The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Wes Anderson · a film · 1996 · the theatrical cut, about 91 minutes · written with Owen Wilson, from their short of the same name
Mode
Heist comedy made gentle; a picaresque of failure, a friendship and a romance in one
Mythos
The outlaw band of three, parted and reunited; the false father who takes the apprentices’ devotion and their goods; the comrade who goes back
Phase
From an escape out of a clinic window to a prison yard, by way of a rehearsal, a bookstore, a motel and a cold-storage plant
Presentation
Feature film in colour, the theatrical cut of about 91 minutes, in English with some Spanish; expanded from a short in black and white; Robert Yeoman’s photography, David Moritz’s cutting, Mark Mothersbaugh’s score
Register
Deadpan affection throughout, from farce at a bookstore counter to a quiet sorrow in slow motion
Scale
Three friends, a few houses and a highway, the exurban Texas of the mid-1990s
Governing Proposition
Two young men in Dallas with no direction plan a life of crime as if it were a game for boys, and play it by its rules until the game costs one of them his freedom. The wager of the film is that a crime film can be made without cruelty, that a plan written in a notebook can be a way of keeping a friend, and that earnestness seen from one side is comedy and from the other is sorrow.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The film begins with an escape that is not needed. Anthony Adams, played by Luke Wilson, has spent time in a voluntary psychiatric clinic, and he could walk out of its front door. His friend Dignan, played by Owen Wilson, wants him to go by the window, down a rope of knotted sheets, and Anthony goes that way to humour him. In one image the film has said what the rest will show: the crime to come is a game that Dignan needs, and Anthony loves him enough to play it.
Anthony went into the clinic from exhaustion rather than illness, and he comes out with no plan of his own. Dignan has one for both of them. The third of their band is Bob Mapplethorpe, played by Robert Musgrave, whose parents are rich and distant and whose brother, called Future Man, is played by Andrew Wilson. No father is present in any of these families. The film is set in Dallas and its suburbs, among lawns, highways and pools, and it was shot there.
Wes Anderson directed it from a screenplay he wrote with Owen Wilson, expanded from their short of the same name, about thirteen minutes in black and white, which was shown at Sundance in 1994. Columbia Pictures released the feature in the United States in February 1996, a production with Gracie Films; Polly Platt and Cynthia Hargrave produced it and James L. Brooks was executive producer. Robert Yeoman photographed it, David Moritz edited it and Mark Mothersbaugh wrote the score. The theatrical cut, of about 91 minutes, in colour and in English with some Spanish, is the film scored here; deleted scenes on home video are not part of it.
Movement II
The first job is a rehearsal, and its target is Anthony’s own family’s house. The friends break into the home Anthony grew up in and take things from it, by the rules of a plan, as if the house belonged to strangers. Grace, Anthony’s young sister, is played by Shea Fowler. The crime begins inside the family, and it is not yet a crime so much as a test of whether the friends will play.
Dignan has written the plan down. In a notebook he has laid out the next seventy-five years, step by step, as earnestly as a school project, and the plan is the form his love for Anthony takes: as long as there is a plan, there is a band, and Anthony is in it. The notebook will be paid at the end of the film, when the plans have shrunk to one small escape that will not be made.
The first real job is a bookstore. It is played as farce around Dignan’s checklist, the band in its roles and the plan followed as if it were a game’s rules. The film has inherited the crime picture of its decade, violent, verbal and cool, and it has turned that picture inside out: these criminals are gentle and earnest, and the comedy is pitched at the level of their earnest speech, so that they stay lovable.
Movement III
After the bookstore the three flee to a roadside motel with a pool, and there the film slows. Anthony falls in love with Inez, played by Lumi Cavazos, a housekeeper who speaks little English, and the days drift by the water. This is the longest movement of the film and its loosest: the scenes at the pool are pleasant and loosely ordered, and the tone relaxes into a naturalism that the rest of the film does not share.
Bob leaves. His brother has been arrested over the marijuana Bob had grown, and he goes home to help; the arrest is reported more than shown, and the departure is under-motivated. Bob’s household tilts the film toward sitcom, the brother, the patch of plants, the house without parents. The band of three is already breaking before its first quarrel.
Anthony and Inez part through a translator. He declares his love across a language they share only in part, and the scene is comic and plainly moving at once, earnest and absurd in the same breath, which is the film’s law. Then Anthony and Dignan quarrel over the shared money, and part. The outlaw band has dispersed, and the plan has lost its thread, as it does throughout.
Movement IV
The friends come back together, and Dignan brings them to Mr. Henry, played by James Caan, a gardener and a crook whom Dignan idolises, with a crew of his own, among them Applejack; Kumar Pallana plays Kumar. Mr. Henry visits Bob’s house, and Dignan’s loyalty to him is a search for a father who will rate him. He has chosen the wrong one.
The job is a cold-storage plant, and it is the one passage of the film cut and staged for precision. The band wears matching yellow jumpsuits. The plan is exact and the failure is exact: a safe that will not open, the alarm, Applejack stricken and down. The precision of the form is spent on the moment the plan fails, and the scene reaches comic panic rather than dread.
Dignan goes back for Applejack, and he is caught. It is the truth the film holds: his innocence is real, and it costs him his freedom. Meanwhile Mr. Henry, it emerges, has stripped Bob’s house of its goods. The false father has taken the apprentices’ devotion and their property together, and the one adult who seemed to play the game was never playing it.
Movement V
Dignan’s friends visit him in prison. In the yard Dignan is still planning, though his plans have shrunk to an escape he will not make. Then he turns and walks back inside, in slow motion, while his friends watch, to the Rolling Stones’ “2000 Man”. It is the film’s highest point, and a single formal stroke changes the meaning of what precedes it: the farce has been, all along, the same earnestness that now looks like sorrow.
That law holds across the film, from the bookstore counter to the prison yard, and it holds most of the film’s parts together; where it bends is in Bob’s subplot and the motel’s drift. The range is moderate, from farce to quiet sorrow, and much of the film is shot plainly, in the daylight any comedy of its decade might have used. What the film knows is real, a plan as a form of love and a crime as a plea to be taken seriously, but much of it stays at the level of mood.
The film failed commercially in 1996 and was little seen for some years; its standing has risen since, and Martin Scorsese named it among his favourite films of the 1990s. Beside its maker’s other films on the desk, The Royal Tenenbaums at 8.3, Rushmore at 8.0 and Fantastic Mr. Fox at 7.9, it is a sketch of what they carry through: the manner is here, in a looser form, without a form that carries its knowledge or a reach of its own. It stands near Rumble Fish at 6.7, below Punch-Drunk Love at 7.3 and Groundhog Day at 7.4. What holds it in Tier II is a slack middle, a plain making and a reach carried by later films; what earns its place is one thing known well, that a game taken seriously by a boy is a kind of love, and that it can end in a prison yard.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged on the theatrical cut. The spine resists the subtractive test. The escape from a clinic Anthony could leave by the door establishes in one image that the crime is a game Dignan needs; the rehearsal burglary of Anthony’s own family’s house makes the same point inside the family; the notebook plan for the next seventy-five years is paid in the prison yard, where Dignan’s plans have shrunk to an escape he will not make. Mr. Henry’s robbery of Bob’s house is set up by his visits and paid on time. What gives is the middle. The motel stretch, the longest movement, is a pleasant idyll, loosely ordered, that could lose a third without loss; Bob’s departure is under-motivated and his brother’s arrest reported more than dramatised.
Score: 6.9 / 10
The disclosure can be stated: for young men with no direction a plan can be a form of love, and a crime played by the rules of a boys’ game is a way of asking to be taken seriously by the world and by one another. Dignan’s plans are his means of keeping Anthony; his loyalty to Mr. Henry is a search for a father who will rate him; his going back for Applejack at the cost of his freedom shows his innocence as real and costly. Anthony, who left the clinic from exhaustion rather than illness, finds in Inez the first thing he chose. What holds it: much stays at the level of temperament and mood, and class is shown and not pursued.
Score: 6.7 / 10
Elevation is rare and gentle, which is the film’s register, not a fault in kind. The highest point is the end: Dignan in the prison yard turning to walk back into the building in slow motion while his friends watch, to the Rolling Stones’ “2000 Man”, a melancholy the comedy has been preparing. The second is the parting of Anthony and Inez, a love declared across a language they share only in part, through a translator, comic and plainly moving. Fireworks set off in a field are a small, earned joy. The cold-storage robbery reaches comic panic, not dread. Measured on height and frequency, the film rises perhaps three times, never far, and the motel stretch is level throughout.
Score: 6.4 / 10
The patterns are present and evoked, not built. The outlaw band of three, its quarrel and its reunion, follows the shape of the gang film and of the boys’ adventure story, with its hideout, its plan and its oath. Mr. Henry is the false father, the master who takes the apprentices’ devotion and their goods, and Dignan is the son who chooses the wrong father; the true father is absent from every family in the film. Anthony is the knight who finds his lady at a roadside inn and loses her, and Dignan’s return for a fallen man has the outline of a sacrifice. None of these bears the weight of the structure, which is a picaresque of failure: the archetypes are worn lightly, as costumes in a game.
Score: 6.4 / 10
The inheritance in 1996 was the crime film as the American independents of the early 1990s had remade it, Reservoir Dogs (1992) above all, violent, verbal and cool. The film turns it inside out: a heist comedy with no violence that lands, criminals who are gentle and earnest, a plan written in a notebook as if for a school project, and deadpan affection where its neighbours had irony. The manner later called Anderson’s begins here, the planned life, the earnest boy-man, the pop song placed for its feeling, the composed group shot, in a looser and more naturalistic look. The stake was real, and the film failed on release. What holds the axis: the turn is one of tone more than of form.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Would changing the form change what the film knows? In part. The episodic, drifting shape is the life of the three men, a plan that keeps losing its thread, and the cold-storage robbery, the one passage cut and staged for precision, is exactly where the plan fails: the form rhymes with the knowledge. The deadpan playing, comedy pitched at the level of earnest speech, keeps the men lovable; played broadly they would be fools, played with menace, crooks. The slow motion at the end changes the meaning of what precedes it. But much of the film is shot plainly, in a Texas daylight any comedy of the decade might have used, and the motel stretch could take another shape without loss. Form here serves more than it knows.
Score: 6.7 / 10
Thirty years of evidence. The film has been returned to steadily, much of that return read through its maker’s later work, as the seed of his manner and the first of his planners. Taken on its own it leaves questions open: whether Dignan’s last act is folly or the only free thing anyone in the film does; whether Anthony’s love for Inez is an exit from the game or another version of it; whether Mr. Henry is a mentor who robs or a robber who mentors; why Dignan, in prison, still plans. On return the small consistencies reward attention, the matching yellow jumpsuits, the plans written down, the failed fathers. What holds it: the semantic depth is modest, the formal depth slight; return rewards affection more than discovery.
Score: 6.8 / 10
The field is the American cinema of the 1990s. Intrinsic force is modest and real: the film proposed a comedy of earnest failure, a crime film without cruelty and a tone of deadpan tenderness at a moment when American independent cinema was turning toward violence and irony, and it is the first statement of a manner. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: on release it was almost none, for the film failed commercially; its later reach is large, but it is carried mostly by its maker’s subsequent films and by the careers it began, Anderson’s and the Wilsons’, and through them a strand of deadpan American comedy and independent film in the 2000s. That reach is credited and discounted: the film opened a door that others, and its maker, went through.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Weighed on form, presence and surface. Form: the film as released survives whole, and restoration for home video repairs it without revising it. Presence: thirty years, charged. The film failed on release and was little seen for some years; its circulation since has been continuous but narrow, on home video, in a prestige collection and in revival carried by its maker’s reputation, less than his own later films and far less than the most circulated films of its decade. The years beyond a quarter century nearly offset what the narrow early presence takes, and the axis stands a tenth below the bar. The surface is fixed lightly to the Texas exurbs of the mid-1990s, its cars and clothes, and it ages as period more than as fashion.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Command is competent and load-bearing only in places. Robert Yeoman’s photography is clean and serviceable, with a few composed frames that show the later manner and much ordinary coverage. David Moritz’s cutting is best in the cold-storage robbery, where the timing of failure, a safe that will not open, the alarm, the fallen man, is exact, and loosest in the motel days. Mark Mothersbaugh’s score, light and percussive, sets the tone of play, and the placing of pop records is the film’s surest musical gift. Owen Wilson’s Dignan is a performance of real invention, eager, proud and stiff; James Caan gives Mr. Henry weight. Against that: Bob is thin, the crew is played at the edge of amateur, and Inez is written more as a figure than a person.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the bookstore robbery, played as farce around Dignan’s checklist, and the prison yard, played as melancholy in slow motion. One law governs both: the game taken seriously, so that comedy and sadness are the same earnestness seen from two sides. The romance obeys it, a love declared through a translator, earnest and absurd at once; Mr. Henry’s betrayal fits, since the game’s adults are the ones who do not play it. Where the law bends is Bob’s subplot, which tilts toward sitcom with its brother, its patch of marijuana and its household, and the motel stretch, where the tone relaxes into a naturalism the rest does not share. The range is moderate and held; the coherence partly reflects narrowness.
Score: 7.2 / 10
Judged on what a film of about 91 minutes holds. Friendship among men, its jealousies and loyalties; the family, present in absence, no fathers, Anthony’s young sister, Bob’s rich and distant parents and his brother; class, glimpsed in the gap between Bob’s house, the motel’s workers and Mr. Henry’s predation; the exurban Texas of highways, motels and lawns; a love across language. They are held together in one picaresque, but held lightly. What keeps the axis at its floor: the state appears only as a police raid and a prison wall, labour only as a housekeeper’s job and a gardening business, and neither is examined; consciousness is given from outside, through behaviour, which suits the deadpan and limits the reach.
Score: 6.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
6.9 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier II · Accomplished
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.4, then The Inner Law at 7.2, then The Swerve, Pressure on Tradition and The Made at 7.0. A film that survives whole in its one released cut across thirty years of narrow but continuous presence; one law, the game taken seriously, governing a farce at a bookstore counter and a slow walk back into a prison; a crime film of its decade turned inside out, gentle where its neighbours were violent and earnest where they were ironic, the first statement of a manner; and a making whose surest strokes are Owen Wilson’s Dignan, the cutting of the cold-storage robbery and the placing of its songs.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.0: friendship, an absent fatherhood, a glimpse of class and a love across language, with the state, labour and consciousness given only from outside. Above it, The Sublime and The Archetypal Deep at 6.4: an elevation reached perhaps three times and never far, and archetypes of the outlaw band and the false father worn lightly, as costumes in a game. Next, The Unconcealment and The Living Form at 6.7, a truth that stays near mood and a form that serves more than it knows.
The Necessity Cap is unmet: The Inevitable at 6.9 falls short of the threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor is unmet: The Made meets it at 7.0 exactly and The Inner Law clears it at 7.2, but The Living Form at 6.7 falls below 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Imperishable at 8.4 falls a tenth short of the bar of 8.5, and The Swerve at 7.0, Pressure on Tradition at 7.0, The Unconcealment at 6.7 and The Archetypal Deep at 6.4 fall further short. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Inevitable, 6.9, and at every other axis it covers but The Imperishable, all below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, meets its own floor of 6.0 exactly. One of the five summit conditions is met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: the twelve sum to 82.5, an average of 6.875 that rounds to 6.9, in the band of Tier II, short of the 7.0 at which Tier III begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Bottle Rocket as released in the United States in February 1996 by Columbia Pictures, a production with Gracie Films, the theatrical cut of about 91 minutes, in colour, in English with some Spanish, from the rope of sheets to the prison yard: directed by Wes Anderson from a screenplay by Anderson and Owen Wilson, expanded from their short of 1994, photographed by Robert Yeoman, edited by David Moritz, with music by Mark Mothersbaugh. No print, script or subtitle file was consulted. The theatrical cut is the object, and no other cut is known; deleted scenes on home video are not part of the work, and restoration is repair, weighed under The Imperishable alone. No line of dialogue is quoted; one song is named by title where the cue is certain. The plot is given in outline, as the reading holds it, and the order of minor scenes is not given. Details that could not be verified, among them the aspect ratio, the box-office gross, the date of the prestige home edition, the minutes of each movement and particular acts within the rehearsal burglary, are not given.