Rushmore
Buena Vista Pictures
Directed By Wes Anderson
Starring Bill Murray
If you believe the advertising for "Rushmore", it's the best picture of the year and the funniest movie in ages. I think the best I could say about "Rushmore" was that it was the best movie I saw this week, a title it won by default. A comedy with a few
funny moments and a bit of fine comedy here and there, "Rushmore" is a picture where I constantly waited for some sort of plot to make itself known, but it never did and that's the main problem I had with the picture: there's so little there that, in
essence, it left my thoughts as quickly as it was entering. In one ear and out the other.
The picture's anti-hero is one Max Fischer, a strange high schooler who does excellently at extracurricular activities such as putting on plays and starting clubs, but his grades at Rushmore, the elite private academy he attends, are quickly falling
into the failing range. Why is Max Fisher who he is? We're never clued in on the character's motives or really just who he is. There's no focus to the character's development. Not that his character develops into anything new by the end of the film.
Midway through, Max meets a new teacher at Rushmore, Rosemary Cross(Olivia Williams) and begins to fall head over heels in love for the young teacher. He's also made a new friend in Herman Blume(Bill Murray), a Rushmore graduate who went on to become
a steel tycoon. Rosemary at first tries to explain to Max that she's far too old for the young student, but he's not convinced by her arguement. He's driven over the edge, though, by the discovery that Herman has been seeing the young teacher on the
side.
The film tries to be sophisticated and witty, but it never really gains any forward momentum. The plot, what little there is of one, is paced out awkwardly and frequently, I felt the picture was frustratingly slow. As good as Bill Murray's performance
is, there isn't much to the character as the true focus of the film is always Max, who, strangely looks like the director of this film. Could it be autobiographical? That and many more random thoughts went through my mind as I basically was quite
bored by the majority of this film, which tries to be quite funny and very few of the jokes work. A film that honestly tries to be funny and misses is something I can accept, but Rushmore is one of those films that seems to have an ego. It KNOWS
that it's funny. It knows that it's hip. Aparently, the humor in this film is an "in-joke" that I'm not a part of.
Schwartzman has a great performance, but unfortunately the character is completely unlikeable as he stalks the young woman. It's an "indie" "There's Something About Mary", only "Rushmore" doesn't have the laughs and to be honest, the further Max
went in his persuit of love, the more disturbing the character is. It's a comedy, or at least the advertisement said it was, didn't it? Nothing about the actions of the Schwartzbaum character were amusing, though. He does have one great scene, though:
walking out of a hotel where he's just taken revenge on Blume, the camera follows Max down a hall in slow motion as he extinguishes his cigarette by putting it out on the nearest wall. It's funny, it's nicely shot and the scene works as the kind
of dark comedic aspect that the picture was apparently going for.
If I can say anything positive about the film, it's that I loved the way that Anderson composed the shots. Shot in the widescreen scope aspect ratio which is abnormal for a character-driven film like this one, every shot seems to go on forever as the
characters interact in the foreground. It adds to the sort of dark fairy tale tone of the film, which is supplimented by curtains that mark time frames in the film, month by month, which open to reveal new events. Anderson's first film, "Bottle Rocket",
didn't have much of a plot either, but a few very big laughs and great performances gave it the momentum it needed to sustain interest. That's all missing from "Rushmore", a film that has a few quick laughs but not enough, in my opinion, to pull viewers
through the 90 minute film which, to me, felt like more along the lines of three hours.
