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“Fantastic Mr. Fox” is the most pleasant out-of-the-ochre surprise of the year.
First-time full-feature animator Wes Anderson makes the fur fly and bristle and blow using painstaking stop-motion animation with “puppets” (or figurines) and without “benefit” of CGI-generated effects.
In other words, in a year in which Hollywood has endlessly trumpeted state-of-the-art 3D animations, 2009’s ultimate charmer – at least outside “Up’s” brilliant near-voiceless sequence of a lifelong romance – just might be a film that employs techniques used by Hollywood since 1925’s “The Lost World.”
The thing is, Anderson, working with some of the best of the business, is able to make the look and feel of “Fox” his own.
One of Anderson’s artistic heroes is “Fox’s” author, Roald Dahl (who has also given Hollywood two Willy Wonka films and “James and the Giant Peach”). Anderson – the Oscar-nominated, hipster-embraced filmmaker behind “Bottle Rocket,” “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” – says “Fantastic Mr. Fox” was the first book he ever owned. Well, he utterly owns the cinematic “Fox” – every frame, every mise-en-scene is rife with Andersonian touches and trademarks and themes.
Q. So why animation now? What was the lure, the attraction?
A.It’s actually been 10 years since I starting working on this one. I went to the Dahl estate in 2000. … I had this idea sometime (that I wanted to work) in stop-motion with puppets – with fur.
Q. In an era of ever-advancing CGI, why go with stop-motion?
A. It’s kind of tried and true. I grew up on the Rankin-Bass animated specials. I’m 40, and I cannot express how revved-up my brother and I were when the holiday specials (came around). … We didn’t know what “stop-motion” meant – we just knew it wasn’t “just” a drawing.
Q. Now this year, we’ve had such stop-motion as “Coraline.”
A. And there’s also Spike Jonze (the “Where the Wild Things Are” filmmaker), who goes into the same mix a bit: a children’s adaptation that uses something like puppets – people in suits. For me, there’s nothing quite like actual, old-fashioned stop-motion. Which is why we were using digital cameras – there wasn’t even a movie camera (on set).
Q. One thing that struck me was how expressive the eyes are in your film – how you avoid the “Polar Express” dead-eye problem.
A. We made some good eyes. The eyes have a lot of feeling. (For one thing) we put glycerine on them.
Q. The striking palette and texture of this film are so fully realized. How did you set about creating them?
A. I visited Gipsy House (in Buckinghamshire, England), where Dahl lived. It was muggy and gray and colorless – the house wasn’t, but the landscape was. … The place was fascinating. I was inspired. I said: “Let’s set it right here.” I had decided we ought to shoot the movie in Oregon – but then I decided: We’ve got to do it in England. The whole look of it came from that.
At a certain point, when you decide that the grass is going to be (the color of) yellow bathroom towels, then you’re set on a certain course. Everything has to grow out of that. The other thing is, once you decide that the sky is not blue and the grass is not green – that you’re going to have a hyper-autumn – that combines with the (effects where) smoke is made from cottonballs and water is made from Saran Wrap. (That all affects) how the illusion is being created and (how you) genuinely cast the spell.
