Wes Anderson CineMasters season at GFT

From the very first scene of Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket – the Texan director’s zesty debut feature about best friends and aspiring thieves (played by Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson) causing mischief around his home state – the world knew they were in the hands of a born filmmaker. With that offbeat comic gem he showed a razor-sharp eye for vivid compositions, and he’s continued to hone his craft from there. His new film is rambunctious stop-motion animation Isle of Dogs, and it might be the most imaginative and finely-detailed film we see all year. This month you’ve the opportunity to trace Anderson’s evolution from loose-limbed comic director to exacting stylist as Glasgow Film Festival crown him their latest CineMaster in their ongoing film series.

Five Anderson films will screen at GFT throughout April, beginning with his breakthrough – and arguably his masterpiece – the bittersweet coming-of-age teen comedy Rushmore. Not only did the film introduce the world to Jason Schwartzman as Max Fischer, a precocious high-school misfit who’s over-stretched himself by being involved with every extracurricular society in school, but it also gave us one of the all-time great Bill Murray performances as Herman Blume, a sad-sack businessman who falls for the teacher on whom Max has a crush.

Bill Murray in Rushmore

Murray’s appeared in every Anderson film since, and it’s a match made in heaven. He’s only been the lead character in one though: as the Jacques Cousteau-esque title character of The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. A seafaring tale of a curmudgeonly oceanographer reconnecting with his estranged son, it’s Anderson’s most melancholic movie, although it could have been a laugh riot, according to Murray.

“The Life Aquatic was the funniest movie ever shot”, Murray told us last month at the Berlinale, where Isle of Dogs premiered. “Wes would edit every single scene we shot at night while we ate dinner,” he recalls. “We would just go and he would be editing, we would be watching, and every single scene was funny. It was. But in order to make the movie work, he had to remove the punchline from every single scene, so that it just kept moving, it never stopped to get the laugh. And the result was it all paid off in this one big emotional moment.”

Bill Murray in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou

The family dysfunction continues in both The Royal Tenenbaums and Fantastic Mr Fox. The former, Anderson’s third feature, might be his most beloved movie and it’s where he really began to flex his flamboyant cinematic style. The intricate story revolves around a family of precociously talented kids who never managed to reach their potential in adulthood, perhaps in part because their father (a brilliant Gene Hackman) is a selfish ne'er-do-well who enjoys pitting them against each other for his affection.

The patriarch of the Fox family (voiced by silver fox George Clooney) is similarly self-centered, although much more charmingly so. This delightful heist caper based on Roald Dahl’s children’s tale sees Anderson find the perfect form of expression for his fastidious doll’s house aesthetic: the literal dolls of stop-motion animation.

GFT’s Wes Anderson: CineMaster season comes to a close with The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson’s dizzying mix of frothy comedy, political hijinks, prison escape thriller and historical epic all rolled into one. It may look good enough to eat, but there’s plenty of sharp edges to this gorgeous confection, from Willem Dafoe as a cat-mutilating assassin to the rise of fascism in 40s Europe that has plenty of echoes with today’s political turmoil. Grand Budapest also has going for it an exquisite comic turn from Ralph Fiennes as Gustave H, the exacting concierge of the titular hotel whose every tiny facial tic and utterance gets a laugh. Released in 2014, it was also a revelation to discover that no one can swear better than the award-winning British thespian.

The full Wes Anderson: CineMaster season is below:

Rushmore – Tue 10 Apr, 8.50pm
Fantastic Mr Fox – Sat 14 Apr, 11.30am
The Royal Tenenbaums – Tue 17 Apr, 8.15pm
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou – Tue 24 Apr, 8.20pm
The Grand Budapest Hotel – Tue 1 May, 8.45pm