The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Wes Anderson · a film · 2009 · stop-motion animation, about 87 minutes · written with Noah Baumbach from Roald Dahl’s novel
Mode
Family comedy and heist, with a midlife comedy of manners inside it
Mythos
The trickster who robs the stronger; the creature tamed by marriage who goes back to the wild; the descent into the earth and the ark of animals
Phase
A fox’s middle age, from a promise made after a trap to a dance in a supermarket
Presentation
Stop-motion feature in colour, the film as released in 2009, about 87 minutes, in English; puppets on miniature sets, staged flat and side on, with songs and an orchestral score
Register
Deadpan throughout, applied as evenly to death as to a game, broken by sudden animal behaviour and once by a wolf
Scale
One valley, one family and its neighbours, three farms and the earth beneath them
Governing Proposition
A fox who promised his wife to give up raiding farms buys a house in a tree, robs the three richest farmers in the valley, and brings the whole animal world under the earth with him. The wager of the film is that civilisation is a costume worn by an animal, that a man in middle age will risk his family for the need to be thought fantastic, and that this can be said in a family comedy made by hand, with the wild left showing in the fur of the puppets.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The film opens on Fox standing on a hill against a yellow sky, and then it goes to work. He and Felicity raid a squab farm, a trap closes on them, and in the trap she tells him she is expecting a cub. He promises her to give up the raids. Everything after is measured against that promise, and the film is the story of its breaking.
Time passes. Fox writes a newspaper column, and he is not satisfied with it, or with where the family lives. Against the advice of his lawyer, Badger, he buys a house in a tree, a property beyond his means that looks out on the three farms of Boggis, Bunce and Bean. The house is the first thing the film gives him and the first thing it will take away, dug out from under him by the men he means to rob.
Wes Anderson directed the film from a screenplay he wrote with Noah Baumbach, after Roald Dahl’s children’s novel of 1970. It premiered at the London Film Festival in October 2009 and opened in the United States the next month, released by 20th Century Fox, in one version of about 87 minutes. Mark Gustafson directed the animation, Tristan Oliver photographed it, Nelson Lowry designed it, Andrew Weisblum cut it and Alexandre Desplat wrote the score. George Clooney voices Fox, Meryl Streep Felicity, Jason Schwartzman Ash, Eric Chase Anderson Kristofferson, Bill Murray Badger, Wally Wolodarsky Kylie, Willem Dafoe Rat and Michael Gambon Franklin Bean. It was nominated for two Academy Awards, for animated feature and for original score.
Movement II
Fox breaks the promise in three raids, one on each farm, each more dangerous than the last, with Kylie as his accomplice. The three farms are three trades of one economy, and the three men are its appetite, drawn as a children’s book draws its ogres. The film is a heist at this point, brisk and plotted, and the raids are its clearest action.
In Bean’s cider cellar waits Rat, a hired security man. Around the raids the household goes on. Ash, the son, is “different”, and he hears the word as a charge. His cousin Kristofferson comes to stay, athletic and given to meditation, and Ash’s father prefers him. Ash tries karate and tries to be what he is not, and gains nothing by it. The rivalry is played for comedy and is not a joke.
Through all of it the animals keep their manners and lose them. They wear tailored corduroy, sit at laid tables, and fall on their food with teeth and claws, gobbling, snarling, snapping into a fighting stance before smoothing their lapels. The film’s whole thesis is in that gesture: civilisation is a costume on an animal, and the animal is still there inside it.
Movement III
The farmers lay siege. Fox loses his tail to them, and he wears it afterwards as a tie, the price of his vanity carried on his chest. They dig the tree out from under him, and the animals dig down to escape them, until the community of the valley is endangered with the foxes.
There Felicity learns what her husband has been doing. Her claws flash across his face, one of the film’s few sudden rises, and the scene that follows is its domestic truth. Fox tells her he is a wild animal. She answers that he is also a husband and a father. Neither is wrong, and the film does not resolve them: it lets them stand side by side, which is how the rest of the film lives.
The form makes the argument without a speech. These are puppets, and their fur stirs and shifts from frame to frame, so that the wild is in the material itself while the manners are in the costume and the set. The rooms are shown in cross-section, the burrows in elevation like an anthill, the camera tracking flatly from side to side, so that the world is a made thing seen through glass. When an animal breaks into animal behaviour, it breaks the frame’s decorum from within.
Movement IV
Bean’s cider is the flood: it bursts through the tunnels, one of the film’s few rises, and drives the animals on. Under the earth Fox gathers them and makes them a speech on the dignity of being wild, a comic oration by a man in middle age, and the community of the valley, gathered and endangered, becomes his to lead.
Rat comes for Fox, and their fight is scored and staged as a duel in a western. Rat dies, and the film treats his death with the same deadpan it gives to a game of whack-bat, which is the tone’s discipline and its limit. Kristofferson is captured by the farmers, and the rescue has its object.
The rescue gathers fast, by motorcycle, dynamite and a route through the sewers, faster than the earlier acts earned it, and its action is staged with less clarity than the raids. What the film gains in it is Ash: the son who was “different” is seen at last by his father, late, for what he is. The swearing of the whole film has been replaced by one word, “cuss”, and it is exactly the right register for a family comedy with an adult’s worries inside it.
Movement V
On the escape route Fox sees a black wolf standing on a far ridge. He tries to address it. After a silence the wolf raises a fist in answer, and runs off. It is the film’s summit, and the only scene in which the wild appears as itself, mute and untameable, beyond the reach of wit. The trickster meets the thing he is not, and the comedy stops for it.
The coda is in the farmers’ supermarket. The animals have tunnelled into it, and they live on the processed food on its shelves, under fluorescent light. The family and their neighbours dance in the aisles to the Bobby Fuller Four’s “Let Her Dance”. Whether this is triumph or capitulation, wild animals housed in a shop, the film does not say, and the question has stayed open.
What holds the film below Tier IV is the height and depth of its truths, not its making. Its truths are a family comedy’s, given with wit more than depth; its elevation is rationed to one wolf and a few lesser rises; and the world it holds has no state, history or sacred in it. What it does hold, it holds under one law and in one made surface: a valley, a marriage, a son and a fox in a corduroy suit who is still a wild animal.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test finds little slack in a short film. The opening trap and Fox’s promise are what the whole film breaks. The tree, bought against Badger’s advice, is the property the farmers will dig out from under him. The three farms are three raids rising in danger and three trades in one economy. Bean’s cider cellar gives Rat his station and the flood its water; Kristofferson’s arrival gives Ash a rival, and his capture gives the rescue its object. The tail Fox loses is worn as a tie for the rest of the film, the price paid in his body. What gives: the whack-bat game is partly gag, and the last act’s rescue gathers by contrivance.
Score: 8.1 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and it holds. A creature domesticated by love and property does not stop being what it is, and a man in middle age will risk his family for the need to be thought fantastic. Fox’s confession to Felicity that he is a wild animal, and her answer that he is also a husband and a father, is the film’s articulated truth. Its second is Ash’s: a son who is “different”, loved less in his father’s eyes than an athletic cousin, and who gains nothing by trying to be what he is not. Image carries both in full, animals in tailored corduroy eating with their teeth. What holds it: these are a family comedy’s truths, given with wit more than depth, and Felicity’s own life is sketched.
Score: 7.7 / 10
The elevation is concentrated in one scene. On the escape route Fox sees a black wolf on a far ridge and tries to address it; the wolf, after silence, raises a fist in answer and runs off. In a comedy of manners the wild itself appears, mute and untameable, and the film stops for it. There are lesser rises: Fox on a hill against a yellow sky at the opening, the flood bursting through the tunnels, Felicity’s claws across her husband’s face, the fight with Rat staged as a western duel. What holds the axis lowest of the eleven: the rest is charm, deadpan and invention, delightful and rarely transporting, and the film’s own irony keeps most summits low.
Score: 7.0 / 10
The myth is built rather than evoked. The trickster is the pattern: Fox is in the line of Reynard, the clever animal who robs the stronger, and the plot is the trickster’s story entire, the theft, the pursuit, the burrow, the escape by cunning. To it the film adds the fall and return of the creature tamed by marriage who goes back to the wild and must learn to live between. The wolf is the archetype the trickster is not, wildness beyond wit, and its one scene gives the myth a floor. The digging into the earth, the flood and the animals gathered underground carry the outlines of the descent and the ark. What holds it: the myth is kept ironic, and the farmers are ogres as a children’s book draws them.
Score: 8.1 / 10
The inheritance is double: the animated family feature of the 2000s, ruled by computer animation’s smoothness and by star-voiced comedy, and the director’s own live-action manner. The turn was to make an animated feature by hand, with puppets whose fur visibly shifts between frames, and to let the craft show rather than hide it; to stage it with flat lateral tracking and symmetrical tableaux; to record the voices away from the booth; and to give a children’s film a midlife comedy’s preoccupations, with swearing replaced by the word “cuss”. The stake was real: a live-action director’s first animation, a children’s classic changed in tone, a studio release that did modestly. What holds it short of the bar: the stop-motion tradition was alive, and the manner came with the director.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Change the form and the film stops knowing its main thing, that civilisation is a costume on an animal. Live action could not dress foxes in suits and make their wildness felt; computer animation would smooth away the matter. Here the puppets are made objects, their fur stirring between frames, so the wild is in the material while the manners are in the costume and the diorama. The flat staging, rooms in cross-section and burrows in elevation like an anthill, makes the world a made thing seen through glass, and the eruptions of animal behaviour, the gobbling, the snarls, the flick into a fighting stance, break the frame’s decorum from within. The handmade surface also gives the comedy its texture of things owned and coveted. The cost: the farmers’ plot is told by the form more than known through it.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Seventeen years of return, steady and continuing: in criticism of its director, in writing on stop-motion, in its place on lists of the century’s animated films. The questions stay open. Is the ending in the supermarket triumph or capitulation, wild animals living on processed food under fluorescent light? What does the wolf mean, and why does it answer? Does Fox change, or is he only forgiven? How far is the film about its director’s family and his own fame? The designed surface rewards return, each frame holding more objects, labels and jokes than one viewing takes in, and the texture repays attention as well as the questions do. What holds it: much of the return is to wit and texture, and the span is short.
Score: 7.7 / 10
The field is the cinema of the 2000s, with animation the nearest part of it. Intrinsic force: the film showed that an auteur’s whole style could pass into stop-motion, that animation for families could carry an adult comedy of manners without condescension, and that visible craft, rather than seamless illusion, could be the chosen surface of a studio feature. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the director returned to the form with Isle of Dogs (2018) and carried its diorama staging into his later live-action films; its animation director Mark Gustafson went on to co-direct Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022); and the film is commonly named in the revival of handmade animation for adults. What holds it: that revival had other lines, and the film did not change how animation is made at large.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the film survives as released, nothing lost and no altered version replacing it. Presence across seventeen years is continuous, in home video, streaming, festival and repertory screenings and family viewing, with the puppets and sets exhibited. That presence is steady rather than the widest a film of its year has: the box office was modest, and the audience grew after release. The surface ages little; the handmade image does not date as the computer animation of its year has begun to, though the soundtrack and the voice casting belong to their moment. Seventeen years is a short demonstration, and steady presence sets the figure at the lower end of what that span allows.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Command of the medium, read to the anchors every desk shares. The making is load-bearing and nearly continuous. Nelson Lowry’s design and the puppet workshops give a world of consistent palette, autumn yellows, oranges and browns, and of miniature objects made with complete care. Tristan Oliver’s photography holds the flat staging and the warm light. Gustafson’s animators give the puppets acting, the eye flicks and abrupt animal movements. Andrew Weisblum’s cutting keeps a comic rhythm in montage and set piece, and Alexandre Desplat’s score, with banjo and small percussion, drives the raids. Clooney’s vanity, Streep’s dryness and Schwartzman’s sulk are exactly pitched. What holds it: the last act’s action is less clearly staged than the raids, some jokes repeat, and a few scenes are arrangement rather than drama.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: Fox’s speech to the animals gathered underground, a comic oration by a man in middle age on the dignity of being wild, and the wolf on the ridge, wordless and absolute. One law governs both: the creature’s nature beneath its manners, rising through comedy as appetite, pride and fear. The table manners, the dig, Rat’s menace, Ash’s karate, Kristofferson’s meditation, the farmers’ industrial appetite and the supermarket all obey it, each a version of civilisation and the wild. The tone is held throughout, deadpan applied as evenly to Rat’s death as to a game of whack-bat. The strain: the farmers belong to a children’s book while the foxes belong to a novel of manners, and the last act bends the world’s physics for the plot.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Judged on what a film of about 87 minutes holds. The family: a marriage, a son, a nephew, a father’s pride and failure. Labour and status: Fox’s newspaper column and his dissatisfaction with it, Badger as a lawyer and his professional caution, Rat as a hired security man. Property and money: the tree bought beyond his means, the farmers’ industrial wealth. The community of animals, gathered and endangered; the wild, given in the wolf; consumer society in the supermarket. They are integrated, one economy of appetite seen from below ground. What keeps the axis lowest: consciousness is held by wit, not interiority; the state, history and the sacred do not enter; and the farmers’ world is schematic.
Score: 6.7 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.9 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Living Form at 8.4, then The Swerve, The Made and The Inner Law at 8.2. A form in which handmade puppets carry the wild in their fur while costume and diorama carry the manners; an animated feature made by hand with its craft left showing, by a live-action director, for a studio; a making load-bearing in design, animation acting, photography, cutting and score; and one law, the animal beneath its manners, governing a comic oration underground and a wolf on a ridge.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.7: the family, labour, property, the animal community, the wild and consumer society held as one economy of appetite, with consciousness held by wit, and the state, history and the sacred absent. Below the rest, The Sublime at 7.0, an elevation concentrated in one wolf and a few lesser rises, the rest charm and deadpan; then The Unconcealment and The Bottomless Well at 7.7, a family comedy’s truths given with wit more than depth, and a return made as much to texture as to open questions.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.1 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.4, The Made at 8.2, The Inner Law at 8.2, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Swerve at 8.2, The Archetypal Deep at 8.1, The Imperishable at 8.1, Pressure on Tradition at 7.8 and The Unconcealment at 7.7 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Sublime, 7.0, below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.7. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.9, from a sum of 94.2, in the band of Tier III, a tenth short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and short of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Fantastic Mr. Fox as released in 2009, after its premiere at the London Film Festival in October and its opening in the United States in November, in its one version of about 87 minutes, in colour and in English, from the hill in the opening shot to the dance in the supermarket: directed by Wes Anderson from a screenplay by Anderson and Noah Baumbach after Roald Dahl’s novel Fantastic Mr Fox (1970), animation directed by Mark Gustafson, photographed by Tristan Oliver, edited by Andrew Weisblum, designed by Nelson Lowry, with music by Alexandre Desplat, released by 20th Century Fox. No print, script or subtitle file was consulted. Dialogue is quoted only in single words whose wording is certain, and speech is otherwise described; one song is named, the one that closes the film. Details that could not be verified, among them the studio where the film was made, the length of the time jump after the prologue as given on screen, the languages in which Fox addresses the wolf, the mention of a mortgage, where the other songs fall, later home-video editions and whether any other cut exists, are not given.