Rushmore

by jamontsky

Honestly, I flush in shame to think how behind on Wes Anderson I am. I only got started with Fantastic Mr. Fox, but I want points for that being my first date. I think the boy told me he wanted a gun license. I don't know if this is more or less alarming in NRA-free Australia. In any case we didn't see each other again.

Rushmore ticks a lot of boxes and leaves me a little biased. Jason Schwartzman, for one, and Bill Murray, and Mr. Anderson and berets. The story focuses around the character of the former, a teenage scholarship student of that most prestigious Rushmore Academy, whose enthusiasm for calligraphy and bee-keeping and joining in keeps him from achieving academically. But he persistently means well, even when he befriends the pretty young widowed first grade teacher, although he does fall in love with her and end up ruining his own life, as well as hers and Bill Murray's, at least for a bit. Rushmore falls very certainly and comfortably into the coming-of-age genre and doesn't attempt to press any envelopes, but charms its way into individuality instead in a very Wes Andersonish sort of way.

I challenge you to dislike this film. It's quite possible to be unenthusiastic about it, especially when you compare it to the director's recent offerings. (Can we talk about Moonrise Kingdom? Is this an excuse to bring up Moonrise Kingdom again? Oh please!) But that indescribable, disarming sweetness, the hazy, stylised believability of it all, gives it that edge typical of most all of Wes Anderson films. It feels so close to being possible, so very nearly perfectly relatable, that you could almost assimilate it into your own life and not feel the bump. It's not a parallel universe; it's a teenage kid on his bike, a teenage kid having abuse hurled at him by a wounded Scot in a tree, a teenage kid being attacked by youngsters in Halloween dress on a cloudy day. This is the film you see shivering at the bus stop and offer the space underneath your umbrella to.

That's 1998's Rushmore, directed by Wes Anderson and starring Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Olivia Williams and Seymour Casse.