Movie Review (& Philosophical Rumination): The Royal Tenenbaums (& Forgiveness)

(Editorial note- I wrote most of this on 2/27/25)

This is going to sound so made up but you have to trust me that all of this did actually happen to me today (bc it's true and also I just do not care enough to lie in a blog that like 3 people read!!!).

This morning I googled "How to forgive someone".

I have been struggling with the inability to forgive a beloved family member who hurt me very deeply about two years ago. I want to forgive her so bad, because I love her so dearly, but I've been so hurt, and I don't know how to.

I think we're in a one sided cold war that she doesn’t know about. Or maybe she does, and I'm too self-absorbed to realize it. I don't know which one would be worse (I actually do).

I'm so tired of being hurt and angry. I think that once you harden your heart to someone, it's so hard to soften it again. And your heart just grows harder and harder with time. The clock ticks so so fast now. I know I don't have forever, as I get older I feel so conscious of the fact that we are so so mortal, and life is so short and sudden and unpredictable sometimes. (Lately there's been several cyclists who have been killed in hit and runs in my city. I cycle everywhere I can and everytime I see a news story about a cyclist death, I think "shit dude, that could have been me"). But I just do not know how to forgive this person. Not right now at least.

I feel like it's been weighing me down so much lately. In quiet moments, I often think about her. Sometimes I think about happy times we had together. And then I feel so angry at myself for hanging onto this anger for so long, and so sad for the time that I've spent angry that I know I won't be able to get back. And sometimes I think about how she hurt me and it makes me feel so angry at her and everyone else involved, and that makes me feel sad.

Feeling sad and angry is the worst emotional combo y'all, I do not recommend. 0/10 experience. (Seriously, is something in retrograde????)

Also this morning, Gene Hackman and his wife were found dead. This is sad because he is a popular actor, but also news to me because apparently Gene Hackman has lived in New Mexico (where my heart calls home forever), since the 80s. I have never seen this man around Santa Fe, but if he lived here longer than I’ve been alive, and had an opinion on green vs red, then I embrace him as a fellow local.

Anyway, news of Gene Hackman's death made me think "I should watch a Gene Hackman movie tonight". I scrolled through his movies and was like "hell yeah Royal Tenenbaums".

This movie came out in 2001, the year I turned 10. I obviously did not watch this movie as a 10 year old, but I do remember walking the rows of DVDs at my local (long defunct) movie rental store (shout out to Silver Screen in Clovis!) and seeing the simple hand drawn DVD box cover art, and thinking "that looks so boring and weird".

I haven't watched The Royal Tenenbaums in many years. I can't remember the last time I watched it. And I can't really remember the first time I watched it. I know that I watched it as a teenager, probably when it aired sometime on HBO in the oughts or something. I watched it numerous times. I thought that Margot Tenenbaum was so cool. I loved the quirky costumes. The settings. The Wes Anderson of it all.

Watching an old movie you haven't seen in ages, that you used to watch a lot feels like having dinner with an old friend who never changes (in a good way). But it also makes you realize how drastically you've changed (maybe in a good way).

If you don't want movie spoilers for a 24 year old movie, turn back now.

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Ok so this movie slaps, and is actually deep, but some of it I'm like "wtf Wes Anderson?"

The movie is about a family in an unnamed NYC in 2001, but everything looks like it's from the 70s.

The family is eccentric and seem to be modern landed gentry down on their luck in a way that is too pathetic to make them Jane Austen-esque, but in a way that is perfectly Wes Anderson-esque. (Wes Anderson is basically Sofia Coppola for men.)

The story begins when the family patriarch Royal (Gene Hackman), who is a conman/ bad dad/ bad husband/ overall bad person, hears that his estranged wife, Etheline, is going to marry her boyfriend, Henry, and sets off a con, pretending to be dying of cancer in order to win back Etheline and his family. Etheline has like no real personality other than being a mom. (One of my beefs with Wes Anderson is that I don’t think he can really write female characters well. They're never as complex as his male characters and they seem less deep. But also I haven't watched a Wes Anderson movie in forever so please let me know if there's a movie I'm missing.) (In retrospect, I kind of don't know if this movie passes the Bechdel test even. There's only two female characters, Etheline and Margot, and they have maybe like 3 scenes alone together, 2 with dialogue, and it’s mostly about Margot’s romantic entanglements.)

Royal and Etheline have three adult children who used to be child geniuses, but have since burned out spectacularly.

Chas, the finance genius, hates Royal because Royal played favorites and was shitty to Chas. At this point, Chas has two sons aged like 8-10, who have never met Royal. They don't even know that Royal is alive. When Chas gets the call that Royal is dying, he tells the boys and they're like "but you already said he was dead". Honestly, I get why Chas did it.

Then there is Richie, who is a retired pro tennis player who is truly madly deeply in love with his sister Margot....

I know.....

We'll get into it.

When I was a teenager, I LOVED Margot, the Tenenbaum’s only daughter. Margot is a washed up playwright. She secretly chain smokes and wears too much eyeliner and runs around having clandestine affairs. She has a bob and a Birkin.

Anyway, the Tenenbaums used to be widely renowned child geniuses. Then they all flamed out spectacularly. Richie has to retire after he has a public breakdown after Margot gets married. Margot hasn't written a good play in like maybe ever. And Chas's wife dies in an airplane accident (!!), that his boys were also on but survived (!!). Chas, understandably, spirals out. He becomes so afraid of life. 

This was one of the movie elements that hit different for me now in my 30s. When I contemplate being a parent, I hesitate. I don’t know that there is any bigger act of global optimism, of hope, than intentionally becoming a parent. The world is TERRIFYING. There is so much in it designed to hurt us. There is so much that even unintentionally hurts us. And having a child seems like wearing your heart outside of your body. You are willing to pour the absolute best of yourself into another being, and then turn that child loose in a world where so much can harm them and there’s absolutely nothing you could do to stop most of it. What sort of rational person would seek to do that? Parents, you are braver than you think. 

(Oh but to love a curly haired, pure of heart version of yourself in miniature)

Anyway, back to movie plot: Richie and Margot are in love. Or really Richie is in love with Margot and Margot is too destructive to be like “hey let’s not”.  I think that when I watched this movie as a teen, I wasn't horrified enough about this. I think maybe I thought their story was romantic, YIKES!

(In my defense, I was such an emo, romance-obsessed teen girl, like of course I ate up their storyline.)

Richie’s opening scene in the film is him dictating a telegram to his best friend, Eli, confessing his love for his sister Margot.

Like what kind of sociopath does that???? Writes a message to their best friend being like “I’m down bad for my sister”????????

Wes Anderson rationalizes this by having the characters mention at like every turn that Margot is adopted, so she isn’t blood related to Richie or really any of the Tenenbaums. (They were all raised together as siblings though so like???)

Anyway, this gets leaked almost immediately by Eli because a) it’s an insane thing to happen and b) Eli is having an affair with Margot, who is married.

There’s a lot of talk throughout the movie about “genius”, who has it, who is it, who is not. In this universe, genius = Tenenbaum, and Eli is desperately trying to attain it. Margot notably NEVER gives him the title.

(Every character in this movie looks soooo coooool.)

Due to a series of events (all of the Tenenbaum kids crashing out for a variety of reasons), they all decide to move back in to their childhood giant brownstone, still owned by Etheline. Royal, lacking two pennies to rub together, and upset that Etheline is engaged to her accountant Henry, pretends to have stomach cancer to garner sympathy from his family, and weasel his way back in to the family brownstone. For the first time in decades, all of the Tenenbaums are under one roof. 

As expected, there is conflict. Royal tries to develop a relationship with Chas’s sons, who again, until recently, thought he was dead. Because Chas’s grief has manifested in him becoming terrified of the world, he is raising his boys to be the same way. And even though Chas tries his best to thwart Royal getting close to the boys, the boys love him anyway.

^ best scene in the movie and such a good representation of unabashed joy.

Margot’s husband hires a private investigator and figures out that she’s been having clandestine affairs like basically her entire life, shattering his and Richie’s hearts. Richie, in response to his sister (!) hooking up with his best friend (?!) makes a suicide attempt that he survives. This scene where he’s staring into a mirror and cutting off all of his hair while Elliot Smith plays is a scene I also think about a lot.

(I've always been jealous of a man’s ability to grow out his beard, and then just shave it all off. Like men can wear it for the world to see as a symbol of pain, of regeneration, of growth. All I have to communicate those ideas with the world is this shitty blog.)

Henry figures out that Royal has been faking stomach cancer and reveals this to the family, mostly because Royal was a gigantic dick to Henry/everyone. The family throws Royal out of the house and cuts ties.

Finally hitting rock bottom, Royal decides that he wants to be better. He agrees to give Etheline the divorce he’s been fighting forever so that she can marry Henry. He sits down with Margot and realizes how shitty of a dad he’s been to her basically because she’s adopted and emo. And he comforts Chas after he has a meltdown when Eli almost kills his boys (!!!).

When I used to watch The Royal Tenenbaums, my least favorite character used to be Chas. At the beginning of the movie, Chas is grieving his recently passed wife in an airplane accident. His grief manifests itself in fear and anger. He's so scared of everything all the time. Natural disasters, urban disasters, things that could hurt the kids or make them turn out amoral. Chas has been so hurt by life that he becomes afraid of it.

I used to think that Chas was shrill and deeply uncool. I didn't understand why he was so mean to Royal. I didn't understand how decades of hurt could fester. I didn't understand the pain of so obviously being loved less, the un-favorite.

The movie works because Royal realizes, eventually, how much of an ass he’s been. How he’s failed his family. Why he wants to be better, especially because he wants to forge a relationship with his estranged grandsons. And how he recognizes that he needs to actually do the work of fixing his past mistakes. And then he does the actual work.

I started crying before the end of the movie, right when Royal walks up to Chas on the street after Eli almost crashes his car into Chas's sons. Royal walks up to Chas and says "I'm sorry I let you down". I continued crying when, in a parallel to an early scene, Royal goes to Margot’s newest play and enthusiastically watches front and center in the crowd. And I was full on bawling by the time that Royal dies, and Chas is the one holding his hand at the end.

When I used to watch this movie, I don't think I ever really related to one of the characters or felt sympathetic towards them. But now when I rewatch it in my 30s, I vibe with every single main-ish character in some sort of way.

I mentioned above that Chas used to be my least favorite character when I watched this as a teenager. My favorite was always cool-as-hell Margot. (In fact, Margot is so objectively cool that Vogue did a retrospective on the character’s wardrobe for the 20th anniversary of the film.)

Clearly, I didn’t grow up to be the kind of girl that Vogue would write a fashion retrospective about. Now, when I watch it as a 33 year old, I think the characters have flipped in my mind. I think that Chas has the best arc.

Chas gets to forgive.

Bella Life Movie Rating: 8/10. There is nothing wrong with this movie at all, it is very very good, it's just that I rated Titanic and Twilight like 10/10, and if I rate everything a 10/10, then the rating system here at the Bella Life 2 will just have no meaning at all. I can't have that.

Closing thoughts: Re-consuming art, now in my 30s ,that I used to love as a younger person is a thing I've been doing recently and it's crazy because how I feel about the art (book, movie, television series) is always different and deeper now. Like before it was seeing a diamond from only one facet, it's so much richer with the different facets now.

What I used to love about this movie was the vibe, how cool it looked, how quirky and weird all the characters were, how funny it was. On a deeper level, I love that this is ultimately a tale of redemption. Richie and Margot get real about being in love with each other, Etheline finds happiness with Henry, and Royal redeems himself to every member of his family.

(I know that their storyline is insane but I absolutely need a couple’s pic of me and D where we look this cool.)

Ultimately, googling "How to forgive someone" is not helpful at all. The first result is an AI answer that google auto populates (I hate this, I don't want it, it's never helpful, plus AI is bad for the environment/a waste of water at a time when we really cannot be wasting water). The first non-AI response was a reddit post filled with a bunch of trite advice from straight up morons. People on there were like "you have to forget." Tf? No, I don't. I will never forget this. I know that already. It will haunt me, probably forever. You know how someone can like absorb a trauma into their DNA, gifting that literally genetically inherited generational trauma to your descendants for generations? This would be a deep betrayal that I could absorb into my DNA, into my physical cells on a molecular level. This has changed me. I will never be the same person that I was, and my relationship with this person will never be the way it was before, even if I forgive them. (I think I read about the trauma getting absorbed into DNA re: the famine in Ireland. The trauma changed those people's DNA and you can still see effects of it today, even in Americans who have Irish ancestors.)

(I’m polishing this on my cell phone during my lunch break so I don’t have access to the full Blogger toolbar to insert a YouTube music video—- but imagine Apple by Charli XCX inserted here.)

ee cummings once wrote “i carry your heart with me, i carry it in my heart”. I carry her betrayal with me, I carry that grief in my heart, always.

(If astrology isn’t real than why am I a Scorpio moon writing the most Scorpio moon coded shit in existence lol)

I don't think that forgiveness means forgetting. That's so trite and dumb. I think it means growing passed the hurt somehow. Like of course you know whatever happened happened, the best you can do is heal and grow yourself and move on, maybe with the other person still in your life or maybe not. I think that it's possible to forgive someone and still choose not to have them in your life at all. Or maybe you do. Idk. The point is that I think forgiveness is deeply personal. I think it's complex. I think it's more of a spiritual journey. I hope that someday I can be like Chas and forgive.

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March 2026 post-script: spring healed something in me. I forgave her 💚. Now onward.

Editorial post-script: I had a bunch of stray observations in my Notes app from when I watched the movie that I was gonna use to flesh out this blog post, but my phone ran out of storage and I deleted all of the Notes before I remembered I had important stuff in there (like the combination for my gym locker- that’s lost now forever!). But I do remember having notes about how much I enjoyed the scene where Chas chases Eli through the house at the wedding, about how this movie is maybe the best that Luke Wilson has ever looked, and how I cannot not laugh out loud when Royal, meeting his grandsons for the first time, and trying to say something nice about their recently deceased mom says “I’m very sorry about your loss. Your mother was a terribly attractive woman.” You’re just going to have to trust me that I had numerous hilarious takes.