7) Ooh La La – Rushmore
Martin Scorsese once dubbed Wes Anderson as the next Scorsese. High praise, indeed. And although both filmmakers have styles so distinct that it would be hard to come up with a list of similarities between them, both Scorsese and Anderson have a thing for dropping the needle on a good rock song at the right moment. Probably the most memorable needle drop in a Wes Anderson film was a literal one, in the last scene of his early masterwork Rushmore.
Many of Anderson’s film focus on the tattered relationships between children and their parents. In Rushmore, that comes forward in the dynamic between prodigal Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) and Herman Blume (Bill Murray), the latter being a symbolic father figure and rival for Max. Both men fall for the same woman – Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams) – and act like children and buffoons in attempts to woo her. Appropriately, both end up learning a thing or two about human compassion and behavior. In the moment, all of the characters are dancing gracefully, happy and wiser than they were at the film’s start.
When The Faces’ Ooh La La finally plays at the end of the film, its lyrics about men finding better understanding about how to treat a woman right perfectly encapsulate the previous hour-and-a-half. As one of the verses goes, referring to women: “They come on strong and it ain’t too long / Before they make you feel a man / But love is blind and you soon will find / You’re just a boy again.”
Anderson is no stranger to using lovely acoustic melodies under playful or poignant scenes (see Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard in The Royal Tenenbaums, or Life on Mars? from The Life Aquatic.) This one, a culmination of the romantic yearning and rivalry that spiced up the film to that point, feels just right, as the curtain drops. What a lovely grace note to end a lovely film.