Are the stars of Wes Anderson's classics cursed?
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What happened to my Royal Tenenbaums?
In recent years, a series of seemingly unrelated events have left me wondering with sad bewilderment about the fate of the actors from one of my favorite films from my youth, Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums.
I was 18 when I first saw—and re-watched—The Royal Tenenbaums, which, in its surprisingly close echo of the J.D. Salinger writings I’d devoured as a teenager, seemed like a cinematic interpretation of my imagination. The film offered a deeply seductive vision of genteel cosmopolitanism: the fictional Tenenbaums were the descendants of well-heeled but cold former enfants terribles who wandered around their Manhattan brownstone in mink coats, polished lines, and endless trouble.
Each of Royal and Etheline Tenenbaum's children (the parents were played by the late Gene Hackman and Anjelica Huston) started out as potential virtuosos: Chas was a financial impresario, Margot a talented playwright, Richie a world-class tennis player. But the trio of Tenenbaum siblings failed to capitalize on their early potential.
“In fact, virtually all memory of the genius of the young Tenenbaums has been erased by two decades of betrayal, failure and disaster,” says the film's narrator, who is, notably, voiced by an unseen Alec Baldwin.
Now, to the crux of this musing: I confess that I was reminded of Baldwin's ominous assessment of the consequences suffered by the imaginary Tenenbaums while watching the actor's very real TLC reality show, The Baldwins.
If ever a programme illustrated the decline of a once-great talent, this was it. The show was seemingly designed to improve the fading public image of Baldwin, who was then at the centre of a criminal investigation sparked by a horrific on-set accident: in 2021, during the filming of the movie Rust Western, Baldwin’s prop gun went off, tragically killing a cameraman. (The charges were dropped during the trial last summer.) The Baldwins tried their best to showcase a softer side to their star, but compared to his once-brilliant film career, it looked rather tepid: Alec had gone from working with Sean Connery on The Hunt for Red October to giving tours of his closet. How the Mighty Have Fallen.
That's when it occurred to me: many of the Tenenbaums had lost some of their royal luster in recent years.
Let’s take the case of Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays the grown-up version of Margot Tenenbaum with great lazy charm. Since she appeared in “The Royal Tenenbaums” some twenty-four years ago, Paltrow has starred in three films to which I’ve bought a ticket: 2002’s “Whiplash” (a mediocre literary adaptation), 2003’s “Sylvia” (a decent biopic of Sylvia Plath), and 2005’s “Proof” (a mediocre stage adaptation). I skipped (or avoided) all the “Iron Man” movies. Paltrow’s screen career has been so insignificant since “Margot” that my most vivid memory of her is
Sourse: theamericanconservative.com
