Rushmore
d. Wes Anderson, 1998
When I first saw Rushmore (after having already seen Anderson's later works The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic), I felt it wasn't as effective as those other films, and that Anderson wasn't yet the great director of the later films. Subsequent viewings, however, have proven other. Rushmore is a heartfelt, hilarious, and subtly heartbreaking coming-of-age story, making it one of the essential film of the 1990s.
The film is about Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman in his first role), the kind of student who is too involved in founding clubs and writing plays to care about his school work. Early in the film, Bill Murray's character, millionare Blume, asks him for his secret for having everything figured out, "I guess you just have to find something you love doing, and do it for the rest of your life. I guess for me that's going to Rushmore," Fischer says. Soon after, though, he is expelled; not only for his bad grades, but for planning to build an aquarium on the baseball diamond.
By this time in the story, Max has "fallen in love" with a teacher at Rushmore, Rosemary (Olivia Williams). He tries to impress her by bringing up latin after she mentions that her thesis at Harvard was on Latin American politics; he also proceeds to petition to save latin, which gives way to a priceless line later in the film. As it turns out, Herman Blume also falls in love with Rosemary, leading to a rivalry between best friends. Eventually, both must learn to come to terms with themselves and their crazy obsession with Rosemary; and the final touching scene is nothing short of extraodinary.
Anderson's framing and compositions will be very familiar to anyone who's watched any of his work, as will be his wonderful selection of music for key scenes. More importantly, however, Rushmore shares the same palpable sense of melancholy that hovers over The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and to a lesser extent Bottle Rocket.
Rushmore is a wonderfully beautiful film about growing up.
