Overview

Earning critical acclaim and commercial success upon its 1998 release, Rushmore—the sophomore film of American auteur Wes Anderson—quickly gained the status of a cult classic. A melancholic coming-of-age story wrapped in comedy drama, Rushmore focuses on the efforts of Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman)—a brazen and precocious fifteen-year-old—to find his way. Restless, energetic, struggling, and overcompensating for his insecurities, Max pursues a dizzying range of possible futures, leading him into the orbit of local steel magnate Herman Blume (Bill Murray), elementary school teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams), and a host of cooperative schoolmates who help him to stage lavish film-derivative plays. Kristi McKim’s compelling study of the film argues that despite the film’s titular call for haste and excess (rush/more), it challenges a drive toward perfectionism and celebrates the quiet connections that defy such passion and speed. After establishing Rushmore’s history and reception, McKim closely reads Rushmore’s energetic musical montages relative to slower moments that introduce tenderness and ambiguity, in a form subtler than Max’s desire-built drive or genre-based plays. Her analysis offers an urgent corrective to what might be perceived as an endearing portrait of privilege that perpetuates a status quo power. Drawing out Rushmore’s subtleties that soften, temper, ease, expand, and equalize the film’s zeal, she reads the film with a generosity learned from the film itself.

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9781839024498

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Kristi Irene McKim is Professor and Chair of Film and Media Studies and English at Hendrix College, USA. Her books include Love in the Time of Cinema (2011) and Cinema as Weather: Stylistic Screens and Atmospheric Change (2013). She has published in journals such as Camera Obscura, Studies in French Cinema, Senses of Cinema, Bennington Review, New England Review, Bright Lights Film Review, Film International, and Film-Philosophy. She is also the online editor for Film Matters Magazine and co-editor of The Cine-Files special edition on ""Teaching Film"".

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