filled couterparts paraded across the screen is the confirmation that despite being unloved, unattractive, unpopular, we may still be seen and understood by someone out there. Even if we don’t see our dreams of a happy ending played out on the screen (Richie, after all, does not attain the object of his desire), the very presence of misfits like ourselves is validation in itself.

The transformation, however cannot occur, if the character in question is, like Napoleon, so thoroughly unlikable as to engender contempt rather than identification. He is not simply socially inept; he is humorless, crass, self-aggrandizing, and perpetually indignant. And he never gets his proper redemption. Though some reviewers have interpreted his climactic dance performance as an compelling transfiguration, a triumph of self-confidence over reality, I could only see a moment in which the movie finally makes completely explicit its invitation to gawk at the spastic efforts of the hopeless geek, to see Napoleon not as a person, but as a side show.

The members of the Tenenbaum clan, on the other hand, are certainly caricatures of a sort, but their stories are full of humanity. Ben Stiller’s Type A widower Chas is overbearing and unforgiving, but the flip side of these traits is his fierce protectiveness of his two young sons. Estranged father Royal (Gene Hackman) manipulates his way back into his family’s life only when he is rendered homeless, but is quickly frustrated by his self-made alienation from his own sons and daughters.

The Royal Tenenbaums is, ultimately, an examination of what happens when people must reconcile the promise that childhood once held with the less-than-satisfying realities of adulthood. The film uses its quirky characters and highly stylized settings to create a slightly fantastical atmosphere that suits its themes. In Napoleon Dynamite, however, the carefully planned details are more like the machinations of an exceptionally well-crafted prank–so slick and clever that you almost forget to feel sorry for the butt of the joke.