The Prologue (from The Royal Tenenbaums)

The Royal Tenenbaums (Specifically, The Prologue), Wes Anderson, United States, 2001, 7 minutes.
Source: iTunes

The Prologue of Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums details the lives of the three Tenebaum children growing up with their mother, Etheline Tenenbaum, and handling the emotional neglect of their father, Royal Tenenbaum. Their parents separate, and the rest of the prologue is their slow alienation from Royal.

I chose to write about this snippet of The Royal Tenenbaums because it serves as a narrative on its own. While the rest of the film is just as enjoyable to watch, watching the prologue alone is just as fulfilling (if you like characters' futures to be open-ended, that is). Within the 7 minutes of film, the audience gets a great deal of detail about each of the children, and learns who they are.

The Prologue is entertaining simply because of the details in the screenplay. Each child's chronicle had its own anecdotes which allows the audience to experience each of the Tenenbaums' memories with Royal. In general I love Wes Anderson's style, and I think the short amount of film given to The Prologue explains the eighteen year span of childhood quite sufficiently.