to want to stay under the water forever , to avoid his empty , broken , life above the surface . In The Royal Tenebaums , Royal , his three children , and their childhood friend , Eli , all face existential crises that draw them back to the family home . Steve Zissou in The Life Aquatic states near the beginning of the film , “ I ’ m right on the edge . I don ’ t know what comes next .” Francis Whitman , the elder brother in The Darjeeling Limited , admits to attempting suicide , and Jack , the youngest , says , “ I don ’ t feel good about myself .” Fox , in Fantastic Mr . Fox , as he faces his own mortality and dissatisfaction says , “ I ’ m seven . My father died when he was seven and a half ” and then says , “ Who am I ? I ’ m saying this more as like , existentialism , you know ?” Laura Bishop in Moonrise Kingdom says that she sometimes asks herself , “ What am I doing here ?” And finally in The Grand Budapest Hotel , the writer seeks out the aging Zero because he notices that Zero is “ truly and deeply lonely , a symptom of my own medical condition as well .”
Because Anderson ’ s characters sense that existential despair is near at hand , that the chaos and meaninglessness of the universe threatens to overwhelm them , they seek to impose order on the universe as a way of combatting its random nature . As Sartre says , “ Man is the being whose project is to be God ” ( 63 ). Each character tries to impose order in his or her own way . But each response is , at bottom , the same response . Dignan in Bottle Rocket forms a seventy-five year plan , so that not a single moment of the rest of their lives will lack order . The same impulse underlies Max ’ s frantic activity in Rushmore to organize and establish clubs . As Mark Browning says , “ Max is fundamentally quite a lonely , isolated boy , whose frenetic social activities seek to hide this lack with only partial success ” ( 18 ). The writing and directing of plays represents another of Max ’ s attempts to impose order on a 73