Wes Anderson is often referred to as a filmmaker in a league all his own, both because his films are so stunning and unique, and because they are so unusual. While he is widely beloved, some of the praise he receives is countered by an assertion that his minute attention to detail and visual quirks are stultifying and fussy. Some people love his weird and mannered style, while others think it takes away from his storytelling.
If you want to know more about Anderson's relationship to art-making in general, film critic for The New Yorker Richard Brody suggests that you look at The Grand Budapest Hotel. In an article entitled "Wes Anderson's Artistic Manifesto," Brody writes, "The story, of the lost grandeur of a hotel that is restored and perpetuated by way of a book, is also the story of a tradition of personal nobility—a severe and self-imposed code of conduct that proves, in the face of historically terrifying and catastrophic trouble, to be a rock of steadfast decency. That tradition, in turn, is preserved and perpetuated in art: “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is the closest thing to a credo, a discourse of principle, that Anderson has yet offered." From Brody's perspective, Anderson's interest in the historic, the charming, the refined, and the fable-esque is rooted in a broader philosophy of art, a philosophy that believes the artist has a moral duty to uphold decency through steadfast commitment to the art of storytelling.
While Brody suggests that Anderson's investment in the precious or the refined is a clue about his broader artistic philosophy, there are some who think his work is overly quirky, exacting to the point of distraction. An article in New York Magazine after the release of The Life Aquatic reads, "Then came The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, a Jacques Cousteau–inspired fantasia that left even some of Anderson’s most loyal fans impatient. There was a sense that the director had become pickled in a world of his own creation." Weirdly enough, the 1970s pop-rock band Steely Dan once penned a letter of "intervention" to the director, pointing out what they thought was flawed in his work and offering up their services for a film soundtrack. His detractors seem to worry that the unusual and just-so aesthetic of his films will be his undoing. Like it or not, however, they are signature elements of the work of a contemporary auteur.
