TEXAS, USA — On Sunday night, Wes Anderson did something not Richard Linklater, Tobe Hooper, David Lowery, nor any other Texas-born director has been able to do up to this point: win an Academy Award while working primarily as a feature film director.
Deserving as Anderson was for nominations that weren't to be for "Asteroid City" – his impeccably crafted and structurally audacious latest feature, and one of 2023's very best films – voters instead settled for awarding the Houston native the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film for Netflix's "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar."
Mysteriously, he wasn't at the ceremony in Los Angeles to accept despite being favored to win. Nonetheless, the victory ends a drought for directors from the Lone Star State; writers and actors from Texas have won at the Oscars before, but never those who were mainly directors. (Robert Benton of "Kramer vs. Kramer" fame was closest, having directed 11 films while writing 13. Fort Worth native Brandon Oldenburg also won in the Best Animated Short category in 2012.)
As particular as they are peculiar, Anderson's movies have put him in the Oscars race previously—most notably "The Grand Budapest Hotel," which won four crafts Academy Awards in 2015, but none of the above-the-line categories Anderson was nominated for. After breaking out with "Rushmore," 2001's "The Royal Tenenbaums" netted Anderson a Best Screenplay nod, his first. Julian Fellowes would go on to win that year for penning "Gosford Park."
Anderson's movies would continue to receive acclaim (and Academy Awards nods) for their writing, even as they grew more visually intricate and "Andersonian" became shorthand for their diorama-style sets and amusingly quirky performances. A Best Director nomination would come with "The Grand Budapest Hotel" – it remains the best-reviewed film of his career – but that Oscar would go to Alejandro G. Iñárritu for eventual Best Picture victor "Birdman."
Whether it be because they started taking him for granted or because they were starting to mistake his straight-faced sincerity for emotional alienation, Anderson's next two live-action efforts, 2021's "The French Dispatch" and last year's "Asteroid City," wouldn't be nearly as beloved as his prior efforts. They garnered a collective zero nominations despite being some of the most imaginative movies of their respective years. By now he'd been firmly entrenched in "He's overdue" status.
Then came Sunday night, when "The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar" beat "The After," "Invincible," "Knight of Fortune" and "Red, White and Blue" for Best Live Action Short. The headlining movie in a series of five short Roald Dahl adaptations Anderson directed for Netflix, "Henry Sugar" starred Benedict Cumberbatch as a gambler whose ambition to see without using his eyes leads to unexpected personal growth. It utilized an ambitious conceit: its all-star cast narrated the proceedings directly to the camera while using Dahl's exact writing.
It was an unexpectedly ambitious short-film effort, though molded in the familiar Anderson design of bittersweet emotion and pastel-colored visuals. His decision to skip Sunday's ceremony, though, might very well be a sign that he believes he still hasn't been fully embraced by his peers until he's recognized for a next feature-length work.
Given how quickly he's been working as of late, we may not have to wait very long until his speech.
