Not dissimilarly, the protagonists and locations are frequently established through artwork. Rushmore opens on a painting of the Blume family, in arguably happier times; similarly, Richie Tenenbaum’s wall of portraits of his sister Margot sets up their close relationship in The Royal Tenenbaums. The opening shot of Moonrise Kingdom is a child-like painting of the Bishop house, while the film closes with an image of the titular cove sought out by its protagonists, Sam and Suzy, when they run away together.
Anderson’s artistic presentation of his texts’ artificiality places the audience at a remove from the events of the film, compelling us to engage with the formal elements as much as the characters and themes. But if we look beyond the mere formal reasons for this, it’s notable how many of Anderson’s characters create novels, plays, films, or paintings diegetically (or, within the fictional world of the film) in addition to Anderson’s narratives being presented extra-diegetically (or, to the film’s audience) as novels, plays, films, or paintings. It’s clear that making sense of the world through art is an imperative common to Anderson’s characters and Anderson himself.
To make sense of his own work, Anderson frequently leaves us in the hands – or rather, the voice – of a narrator. This narrator is usually a complete outsider to the story, such as the disembodied voice of Alec Baldwin recounting the events of The Royal Tenenbaums, or the unnamed author of The Grand Budapest Hotel, who is merely a conduit for Zero Moustafa’s story, 30 years later. While the use of a narrator is a formal quirk which can allow for quick, extra-diegetic exposition, using this kind of outsider as the narrator also allows the audience to read his presentation of events as more objective and reliable than if it had been recounted by a character involved in the story itself. Just as Anderson distances us from the events of the story from the outset by drawing attention to its status as a work of fiction, so, too does the narrator distance us from the characters in this way.
It’s noteworthy that even when the narrator does appear in the film, his function remains the same. He’s there to set the scene and catch us up, not to pass judgement or get emotionally involved. Bob Balaban appears as the narrator in Moonrise Kingdom, speaking directly to the audience about the geography of New Penzance, the island on which the film takes place. However, unlike the other previously-mentioned narrators, this character turns up in the film for one scene. As the parents and guardians of the two runaway sweethearts, Sam and Suzy, clash on the pier in New Penzance over their kids’ whereabouts, he appears from out of nowhere to advise that, as Sam’s cartography tutor, he has a hunch as to where they may be headed.
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