“That’s the last time you put a knife in me!”

Wes Anderson’s movies are often described as quirky and eccentric; these are not unfair labels for a body of work by a filmmaker with such distinct aesthetic sensibilities and preference for off-beat storytelling conventions. But the pleasure that comes from watching Wes Anderson’s movies derives not from them being quirky or eccentric for the mere sake of quirkiness or eccentricity; their unique traits do not exist simply for humor or to be unique. The eccentricities in Anderson’s movies often draw attention to things that, if scrutinized, add depth to the movie’s themes; Anderson’s storytelling decisions go beyond the obvious, communicating ideas and conveying empathy in ways that are distinctly, uniquely his own.

His eccentricities, in short, have purpose.

At the end of the introductory sequence of The Royal Tenenbaums, Alec Baldwin’s narration tells us that “virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums had been erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster.” As we hear that narration, we see a young Richie Tenenbaum remove the blindfold hood from his pet falcon’s head, take him out of his cage, lift him on his arm up to the sky, and bid him farewell with an emphatic, “Go, Mordecai!”

The falcon then soars away to “Hey Jude” by The Beatles; the camera pans to follow Mordecai’s flight above the streets of Manhattan.

Mordecai has nothing — and everything — to do with the main story, and would not have been be included in a more formulaic film. But his inclusion in the story is not just a silly aside; as we watch him fly freely above the hustle and bustle of the city to the uplifting tune of “Hey Jude,” a thematic association begins to form of freedom being associated with escape.

This is a theme that all of the Tenenbaums, in their own unique ways, seem to internalize and embrace — we learn that as an adult, Richie sailed around the world to escape from his failures, Chas isolated his family from the world to shield them from perceived danger, and Margot habitually jumped from one lover to the next to the next, never settling down out of fear of vulnerability and potential pain. To be free of the conditions and place of their upbringing, it seems, felt like freedom to them.

The next time that we see Mordecai, all of the Tenenbaum children are gathered in their childhood home to take care of their allegedly ailing and definitively estranged father. The ensuing scenes reveal their true selves, exposed by the familiarity of the dynamics and tensions between them, and the trauma that that digs up.

It is clear that they perceive being cooped up together under the same roof to be an act of imprisonment; it’s why Richie decides to formally let Mordecai go as soon as they’re all together again: “Richie woke at dawn. He had decided birds should not be kept in cages, fed Mordecai three sardines, and set him free.”

Late in the film, however, Mordecai takes on deeper meaning; this quirky symbol flies back to the Tenenbaums once more — but with a new coloration on his feathers. It seems as though Mordecai decided that he didn’t want to be “free” in the world, instead preferring to be with his family, even though they kept him in a cage.

As Margot and Richie sit on the roof of their childhood home with the falcon, Richie remarks, “You know, he has more white feathers on his neck.” “I wonder what happened to him,” Margot asks, to which Richie replies, “I don’t know. Sometimes if a person has a traumatic experience, their hair turns white.” Richie caresses the bird as Margot provides a quick retort — “well, I’m sure he’ll get over it” — before taking a long puff on her cigarette.

Through Mordecai’s three-part journey, the quirkiness of the rich family having a pet falcon in New York City becomes a metaphor for the characters’ own inner journeys.

Other small, quirky details fill the runtime of The Royal Tenenbaums. Many of them add depth to character development while also providing the film with amusing originality.

We learn that Chas, for example, has a BB pellet stuck in the back of one of his hands, which he can push around under the skin but never was able to get removed; this is a funny, eccentric character attribute, but also one that serves as a metaphor — his narcissistic father, Royal, shot Chas with a BB gun during a game when Chas was a young kid, and the pellet remained lodged in his hand for life, just as the feelings of anxiety and betrayal caused by his father’s self-absorption stuck with him for life, affecting him in unexpected ways.

What seem like eccentricities are intentional dramatic choices.

This approach extends beyond the script and its characterizations to the way in which scenes are staged and shots are composed. Character blocking within scenes communicates dramatic tension visually; it is no coincidence that in the scene in which Chas and Margot — along with their mother and her new boyfriend — confront their father for the first time in the film, the four family members who are on cordial terms sit at one end of the table in pairs with an empty chair between them while their father sits alone at the opposite end of the table in the reverse shot. His absence is felt in the empty chair on his family’s side of the conversation, and there is no intimacy to the shot compositions in this conversation — there are no over-the-shoulder shots or close-up exchanges like there would be in most reunions in more traditional movies. Instead, this reunion is framed in calculated wide shots, each featuring one of two opposing parties locked in a debate. Style, as always, has a purpose. Here, it communicates the relationship between Royal and everyone else; the words of the dialogue, well-drafted as they are, are simply a bonus.

The Royal Tenenbaums is largely about inter-generational trauma, and the adult children in the film represent two of the unintended consequences of it — anxiety and depression.

Chas, physically scarred by his father’s BB gun betrayal and emotionally scarred by his absence, represents anxiety.

Chas is introduced in a scene featuring frenetic, handheld camerawork that deviates from the otherwise controlled, methodically composed scenes that make up the rest of the film; in that introductory scene, he forces his young kids out of bed in the middle of the night to see how fast they can escape their apartment building in a hypothetical fire. His character’s anxious energy, captured by handheld camerawork, is paired with percussive, aggressive music on the score to tell us everything that we need to know about him without words.

Richie and Margot, meanwhile, are introduced in more stoic vignettes; they lock themselves away from others and sulk, disconnecting — depressed. It becomes clear through comedic, contextual flashback scenes that their father never failed to make them feel like they would never be good enough. It’s a feeling that they clearly can’t shake in adulthood. The camerawork is composed and generally still in their scenes, never matching the intensity of adult Chas’ opening scene — except, of course, when we observe Richie in the family bathroom at his lowest moment in stark close-up until the camera — like the character — begins to spiral.

Formal camera choices visualize characters’ inner worlds. Character blocking conveys the nature of their relationships to one another.

Wes Anderson and cowriter Owen Wilson could’ve easily condemned the character of Royal outright, blaming him for all of the pain that he caused his father without any hint of redemption, and still would’ve made a compelling enough movie about inter-generational trauma.

But they tell a more complex story than that, and the film is better for it — albeit more emotionally elusive. In spite of his son’s protestations, Royal wants to be a good grandfather; he puts in a significant amount of effort to spend quality time with Ari and Uzi, Chas’ young boys. He takes them frolicking around the city, freely and unabashedly letting them do things that Chas would never let them do. Chas is furious about this — and we come to see that he can’t recognize how his own anxiety, caused in large part by his father, has made him an overbearing father himself.

Royal is undeniably self-absorbed. He can easily recognize and call out faults in others — especially his children — but not himself. He lies to his family about the fact that he’s dying. But when he is kicked out of his own home — yet again — he exhibits a level of self-awareness that adds nuance to his character. He pulls Chas aside and delivers one of the film’s most poignant lines: “Take it easy on those boys, Chassie. I don’t want this to happen to you.”

With that additional layer of subtext and character development, the themes of The Royal Tenenbaums become more complex and interesting — the characters, especially Royal, become more likable, and the tone of the story becomes a little bit more nuanced.

It’s an important reminder that empathy for all characters, even the “bad” ones, makes stories far richer than they would be otherwise.

Near the end of the film, a car crashes into the family home, and a sweeping camera move follows all of the characters around the outside of the property as they respond to the mayhem and fervor. Bad things happen — as they tend to with this group — and characters try to fix them, with mixed but well-meaning results — note how Royal puts in the potentially misguided, but sweet, effort to replace Chas’ family’s dog.

Then, in the film’s final scene, the Tenenbaums gather together at a funeral, finding comfort in each other in the midst of shared despair. The end of the movie thematically circles right back to that conversation on the roof between Richie and Margot about Mordecai.

They’re all messed up, and one or two of them might be at least partially responsible for how messed up some of the others are — but in difficult times, they seek solace in the familiar, and as for the pain — well, maybe they’ll get over it.