Assembled Worlds: Intertextuality and Sincerity in the Films of Wes Anderson

Abstract

Anderson’s stylized film worlds are more than pure aestheticism. Placing disparate objects from across film history and popular culture in concert with each other, they assemble cinematic worlds that contain issues “too big” to be approached directly. As such, although both Rushmore and The Grand Budapest Hotel are permeated by stultifying loss and grief, their anachronistic, reflexive diegeses act as both canvases and containers for unresolvable narrative and thematic concerns.