The Fantastic Mr. Fox or, A Midlife Crisis Observed

There’s a certain brilliance, albeit rather unhinged, to all of director Wes Anderson’s works, but few take this to quite the superlative that may be found in The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Color, humor, and quasi-ridiculous attention to detail leave viewers either amazed or baffled, but certainly not blandly satisfied.

Against a rhapsodic background formed by the combination of these elements, Anderson tells the story of a fox’s battle to save his family and confront a sense of dissatisfaction with his life. Like the fox, we the viewers are left to analyze these same issues, as well as the feral canine himself, and judge if he is a fantastic Mr. Fox, after all.

The story begins with Mr. Foxy Fox and his wife Felicity idyllically killing chickens at a local farm in tandem, when they are caught in a trap. Apropos of the situation, Felicity reveals to Foxy that she is pregnant. He promises to her that if they escape from the cage, he will find a different—and safer—job.

Years later, the fox family (now plus one) live in a modest, yet not unhomey house. The family is safe financially and physically, but our protagonist is undergoing a midlife crisis. He buys a new house against his lawyer’s advice, not far from the estates of the notorious farmers Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. Foxy, unwilling to remain chained to an average domestic life any longer, begins raiding the farmers, fully aware of the risk involved.

Sure enough, these raids bring down the wrath of the farmers on not only Foxy, but his family and the whole anthropomorphized woodland populace. A series of events ensues. Foxy loses his tail, finds his friends, loses his nephew, loses his friends, loses his son, finds his son (who found his nephew, found foxy’s tail, and lost his attitude), and finds (with his refound friends) a supermarket where they find all the food they will ever need.

Now it is true, as referenced above, that Mr. Fox did indeed save everyone, and so in many respects he is fantastic. But the fact that it all worked out in the end was mainly due to dumb luck. Foxy spends the greater part of the movie fixing what was caused by his dissatisfaction with life. 

The translation of the crisis, and indeed its grave consequence, from this fox with George Clooney’s voice to the modern American is not a difficult one. One of the greatest temptations of our day is dissatisfaction with our lives in their monotony and seeming lack of direction.

Dissatisfaction is the sickness in the mind of every adulterer, the drug that convinces us that reckless spending on a fancy car or (in Foxy’s case) a bigger house will give us lasting happiness. How many families, not unlike Mr. Fox’s,  have been ruined through a desire to have a little spice in life?

This is not to say that all dissatisfaction is evil. Quite on the contrary, dissatisfaction with the world is what led some of the greatest saints and apologists to the faith: St. Mary Magdalene, St. Benedict, St. Faustina, and C.S. Lewis. They saw that all the world could possibly offer is still “so much rubbish” (Phil. 3:8).

It is our part, then, to be dissatisfied with this mundane world, but to seek true satisfaction in the Lord. If we deny ourselves daily and take up our crosses, we’ll see that the things we hold onto actually hold us back. When, like Mr. Fox, we are tempted to look for peace and happiness in created things and thrills, may we remember the words of another dissatisfied man, St. Augustine: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Featured image courtesy of Lauren Jolly Roberts via Flickr