Brow Beat

The Many, Many Father Figures of Wes Anderson’s Movies

It’s not difficult to see that Wes Anderson’s films are crammed full of symmetrical shots, made-up books, and many, many other stylistic elements, but they also center around a theme so obvious you probably missed it: fathers. A video essay from The A to Z Review compiles the many fathers and father figures that crop up in Anderson’s films, from absentee parents like Royal Tenembaum to dearly (or not-so-dearly) departed dads, as in The Darjeeling Limited. In his supplementary essay to the video, Luís Azevedo attributes the presence of so many father figures to Anderson’s parents’ divorce when he was 10: “It would appear that almost 40 years later, Anderson is still coping through his art.”