Everything in its right place

A new London exhibition showcasing curious objects from the movies of idiosyncratic Texan filmmaker, Wes Anderson, illustrates the hidden depth of his work

- Louis Chilton

In recent years, west London’s Design Museum has enjoyed great success in plumbing the work of cinematic auteurs.

In 2019, “Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition” - a walk through the monolithic filmmaker’s shining career - became the museum’s most attended event in its 35-year history. A show based on the oeuvre of gothic eccentric Tim Burton, launched last October, went on to break that record again. But there is probably no filmmaker alive more uniquely suited to a gallery exhibition than Wes Anderson.

Over the course of his three-decade career, the Royal Tenenbaums filmmaker has perfected a cinema of things - quaint, ornately designed objects, arranged and displayed on screen with curatorial care. Books; paintings; playbills; typewriters; outfits. Even his actors have often been described as things: articulated mannequins to be marshalled within Anderson’s pastel dollhouse sets. In his two stop-motion efforts, 2009’s Fantastic Mr Fox and 2018’s Isle of Dogs, this comparison was literalised. Detractors say Anderson’s films are twee and inhuman, or (that most blunt of criticisms) pretentious. Admirers – and there are fervid ones out there – see a lot more.

At a glance, “Wes Anderson: The Archives”, which showcases hundreds of objects from Anderson’s work, might seem to indulge this idea of the director as objet fetishist. Ever since his second film,