The Royal Tenenbaums


The Royal Tenenbaums is a 2001 American comedy-drama film directed by Wes Anderson and co-written with Owen Wilson. It stars Danny Glover, Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, and Owen Wilson. Ostensibly based on a nonexistent novel, and told with a narrative influenced by the writing of J. D. Salinger, it follows the lives of three gifted siblings who experience great success in youth, and even greater disappointment and failure in adulthood. The children's eccentric father, Royal Tenenbaum, leaves them in their adolescent years and returns to them after they have grown, claiming he has a terminal illness. He works on reconciling with his children and wife, from whom he has been separated, but not divorced.
With a variety of influences, including Louis Malle's 1963 film The Fire Within and Orson Welles' 1942 film The Magnificent Ambersons, the story involves themes of the dysfunctional family, lost greatness, and redemption. An absurdist and ironic sense of humor pervades the film, which features a soundtrack subsequently released in two albums. The Royal Tenenbaums was shot in and around New York City, including a house in Harlem used for the Tenenbaum residence. The filmmakers went to efforts to distinguish the film's backgrounds from a recognizable New York, with fashions and sets combining the appearances of different time periods.
After debuting at the New York Film Festival, The Royal Tenenbaums received positive reviews from critics and was Anderson's most financially successful film until 2014's The Grand Budapest Hotel. Hackman won a Golden Globe for Best Actor - Musical or Comedy for his performance at the 59th Golden Globe Awards, and Anderson and Wilson were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay at the 74th Academy Awards. In 2016, it was included in BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century.

Plot

Royal Tenenbaum explains to his three adolescent children, Chas, Margot, and Richie, that he and his wife, Etheline, are separating. Each of the children achieved great success at a young age. Chas is a math and business genius, from whom Royal steals money. Margot, who was adopted, was awarded a grant for a play that she wrote in the ninth grade. Richie is a tennis prodigy and artist who expresses his love for Margot. Eli Cash is the Tenenbaums' neighbor and Richie's best friend. Also part of the Tenenbaum household is Pagoda, the trusted valet.
Twenty-two years later, Royal is kicked out of the hotel where he has been living. The children are in a post-success slump, with Richie traveling the world on a cruise ship, following a breakdown. He writes to Eli revealing his romantic love for Margot. Chas has become overprotective of his sons, Ari and Uzi, following his wife Rachael's death in a plane crash. Margot is married to neurologist Raleigh St. Clair, from whom she hides her smoking and her checkered past. Raleigh is conducting research on a subject named Dudley Heinsbergen, and diagnoses Dudley with Heinsbergen Syndrome.
Etheline's longtime accountant, Henry Sherman, proposes to her. Learning of Henry's proposal via Pagoda, Royal claims that he has stomach cancer to win back his wife's and children's affections. Etheline calls her children home, and Royal moves back in and sets up medical equipment in Richie's room. Royal learns of Chas' overprotective nature and takes his grandsons on an adventure involving shoplifting and dog fighting. On their return, Chas berates him for endangering his boys while Royal accuses Chas of having a nervous breakdown.
Eli, with whom Margot has been having an affair, tells her that Richie told him he loves her. Royal discovers the affair and objects to Margot's treatment of Raleigh, who confides to Richie his suspicions of Margot having an affair. He and Richie hire a private investigator to surveil her. Meanwhile, Henry investigates Royal's cancer claim and discovers his hospital had closed, his doctor does not exist, and that his cancer medication is only Tic Tacs. He confronts Pagoda, Royal's partner in the scheme, and gathers the family to tell them that Royal has been lying about his illness. Afterwards, Royal and Pagoda are kicked out from the family home and into a gypsy cab.
Richie and Raleigh get the private eye's report on Margot, which reveals her history of smoking and sexual promiscuity, including a previous marriage to a Jamaican recording artist. Both men take the news hard, with Richie going into a bathroom, shaving off his hair and beard, and slashing his wrists in an attempt at suicide. Dudley finds Richie and Raleigh rushes him to hospital. As the Tenenbaums sit in the waiting room, Raleigh confronts Margot about her past, reveals that he knows she smokes, and then leaves. Richie checks himself out of the hospital and meets with Margot in his childhood tent to confess his love. They quietly cherish their mutual, secret love and they kiss.
Royal decides that he wants Etheline to be happy, and finally files for a divorce. Before Henry and Etheline's wedding, Eli, high on mescaline, crashes his car into the side of the house. Royal rescues Ari and Uzi just in time, but the boys' dog, Buckley, is killed in the collision. Enraged, Chas chases Eli through the house and tosses him into the neighbor's yard. Eli and Chas agree that they both need help. Chas thanks Royal for saving his sons and for buying them a Dalmatian named Spark Plug from the responding firemen as a replacement for Buckley. Forty-eight hours later, Etheline and Henry are married in a judge's chambers.
Some time later, Margot releases a new play inspired by her family and past events, Raleigh publishes a book about Dudley's condition, Eli checks himself into a drug rehabilitation facility in North Dakota, and Richie begins teaching a junior tennis program. Chas becomes less overprotective of his sons, and Royal seems to have improved his relationship with all his children, and looks to be on better terms with Etheline.
Sometime later, Royal suffers a heart attack and dies at the age of 68. Chas accompanies him in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and is the only witness to his death. The family attends his funeral, where the epitaph reads that he "Died tragically rescuing his family from the wreckage of a destroyed sinking battleship."

Cast

The Royal Tenenbaums has an ensemble cast, led by Hackman. Alec Baldwin also serves as the narrator. The fictional family and performers are:
  • Gene Hackman as Royal Tenenbaum, the scrappy, uncaring, patriarch of the Tenenbaum family who claims he has recently been diagnosed with cancer.
  • Anjelica Huston as Etheline Tenenbaum, Royal’s pristine archeologist wife who is soon to remarry.
  • Ben Stiller as Chas Tenenbaum, Royal’s financially smart, overprotective first son whose wife has recently died.
  • Gwyneth Paltrow as Margot Tenenbaum, Royal’s secretive, rebellious adopted daughter who writes plays and is a closeted smoker.
  • Luke Wilson as Richie Tenenbaum, Royal’s third son who is a tennis player and is infatuated with Margot.
  • Kumar Pallana as Pagoda, the family’s trusted valet
  • Danny Glover as Henry Sherman, an accountant who is marrying Etheline.
  • Owen Wilson as Eli Cash, the Tenenbaum’s next door neighbor and Richie’s best friend who is a drug-addicted writer.
  • Bill Murray as Raleigh St. Clair, Margot’s neurotic husband and a neurologist conducting research on Dudley Heisenbergen.
  • Seymour Cassel as Dusty, a hotel elevator operator and Royal’s friend who poses as his doctor.
  • Stephen Lea Sheppard as Dudley Heisenbergen, a young man who Raleigh conducts research on.
  • Alec Baldwin as the Narrator
  • Grant Rosenmeyer and Jonah Meyerson as Ari and Uzi Tenenbaum, Chas’ sons who are obsessively overprotected.
  • Al Thompson as Walter Sherman, Henry’s son.
  • Andrew Wilson as a farmer father and Margot’s biological father.

    Production

Development

A starting point for the story's concept was the divorce of director Wes Anderson's own parents, but the screenplay as developed bears little resemblance to his family events. French director Louis Malle's works, such as his 1971 Murmur of the Heart, were an influence on Anderson. He particularly drew from The Fire Within, in which a suicidal man tries to meet his friends. A line from The Fire Within, translated into English, is said as "I'm going to kill myself tomorrow." Orson Welles' 1942 film The Magnificent Ambersons was also an influence. Anderson acknowledged that he may have subconsciously selected his main set for its reflection of Welles' production.
E. L. Konigsburg's book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, in which young siblings Claudia and Jamie Kincaid run away to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, inspired the film's section of Margot and Richie hiding out in a museum. Anderson had read the book as a child, and said it long fascinated him.
J. D. Salinger's characters in the 1961 book Franny and Zooey inspired much of the child prodigy material. The children of the Glass family in Salinger's work are precocious with an abundance of exceptional talents. Franny and Zooey also features characters wearing distinctive fashions and a character named Tannenbaum. "Tenenbaum" is the surname of an acquaintance of Anderson.
The film Les Enfants Terribles by Jean-Pierre Melville, partly inspired Richie and Margot's relationship. Other inspirations were a childhood friend of Anderson said to love his sister, and the director's interest in the incest taboo. Anderson acknowledged that revising the story to make Margot an adopted daughter made the relationship more believable. In creating the characters, Anderson and Owen Wilson used neurologist Oliver Sacks as a model for Raleigh. Anderson based the notion of Eli writing Old Custer on the success of Cormac McCarthy's style of storytelling. Wilson and Anderson completed the screenplay in two years, needing an extended period because of the film's complexity.