“Rushmore” (1998)
Just like its hero, the academically impoverished but activities-rich high school kid Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), this 1998 comedy is a come-from-behind winner. Lavishly photographed in anamorphic widescreen, a format more typically used for action films and historical epics, it isn’t just about Max’s frenzied attempts to charm a moneybags businessman (Bill Murray), win the love of a teacher (Olivia Williams) and mount the most spectacular school play ever seen. It’s about recognizing the finality of all things, and learning to ride the cycles of decline/fall/death/rebirth rather than try to impose one’s will on them. Director Wes Anderson and his co-writer Owen set “Rushmore” between September and December of a school year. Much of the action occurs outdoors, and the change in climates both affects and comments upon the film; as the film’s events become more bleak, the leaves turn brown and fall from the trees, and the kids start turning up onscreen in jackets, then winter coats with mittens. (Max even sports a hat with earflaps, a la Holden Caulfield or Charlie Brown.) Especially lovely is the scene where Max returns to the prep school he got kicked out of and is attacked by underclassmen in Halloween costumes, and the November sequence, which is compressed into a single music montage scored to the Rolling Stones’ “I Am Waiting.” (Watch it here, it’s gorgeous.) The film was shot in Anderson’s hometown of Houston, Texas, which cinematographer Bob Yeoman miraculously photographs as if it’s the marshland in “Wuthering Heights.”
