In The Royal Tenenbaums and The Graduate the directors of the film decided to end with a wedding scene. In The Graduate, Benjamin crashes the wedding of Elaine Robinson and her fiance in which there is a lot of violence to win over the woman he loves, the way this is shot is interesting in how Elaine decides to go with him and there are a lot of quick cuts from the different actions going on in this part of the film. In The Royal Tenenbaums ending right before the wedding there is almost a calm moment of multiple discussions until Eli crashes his car into the side of the house. There is then a lot of the same violence that occurs in The Graduate, though for a different reason as Chas tries to attack Eli for nearly killing his kids and killing the dog; which is Chas fighting for the ones he loves in a protective sense.
If this film were designed to example The Graduate, then Royal would've shifted in character to fight for Ethel and not have her marry Henry Sherman. Why do you think Anderson chose to end The Royal Tenenbaums the way he did?
Your connection to the Graduate is very interesting, and I think that Wes Anderson didn't follow this, because Royal just wanted to make a new impact and have a good connection with his family, rather than make a ruckus. You bring up a good point about how Royal never really fought for Ethel. I believe that this is because rather than trying to redo everything, and right every wrong, he just wanted to make a new clean start.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Carly when she says that this is a very interesting take on the connection between The Graduate and The Royal Tenenbaums. I think that Anderson decided to end the film the way he did because he wanted to film to be more about a family coming together, rather than a heroic love story. This ending, to me, is more realistic rather then The Graduate, where both of the romantic leads fall in love with each other even though all of the awful events occurred. I think that Wes Anderson wanted to have a more real ending and to make the morals and lessons learned alternate then a "happy ending" that ended with a marriage between Ethel and Royal.
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