One of Bertolt Brecht's philosophies on theater was that the audience should see the behind the scenes goings on of the play. If there was a fan blowing fake snow flakes onto the stage the audience should see the fan. He thought this was impotent because it reminds the audience that they are watching a play and therefore will ask themselves, "what is this play trying to say?" An argument could be made that Wes Anderson tries to make the audience realize that they are watching a movie through his use or mise-en-scene. The precise composition of his shots along with his generic and ridicules costuming, and camera movements all contribute to creating a film that is so obviously controlled and unnatural that it forces its audience to realize that this is in fact a movie.
             Almost every single shot of The Royal Tenenbaums has its subject directly in the center of the frame or exactly in one of the vertical thirds of the frame. In the scene where Margot Tenenbaum (Gwyneth Paltrow) steps off the Green Line bus to meet Richie Tenenbaum (Luck Wilson) she is exactly in the middle of the frame and is also framed by the two parallel crosswalk lines painted on the road. There is a shot of Richie walking over to take a picture with a fan. During his walking Richie never leaves the center of the frame, he is rigidly placed there even as the camera does a track shot staying parallel with him. When the camera movement stops there is a huge ocean liner with disappearing lines perfectly framed in the left third of the screen. In fact there are wonderful uses of line throughout the film – as Margot steps off the bus there are thick green horizontal lines painted on the busses behind her from one end of the wide angle shot to the other. In a slow-motion dolly of Richie we see a line of sailors walking, almost serially, behind him.
             From the sailors wearing their uniforms to Richie, the tennis pro, wearing his headband to ...