Rushmore is a strange, funny, and deeply sad movie about a boy who wants everything and gets nothing. Wes Anderson made it in 1998, and it remains one of the best debuts in American cinema. Jason Schwartzman plays Max Fischer, a 15-year-old scholarship student at Rushmore Academy in Houston, who is brilliant at every activity except schoolwork. He is a genius at debate, fencing, chess, and drama club, but he fails classes and gets placed on “sudden death academic probation.”
The plot follows Max’s obsession with Rosemary Cross, a new first-grade teacher played by Olivia Williams. He tries to win her over by keeping the Latin curriculum alive and building an aquarium on the baseball field. His friend Dirk Calloway, played by Mason Gamble, gets caught up in the chase too, and the film turns into a war between two friends for a woman neither of them can fully understand.
Trailer, via Film4.
Max Fischer’s World
Max is the center of everything, and Anderson and Owen Wilson built the character from a precise set of traits. He is arrogant, sophisticated, and utterly sincere. He believes he can change the world through his projects, and he is completely wrong about it. The film spends its first half showing Max’s brilliance, and the second half letting that brilliance break him.
Schwartzman is excellent. He brings a nervous energy to the role, a mix of smugness and desperation that makes Max feel both charming and exhausting. He is a teenager who acts like a grown man, and the film trusts us to see that the two things are not the same.
Herman Blume’s Loneliness
Bill Murray plays Herman Blume, a rich industrialist who is also in love with Rosemary. He is Max’s mentor and his rival, and the film spends a lot of time with the two men together. Blume is lonely and bitter, and his friendship with Max is the most honest relationship in the film.
Murray was paid $9,000 for his work, which Anderson estimated as scale. He was drawn to the script’s writing, calling it “precise,” and said the film was about “the struggle to retain civility and kindness in the face of extraordinary pain.” That is exactly what the film delivers, even when it is being silly.
Rosemary Cross and the Chase
Rosemary Cross is the object of desire, but the film never makes her a prize. She rejects Max’s advances because of their age difference, and the film treats that rejection as serious. Olivia Williams plays her with a quiet strength, and the chase feels like it matters to her too.
Dirk Calloway gets pulled into the fight, and his mother, Mrs. Calloway, becomes a subject of rumor. The film uses Dirk’s involvement to show how Max’s schemes affect everyone around him, not just the people he targets.
The Academy’s Rules
The headmaster, Nelson Guggenheim, played by Brian Cox, is the man who eventually expels Max. He warns Max repeatedly that he will be kicked out if he fails one more class, and he watches as Max ignores the warning. Guggenheim is a stern figure, but the film also shows him as a man who cares about the school’s reputation.
The expulsion comes at the ground-breaking ceremony for the aquarium. Max builds the project without asking permission, and Guggenheim stops it. The film makes the moment feel like a loss, not a victory.
The Soundtrack
The music in Rushmore is worth noting. The soundtrack draws heavily on bands tied to the British Invasion of the 1960s, giving the film a distinct musical identity. This is not a film that depends on irony to be clever. It uses songs that feel like they belong to the characters, and the music helps set the tone of each scene.
The Writing
Anderson and Owen Wilson wrote the script together, and the writing is sharp and controlled. The dialogue is full of jokes, but the jokes are always pointing somewhere else. The film is funny, but it is also a tragedy about a boy who cannot stop pushing.
The casting process was massive. More than 1,800 teenagers from the United States, Canada, and Britain were considered for the role of Max Fischer. Jason Schwartzman was found through Sofia Coppola, his cousin, and he showed up to his audition wearing a preparatory-school blazer and a self-made Rushmore patch. Anderson almost gave up on the film when he could not find an actor for Max, but he decided Schwartzman was right for the part.
Legacy
Rushmore helped launch Schwartzman’s career, and it gave Bill Murray a second career in independent cinema. The film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 2016, deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
At the 1999 Independent Spirit Awards, Anderson won Best Director and Murray won Best Supporting Male. Murray was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. Both actors went on to appear in many of Anderson’s subsequent films.
Final Word
Rushmore is a film about obsession, failure, and the limits of talent. It is a comedy, but it is not a happy one. The jokes land, but the sadness stays with you. It is a film about a boy who wants to be remembered, and it remembers him.
- Max Fischer, played by Jason Schwartzman, is the driving force of the film.
- Herman Blume, played by Bill Murray, gives the film its heart.
- Rosemary Cross, played by Olivia Williams, gives the film its gravity.
- Nelson Guggenheim, played by Brian Cox, gives the film its rules.
The film is not perfect. Some scenes run long, and the pacing slows in the middle. But the ending lands hard, and the film earns its sadness. It is a film about a boy who cannot stop trying, and it never loses patience with him.
Rushmore is a great film, and it holds up. It is a comedy that understands grief, and a tragedy that understands humor. It is a film about a boy who wants to be remembered, and it remembers him.
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