Journey through the world of Wes Anderson

Through Wes Anderson's films you can travel half the planet without leaving home.

From Tokyo to New York, from India to the Italian region of Lazio.

Microworlds full of fine (and precious) detail, some of which it helps to uncover - via screen or on a future getaway from moviegoers - Ian Nathan in

Wes Anderson.

The magical world of the most unique director of North American cinema

(Editorial Libros Cúpula), a book that reviews his filmography published at the beginning of March.

This is a movie trip.

enlarge photo The film director Wes Anderson.

USA, part 1. The fan hotel in Texas

Born in 1969 in Houston, the most populous city in Texas, "hot, humid and mosquitoes," Anderson debuted with

Thief Who Steals Another Thief

(1996).

His first film inaugurated the first place of pilgrimage for lovers of his cinema: the Days Inn motel in Hillsboro, where heist friends hide.

Schlotzsky's coffee shop featured on one of the movie posters is across the street.

The exquisite point is set by Buddy Bob's house, which is actually John Gillin's residence in Dallas, one of the latest designs by renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

And Grace School is St. Mark's Academy, from where Owen Wilson (friend, screenwriter and protagonist of the film) was expelled in real life.

For

Rushmore Academy

(1998) the principal would choose his own school, St. John's, as the central location.

USA, part 2. The New York case of the Tenenbaums

Anderson has always loved Manhattan and moved there as soon as possible.

But when he filmed

Los Tenenbaums

(2001) he moved away from the stereotype and the tourist locations of the city.

The mansion, one more character in history, was found in Harlem (between 144th Street and Convent Avenue).

In the scene in Battery Park he goes out of his way to hide the Statue of Liberty and behind the fictional Lindbergh Palace hotel is actually the Waldorf Astoria.

The Tenenbaums have traveled around the world: from Antarctica to Jamaica, through the Amazon or New Guinea.

The house on the rock of Clingstone, in Rhode Island (United States).

Don Mennig alamy

USA, part 3. Bucolic Rhode Island

For the scenery of

Moonrise Kingdom

(2012) the director was inspired by the island of Naushon, off the coast of Massachusetts: there the law does not allow to travel by car or modern residential buildings.

But he didn't actually leave New England to recreate the idyllic (and fictional) New Penzance: he chose the State of Rhode Island, its coves, its forests, Trinity Church in Newport, Jamestown Lighthouse, and

Rockville's Yawgoog

Scout

Camp ( Ivanhoe, in the film).

The story required visually powerful natural exteriors to tell the search of two children who, in love, decide to flee.

The route includes the town of South Kingstown, Lincoln Woods State Park, the peculiar house on the rock of Clingstone and the Ocean House hotel.

At another lodge, the Vanderbilt Grace in Newport, the film crew stayed.

The great journey: India by train

The spiritual adventure of three brothers who twists along the way gave rise to the satirical

Journey to Darjeeling

(2007).

Although the plot is fictional, it is based on the actual train journey that Anderson and his two screenwriters made to India.

They filmed for four months in the desert region of Rajasthan, following the tracks of Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, near the border with Pakistan.

In the city of Udaipur the scenes of the convent located in the shadow of the Himalayas take place.

On the journey they stepped on luxurious hotels such as the Rohet Garh,

The Oberoi Udaivilas

resort

and the spectacular Bal Samand Lake palace.

A stylish detail: the 11

customized

Louis Vuitton

suitcases

carried by the trio symbolize the burden of their father's memory.

Aquatic Italy: from Naples to Milan

Although it is never specified,

Life Aquatic

(2004) was filmed offshore off the Neapolitan coast.

Something would have to do with the script for this tribute to the oceanographer Jacques Cousteau played by Bill Murray being written at the Pitti Italian restaurant in New York.

Anderson rehearsed in the Lazio region, in Nettuno and near the volcanic island of Ponza, and kept his headquarters at the Eden Hotel in Rome.

The San Carlos theater and the Royal Palace of Naples are also seen in the film.

He returned to Italy to design the Café Luce in 2015, located in the Prada Foundation building in Milan.

enlarge photo The old department stores of the German city of Görlitz where 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' was filmed.

Matthias Hiekel getty images

A sugary hotel in Görlitz

Set in Eastern Europe, the giant cake-like building from

The Grand Budapest Hotel

(2014), sorry, doesn't exist.

In an

art nouveau

style

,

the interior was built in an old department store in the German city of Görlitz, opened in 1913 and closed in 2009. But the traveler can discover its inspiration in hotels such as the Atlantic in Hamburg;

the Imperial in Vienna and the Bristol Palace, with its same pink façade, in the town of Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic).

For their highest-grossing film, the bizarre story of a janitor who inherits the fortune of a murdered old woman, the team stayed in the central Börse in Görlitz.

If you are looking for delicious sweets from Mendl's, you must visit the Molkerei Pfunds confectionery in Dresden.

Puppets in the UK and Japan

For the adaptation of Roald Dahl's book

Fantastic Mr. Fox

(2009), Anderson lived for two months in Great Missenden, the writer's picturesque town in Buckinghamshire, England, with access to his home, Gipsy House, and his office with a yellow door. (recreated in miniature in the animated film).

Isle of Dogs

(2018), his tribute to the country he had visited 13 years ago, borrows its name from an area near Stratford, a maze of old quays turned residential area on the River Thames.

The nod: The brick mansion is based on the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Last stop: France

Anderson soon bought a house in the Montparnasse district of Paris.

He had shot in France the short

Hotel Chevalier

(2007), the erotic encounter of a couple (at the Raphaël hotel in Paris).

Also an ad for a bank in which Brad Pitt emulated Jacques Tati and, in 2013, with Léa Seydoux for Prada, in a very chic cafe.

His latest film, still without a release date, is

The French Chronicle,

about a magazine with travel columns (a tribute to

The New Yorker),

set in the fictional Ennui-sur-Blasé.

Actually, it is the French Angouleme, a city on top of a mountain, with green spaces and a charming old town.

Anderson, who stayed at the centrally located Le Saint Gelais hotel, added Gothic facades, plaques and silhouettes of towers.

Because in all your trips you cannot miss your personal touch.

Two clues to find out more about the director

• The Great Wes Anderson Hotel

   (Lunwerg, 2018).

  A delicate illustrated tribute to the creative universe of the director of the Galician artist Nuria Díaz.

• Accidentally Wes Anderson

  .

  Tallinn's Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, the Marrakesh Bay Palace and so on up to more than 1,400 photos.

  Wally Koval's Instagram account, with 1.4 million followers, brings together pictures reminiscent of Andersian cinema.

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