Rushmore: Jason Kills Bill

every once in a while, you see a movie that brings back your faith in celluloid, and to me that was exactly what happned with "Rushmore"

Max Fishcher (Jason Swhartzman), is an excentric and brilliant scolarship student in Rushmore Academy, the top notch private school, his brilliance doesn't come from academic achievment, but from a huge amount of extracurricular activities, you name it he is there, wrestling, bees farms, karrting, theater (where he is particularly brilliant), collecting stamps, he meets Howard Blume (Bill Murray) when this last delivers a very acid commencment speech, Mr Blume, is particulary desillusioned with life, although being a rich industrialist and has tons of money, a fast friendship forms between the two, each finding in the other qualities he admires, but soon enough all this turns into something else, after they both fall for the beautiful and melancholic first grade teacher in Rushmore Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams)


well let me say this, first of all, it's hard to be not envious of the great talent of Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou),, but the most stunning fact in this movie, is that Jason Shwartzman shines more then Bill Murray, which is something really near impossible, this half unkown actor, son of Talia Sheir (Adriane in Rocky, remember ??) and cousin of Sofia Coppola, is really the revelation of this movie, the way he plays his character is both ethearal and powerful, well Bill Murray is excellent as he always is, but frankly the bows go to Jason

So this is a great movie, in terms of story, and characters and filmmaking, and it's really close to theater format (like the excellent "closer" by mike nichols), and it has wonderful theather inside it as Max Fisher is obviously a great theater person, but this love triangle has such a power, just by the force of the excentricity and the despair of it's characters, that equals or surpasses the power of Bermuda Triangle !

So if you wanna see the prequel of "lost in translation" in terms of Bill Murray's tired character see this movie (just because Sofia Copolla spotted him in this movie) this movie is at the end of the day, an ode to all these forgotten brilliant people, wo are in fact the true engine of any living society, so please do see it, because it's kind off the lost diamond of the movie "Titanic" except that Titanic was a super boring movie

Jebiness: 3.5/5