Wes Anderson, recalled by the use of distinctive colors and the symmetry that he maintains on the frame, the object seen in the camera is noted as art to him. His portrayal of films are as vibrant and dramatic edging on the design elements and visual treasure to the viewers, the composition of the frames are sighted carefully to deliver the essence of the script to the audience, mostly said to be as ‘his style is so specific that he is his genre’.
Known for his critically acclaimed films as the Grand Budapest Hotel, The Royal Tenenbaums and the Isle of Dogs. Nominated chiefly for academy awards, Golden Globe and won a BAFTA for the best screenplay of ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’.
Reinventing the styles to be portrayed and carried on the film sets are correlated as a proverbial cousin to architecture, the screenplay follows the backdrop of built architecture in detail to extract the identity of the film. Anderson’s touch to the film is about the set and scenarios created in the Grand Budapest, the entire plot was connected to the color theory grabbing, seizing or locking away the vision to the fast framed cinematic play.
The architecture speaks as an interplay of Wes Anderson’s light and color to his direct approach to the characters and sub-objects producing a stereoscopic display to the observer. The palette is confined to the complementary shades and hues as a pattern on the screen. Through his cinematography, he moves through cinematic spaces as if it truly existed in nature as an actual building, utilizing his signature long tracking shots and zooms to show a choreographed piece not run over by clever editing, something that is as similar to an architect’s 3D model realistic walk-through.
Wes Anderson as an architect; would follow and adopt the modernist style towards the design, with a simplified and thoughtful process to the design, it would speak loud on the outside with pop colors and would be pacific as it emerges internally. Works of Anderson can be related to that of Luis Barragán, a self-trained architect that embodied the modernist movement as well. Apart from the architecture, what designers and architects also gravitate to is his quirky touch of style, engulfing the palette and fonts on the screen. The tonal capacities that Anderson carries are visually appealing though it leaves a mark onto the audience, it breaches through delivering the aura of the 3-dimensional space on the screen. It is a noteworthy example of direct-direction, the scenes being played fast, strong and intentional yet it’s spoon-fed to the viewer.
Wes Anderson, an Architect??
Anderson would be fabricating spaces with soft pastels and rough-edged walls, throwing in a little pink with Prussian blue to escape the softness. Long wider halls and narrow passages to get the scale improperly right, a bright yellow ornament at the end of the line to catch your eye and winding on the casted handrails in shinier brass and herringbone styled carpet to grab the right emotions.
Luis Barragan and Wes Anderson would have a similar line on the design terms as it would follow the similar style of architecture, with the materials and shades it would be foreseen as a mixing palette of bright pastel colors, each space to have a mismatched identity yet it would be under the same roof. With an addition to the style, Anderson would touch the façade with baroque styled windows and gilded statuary. His range of style would get in from the outfitted baroque to a very modern and unpretentious interior.
With his move towards the set designing and indulging architecture into the movies he directed, he had influenced thousands to accept his remark in the field of architecture and design, his film had made an advancement to a stage of which he could be known as the Director/Architect in Hollywood. This spontaneity towards representing and contextualization cut strongly against the rush and graphic of most Hollywood directors, who like to throw viewers amid the action to encourage direct absorption in the plot. In exchange, Wes Anderson treats his audience like architects treat their clients, leading them eventually through the realm he has affectionately created.
As rightly said by him, “I wouldn’t say that I’m particularly bothered or obsessed with detail.”
