INTRODUCTION 

 Fig. 1. Director Wes Anderson

In the past 13 years, director Wes Anderson has been nominated for 6 Academy Awards, but has never won, perhaps because both the film community and general public are very divided in their opinion of his works ("Awards"). Some appreciate his unique style of film making, his intriguing story lines and his stunning visuals, while others hail them as pretentious. In any case, Wes Anderson, has created a unique cinematic universe and almost a sub-genre of its own. Thus far, he wrote and directed 8 feature films and 6 shorts. Even though he collaborates with writers and takes inspiration from literary authors, Wes Anderson heftily lands his hand to all aspects of film production from writing and casting to directing, producing and editing, making him a modern day auteur. 

Visually, most Anderson's films run on similar themes with similar camera and editing techniques. Wild colorful prints, a connection with literature, portraits and perfectly composed shots are all prominent themes throughout Anderson's body of work. Anderson also tends to cast actors from the same rolodex. Bill Murray, Jason Shwartzman, Owen and Luke Wilson, Anjelica Houston have appeared in multiple of his films and are considered staples of his distinctive style. Common narrative themes are also apparent throughout all of this films. 

Perhaps most prominently, strong, influential and troubled family relationships form central motifs in many of his films. In this paper, I will examine several types of relationships that recur in the films of Wes Anderson, namely Fatherhood, Brotherhood, Surrogate Parenting, The New Mother, Forbidden Love & The Loyal Companion. Not all of these chategories fall neatly under the umbrella of family relationships, as they are not solidified by kin, however, powerful none-blood bound ties that replace or substitute for family are very common in Anderson's films. Many of the different characters and their relationships fall under multiple categories. 

Steven Rybin in his essay The Jellyfish and the Moonlight: Imagining the Family in Wes Anderson Films describes the families in Anderson's films as: "the family [is] not a fact of nature, but as a system of cultural relations contingent, for its unity, on playfully creative reaffirmations and reformations" (Kunze 40). Anderson doesn't regard the institution of family as a given, but rather a socially constructed unit, which is constantly changing and can be reshaped, reimagined, absent or established based on the actions of the people (or characters) involved. Most of the stories in the films, and all of the relationships I will examine in this paper, are undergoing such a transformation on screen. New father/son relationships are formed in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Moonrise Kingdom and Fantastic Mr. Fox. Some relationships dissolve, such is the case of Suzy in Moonrise Kingdom, who became disengaged from the parents or the Whitman brothers in The Darjeeling Limited, when they finally let go of the attachment from their absent mother and diseased father. At the same time The Whitman brothers manage to reconnect their relantionship, much like The Royal Tenenbaums and their ultimate family restoration at the deceiptful hand of the patriarch, Royal. 

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Auteur Theory - the director is the sole author of the film and is involved in all areas of production (Barsam, Meran & Monahan, p. 535)