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ONE KEY THEME: The quote from Eli at the top of the column is perhaps my favorite in the film - verbally, for the use of the word presupposes, which seems like a word that Eli would toss out, but also for its echo in the slightly falsified epitaph that Royal chooses for his tombstone (which I will allow those who have yet to see the film to discover for themselves) and in the brief exchange where Eli reveals that he “always wanted to be a Tenenbaum” and Royal concurs, “Me too, me too”. In each of the three cases, there is the desire and the hope to rewrite the past, to scrawl into the history books or etch into granite the way things might have been, could have been, should have been.

There is also the fervent desire expressed to be somebody else (or in Royal’s case, to be a better version of himself). Eli and Royal both feel like outsiders (as opposed to, say, pretenders or fakers) and their journeys each take them to a point where they must finally make peace with and accept how they fit in with, or don’t, The Royal Tenenbaums.

A final thought: I have expressed dismay and sadness elsewhere over the fact that Gene Hackman has made no films in the last seven years, that he announced his retirement several years ago, and coming up at the end of the month on his 82nd birthday, it seems less and less likely that he will unretire. His role in Tenenbaums will perhaps remain one of his last five. I often wrestle with what I love about Hackman, and I think I have come to the conclusion that he seems to be that most American of actors: a chameleon hiding in plain sight. I don’t associate accents or costumes with him (Young Frankenstein aside) but a certain attitude, an easygoing smile that somehow can slide over into violence, a cocksure attitude that can veer off into doubt and loathing. In The Royal Tenenbaums, he is able to play clueless and classless and push buttons and get the laughs, and on a dime, with just a brief lift of the veil past the opaqueness of his eyes, suggest that his character knows all along the price he has paid for his behavior.

Next time: Spend 201 minutes with a single mother as she cooks, cleans, turns the occasional trick, and watches her tightly wound world begin to come undone. DVD spine # 484.

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