— Roger Ebert, reviewing Moonrise Kingdom:

[Bill] Murray is always right for a role in an Anderson film, and I wonder if it’s because they share a bemused sadness. You can’t easily imagine Murray playing a manic or a cut-up; his eyes, which have always been old eyes, look upon the world and waver between concern and disappointment.

In Anderson’s films, there is a sort of resignation to the underlying melancholy of the world; he is the only American director I can think of whose work reflects the Japanese concept mono no aware, which describes a wistfulness about the transience of things.