‘Beaker Morant’: The overlooked movie Owen Wilson introduced Wes Anderson to
There is someone out there for everyone: Beyond the hallmark sentiments of that soundbite, it certainly seems to be true of cinema. Another less soppy but equally cliched expression that seems to particularly apply to Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson is that you can’t choose who you love. In a quirk of fate known only to the gods of filmmaking, cinema’s foremost purveyor of symmetry found a simpatico foil in the leading man with the least symmetrical face in Hollywood history.
Despite the odds and several unfortunate breaks to a prominent facial appendage, the odd couple have become one of the most beloved pairings in cinema history. And they have proved one invaluable lesson in the process: there is no substitute for a happy set. While masterpieces like Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo might have been made in terrible turmoil, the legacy of their backstory has proved overbearing on the perceptions of cinema.
From In Bruges to The Big Lebowski and Lady Bug, countless more masterpieces have been made when there is a sense of old friends having fun together—hell, that’s the key tenet that made The Beatles so unique and original. Anderson has always strived for this on his film sets. When you’re going for something as particular and stylised as his vision, you need everyone to be on the same page.
So, it makes sense that Wilson has starred in seven of them, given that they were once college roommates. They both attended the University of Texas at Austin in 1989 and became fast friends in their sophomore year. They were in a playwriting class together, and Anderson became intrigued by his peer when he noticed that he would feverishly read newspapers before every lesson. Soon enough, they were getting into hijinks, staging break-ins in their dorm room, which would later become the premise of Anderson’s first film, Bottle Rocket, which Wilson co-wrote.
As it happens, Wilson co-wrote the first three films that Anderson would go on to direct, but his input on his career extended beyond his contributions to the script and screen. During their dorm days, they would also endlessly recommend each other’s films. One of the most formative was Beaker Morant, one of Wilson’s five favourite films of all time.
“That’s an Australian movie,” the comic star told Rotten Tomatoes. “That’s a movie that I went to as a kid with my parents. And then I remember when I roomed with Wes in college, he’d never seen it. I think he really liked the movie, and there’s some great lines in it and great performances.”
Like Anderson’s own movies, it is stylised and idiosyncratic, but there is a weighty undercurrent that needs to be found. As the brutal synopsis explains, “In South Africa during the Second Boer War, Australian Army Lieutenants Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant [Edward Woodward], Peter Handcock [Bryan Brown] and George Witton [Lewis Fitz-Gerald] stand accused of the murders of six Boer prisoners and the assassination of a German missionary. British Commander-in-Chief Lord Kitchener is determined to see the men found guilty, which he can use as a bargaining chip in an impending peace conference with the Boers.”
The movie proves fascinating for an array of reasons, not just that gripping storyline. In a manner akin to what would become of Anderson’s work, it shows how style and sentiment can be opposed, with the brutal backdrop to Beaker Morant upended by the equanimous unspool of the luscious and distant cinematography.
