This piece on Slate contains a link to an Am*r*c*n Expr*ss ad, directed by Wes Anderson, that you can watch via the wonder that is YouTube. Watch the ad. (I guess you might have seen it if you are an American but I also assume we'll never see it down here.) Read the piece. (It contains some helpful information for non-cinephiles.) Watch the ad again. And again. And again. Repeat the process.
Wes Anderson is one of the masters of contemporary American cinema. There are a few others. (There is even a second Anderson amongst them.) A companion piece on Slate laments that they are less than timely in their output, and this ad is an interesting and perhaps, in time, significant insight into how Wes Anderson's mind works. I'm not convinced that this supposed tardiness is a valid argument, though. If a film takes time to get right, isn't it better to take that time than throw five films into the world in order to see if any of them "stick"? As Mr Incredible said [Pixar has never exactly flooded the market with product, but I don't hear anyone complaining about them], "We get there when we get there."
The thing about Anderson's films, as I'm sure I've said here before, is that he tells fundamentally bleak stories by way of slapstick comedy. This provides for maximum discomfort and memorable images. He also has a lot of ideas, and (as his Amex ad, unless I am seriously misreading it, suggests) isn't averse to having fun at his own expense.
It struck me, 10 years ago, while sitting in a cinema in London observing, in amazement, the quality and inventiveness of British cinema advertising, that advertisements would be the next major artform. I have seen nothing since to disabuse me of that notion. Sure, most advertising is rubbish, but then so are most books, movies, paintings; even (perhaps especially) the vast majority of music should never have been made. So why should advertisements be any different?
Anyway, enjoy the ad. After all, you paid for it.
