Gene Hackman’s Best Royal Tenenbaums Scene Highlighted His Ferocity As An Actor

It is a testament to the depth and breadth of the career of Gene Hackman that, upon the announcement of his passing at the age of 95, people have come together on social media to praise him, but without a uniform winner among his large filmography. Comic-book fans can continue to marvel at how he set the standard for villainous characters with his take on Lex Luthor in “Superman: The Movie.” (Even if, in that case, he was fooled into shaving his mustache.) Fans of modern action movies are no doubt fondly remembering his work in the tense and sweaty thriller “Crimson Tide,” among other examples. And the number of dramas he made, introspective or otherwise, are nearly innumerable. You can find so many examples of brilliance in Gene Hackman’s list of credits, across so many genres. One of the most common threads throughout his career was his deft ability to create effectively memorable confrontations with his fellow performers, taking what’s written on the page and amping up the energy and tension simply through his presence and his voice.

There are few better examples of this specific trait — and honestly, few better performances of Hackman’s — than in the 2001 comedy-drama “The Royal Tenenbaums,” from co-writer and director Wes Anderson. The entire film remains a standout in Anderson’s lengthy and impressive career, and it’s all the more notable because of how early on Anderson made this one relative to even more precisely appointed, handsomely designed titles moving forward. No matter what else can be said of Hackman’s work as a whole, his presence in playing the dysfunctional paterfamilias of a broken and quirky New York family looms large not just in Anderson’s broader work, but among his own performances. That’s because, especially in one specific scene, we get to be reminded that the elder statesman of American film acting could still command the room even in the most unexpected of circumstances.

Although Anderson’s two previous feature films, “Bottle Rocket” and “Rushmore,” include some of the aspects with which we associate him as an auteur, it was “The Royal Tenenbaums” that truly set the template for what a Wes Anderson film is — how it looks and sounds and feels. (Just look at our ranking of every Wes Anderson movie to see the unique qualities across his work.) There’s a general sense of deadpan humor, established by the dry narration of Alec Baldwin and carried throughout the story of a family that was once seen as a scion of New York culture and has since fallen due to how the Tenenbaum children have stumbled once they exited their juvenile years. Part of that stumble is due to the fact that their father was a cad and fooled around on their kindly mother Etheline (Anjelica Huston). Among the film’s many storylines, it becomes quickly clear that while Etheline divorced Royal years ago, she’s not fully aware of the fact that the bow-tie-befitted accountant Henry Sherman (Danny Glover) who follows around, soft-spoken and friendly, does so because he’s madly in love with her and wants to marry her.

When Royal is informed by his old friend and the house valet Pagoda (Kumar Pallana) that Henry has not only declared his love for Etheline, but proposed, he puts a hare-brained scheme into action. Despite not having lived in his old house for more than two decades, Royal lies his way back into the hearts of his children by saying he has a fatal case of stomach cancer and wants to spend his last days with his sons Chas (Ben Stiller) and Richie (Luke Wilson) as well as his adopted daughter Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow). What he really wants is to upend Etheline’s potential plans to head off into the sunset with Henry, as much because of any latent affection for his wife as because he simply doesn’t want anyone else to have what he can’t. And that’s what leads to a confrontation as tense as it is funny midway through the film. 

“Can I ask you a question, Hank?” Royal says slyly and calmly when Henry enters the kitchen one morning. Although the bespectacled and tweedy Henry can, thanks to Glover’s adept physical acting, already tell that he’s walking into a troublesome spot, he allows for the question and quickly finds himself being attacked with racially insensitive language (that manages to be insensitive without being extremely inflammatory). After the other man asks Henry if he’s “trying to steal my woman,” Royal calls him “Coltrane” and then yells at him to get his “raggedy ass” out of the house. In a film that does feature at least one bout of unexpected violence between two diametrically opposed men, it’s both shocking how quickly this conversation turns both tense and angry. It’s not that you can’t understand why a selfish man like Royal wouldn’t be incensed and insulted at the notion of his ex-wife being involved with another man, but the fact that this jumps from a simmer to a big boil within seconds is jarring in the most apt way.

It helps that the tonal shift is being captured and carried by both Gene Hackman and Danny Glover, two excellent performers who can steer a scene emotionally without overplaying. When Royal stands up to face Henry, threatening to “talk some jive,” it’s as ridiculous as it is tense, because the outdated phrasing and the face of illness that Royal is attempting to display make him less intimidating. But Hackman’s voice, that richly textured tenor of his, creates vastly more intimidation than the dialogue allows or that Anderson may have even originally envisioned. (It’s the same as the moment in the film when Royal and Chas are in a closet full of board games, and when Chas asks if his father is listening, he’s greeted with an angry shout of “Yes, I am! I think you’re having a nervous breakdown.” A line like that doesn’t sound too intense, but when it’s Gene Hackman, it gets a whole new life coming out of his mouth.)

There is so much to adore in the performance Gene Hackman delivered as Royal Tenenbaum in Wes Anderson’s third (and still best) film. His capacity as an actor means that just as we feel the anger in his character’s face and voice when he realizes he’s being supplanted by someone entirely different than him as a new father figure, we feel the love and kindness in his face as his relationship with his children finally changes for the better when he actually is at death’s door. You can, of course, give a good deal of the credit to the script itself, which effectively shifts from tone to tone without a second’s glance and manages to be massively emotional in its final minutes, specifically because it pays off so much of what we know of these characters and the father who damaged them, even if he wasn’t actively trying to do so.

You can look at so much of Hackman’s career and understand how much of a titan he was across decades’ worth of work on the big screen. Obviously, seeing as Hackman had retired from acting a couple decades ago, something about his loss at the age of 95 may feel slightly less sad; this is not a case of someone who died too young, or at the height of consistently delivering excellent work. But just because Gene Hackman hadn’t acted in years doesn’t mean that his loss isn’t keenly felt by many people across the world who may have known him for so many distinctive roles. And yet, as many great performances as he delivered, it’s a simple truth that his work in “The Royal Tenenbaums” is one of his very best performances, because he could still turn on the ferocity when he needed to, almost blowing his fellow performers off the screen with his energy and vitality.

A couple of my colleagues spoke about Hackman and his career on today’s episode of the /Film Daily podcast:

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