Wes Anderson’s filmography is chock full of classic soundtracks, and the director often uses sound to convey mood in a scene rather than spoken dialogue. A few great examples include Elliot Smith’s Needle in the Hay in The Royal Tenenbaums, Sigur Ros’ Staralfur in Steve Zissou and the Life Aquatic and The Who’s ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’ in Rushmore. While I might get round to analysing some of those examples in future editions of this series, for now I’ll be focusing on Anderson’s finest animated caper (Isle of Dogs was entertaining, but it wasn’t in the same league as this).
As you’ll know if you’ve read Roald Dahl’s brilliant book, Boggis, Bunce and Bean aren’t the nicest of dudes. When Mr Fox starts stealing too much of their goods for their liking, the three farmers try to take vengeance by digging into the ground to find and kill Mr Fox and the rest of his family. In typical American style, all the bad guys are British (Boggis, Bunce and Bean are voiced by Robin Hurlstone, Hugo Guiness and Michael Gambon – yes, Dumbledore is a bad guy here, I’m afraid), and all the good guys are American (Mr Fox and Mrs Fox – here titled Foxy Fox and Felicity Fox – are voiced by George Clooney and Meryl Streep).
At the start of the sequence, Bean orders several vehicles to take down the fox family, requesting the items for ‘immediate delivery’. Once he has said these exact words, we aptly cut immediately to the image of the three vehicles ploughing forward in stop motion. The title ‘The Terrible Tractors’ appears above the sleeping foxes, quickly disappearing as The Rolling Stones’ classic tune Street Fighting Man starts playing and Mr Fox wakes up in unison shortly before his family members. The group start frantically digging as we zoom up to see the farmers and hear their maniacal laughter. In a genius moment of sound design, the song is muffled as we move underground and listen to the strained conversation between Mr Fox and his son Ash (Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman), who shoves sand in his ears to block out his father’s speech. The song then blares into full force again as we go back up to witness the farmer’s destruction and the progressively diminished hill. It’s a short sequence, but one that certainly benefits from some iconic rockin’ beats.