Angelica Houston and Gene Hackman are the heads of a
pathetic family of eccentrics that includes Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, and
Luke Wilson. All the children are former
child prodigies that could never cope with growing out of the safety of being
precocious children into full-fledged adult geniuses. Each one has great
accomplishments, a playwright, an inventor, and a tennis star, but all still
continue to be wrapped up in the cloud of disappointment of their family rather
than function as individuals. Despite
the familial chains, each character maintains a sort of rigid yet false
individuality that is comic and heartbreaking at times. The film is famous (and infamous) for the
steady, painstaking development of the characters, rarely giving huge insights
into each character and relying instead on constant interaction and individual
action to flesh each person out. While
it evokes an intense air of detachedness, the intimate details work themselves
into a very full picture of family relationships. Dead-pan comedy is prevalent and becomes
practically an art form with director and writer Wes Andersen and is a popular
aspect of this film as well as many of his others.
The J.D. Salinger Connection: The Tenenbaums are suspiciously
close to Salinger’s beloved “Glass” family.
In many short stories, as well as the novels Franny and Zooey, Raise High
the Roof Beam Carpenters, and Seymour:
An Introduction, the Glass family appears in fragments (focusing on one or
two characters within one story), though Seymour was clearly the favorite of
Salinger. Like the Tenenbaums, the
Glasses were a family of former child geniuses that faced extreme difficulty
adjusting to adulthood. The slightly
cold, professional bonds between both families’ children had a deeper,
intriguing core of genuine warmth, acceptance, and trust only family members
can give. “The Royal Tenenbaums” focused
more heavily on the parental influence, the Hackman and Houston
characters, whereas Salinger rarely discussed the Glass parents, sticking
mainly to the lives of Buddy, Franny, Zooey, Seymour, et al.