Wes Anderson has become a film genre. Even Saturday Night Live did a spoof on this notion, re-envisioning a modern horror film as a Wes Anderson comedy for one of their digital shorts. And although the auteur would not likely refer to himself as a “genre”, the evidence is onscreen in every one of his films. It’s through the marriage of his production design team’s (David Wasco, Mark Friedberg, Nelson Lowry and Adam Stockhausen) signature art direction, and the virtuoso camerawork led by his go-to Director of Photography Robert Yeoman (as well as his stop-motion animation cinematographer Tristan Oliver) that Anderson has been able to carve a niche in American cinema history. In the same way a Spike Lee Joint or a Martin Scorsese Picture have their own distinctions, so also is a Wes Anderson film (more properly known as an American Empirical Picture) easy to spot. But the twist is, for all his towering success as an American auteur, the look and feeling behind each Anderson film finds its influences more rooted in foreign cinema. The tracking camera, moving from room to room, examining the bourgeoisie and upper class in the films of Luis Buñuel (e.g. El Angel Exterminador) laid the groundwork for the dolly and tracking shots in Anderson’s Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and early sections of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. The frenetic energy and overall zeal found in François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim serves also as the celluloid backbone of most of Anderson’s works, specifically Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Fantastic Mr. Fox. The melancholic swoons of the silver screen’s longing romantics permeate Moonrise Kingdom, Hotel Chevalier/The Darjeeling Limited and in the romance subplot of Bottle Rocket.  These films share the same sort of beautiful yet honest moments found in Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou.

A standout influence is definitely Louis Malle’s Le Feu Follet. In The Royal Tenenbaums, Richie Tenenbaum (Luke Wilson) emotes the quiet pathos of Follet’s depressive protagonist and is similarly positioned inside the framing of certain shots. Study the scene where Richie visits Eli Cash to see the striking similarities in composition and staging with Malle’s film. It’s not that Anderson is simply covering his cinematic idols, he’s curating them; he’s channeling them; he’s transcending them.

Now on the eve of his latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson looks to enhance his cinematic oeuvre, incorporating more of an ode to the staged theatrical, in addition to his trademark cinematic styles. Anderson’s visual themes work best when they are firing on all cylinders, enthusiastically running into each other; every time that happens, Anderson becomes his own genre; both inimitable and iconic.

From the outset, the films of Darren Aronofsky seem as different from each other as any filmography can be. There’s the microbudget black and white feature debut Pi; the drug-addled, head-spinning Requiem For A Dream; the ambitious, time-spanning love odyssey that is The Fountain; the Dardenne Brothers-influenced intimacy of The Wrestler; the psycho-sexual ballet drama Black Swan; the upcoming biblical retelling of Noah’s Ark in Noah. However, if you consider Aronofsky’s educational background, namely his majoring in film and social anthropology during his undergraduate days at Harvard University, the visual DNA of his entire body of work becomes clearer. Each of his films follows a visual mapping that demonstrates the anthropological study of cultural continuity; they depict rituals (the drug use in Requiem, the spectator sport of Wrestler), symbolic behaviors (the time traveling of Fountain, the repeating paradigms and motifs in Pi), gender relations (Black Swan) and resurgent religiosity (Noah). In fact, while Aronofsky is revered for having an eclectic body of work that centers on supremely independent and strong protagonists that foil one another, his visual canon is more interested in exploring the ambiguities and conflicts of a broader social life—if not a more universal social experience.

Originally published on 1/25/13 and was re-posted for the theatrical premiere of Malick’s To The Wonder on 2/12/13.