Summary
Chapter 7. Royal is working at the hotel manning the elevator, and Richie comes to visit him. When Richie boards the elevator, he asks his father why he became an elevator operator. “We’re broke,” says Royal matter-of-factly, before adding, “I wanted to prove I could pay my dues and whatnot. I just hope somebody notices.” Richie then asks Royal for advice on what to do about his love for Margot. They discuss it on the roof and Royal is a little taken aback, wondering if his son and daughter’s affair is illegal. “I don’t think so, we’re not related by blood,” says Richie, but Royal still isn’t sure. Suddenly, Royal gets a flash of conviction, and urges his son not to listen to his advice, and that he has to figure it out for himself, saying, “I wish I could tell you what to do, but I just can’t.” When Royal apologizes for not being a better father, Richie says he understands. All of a sudden, Richie recognizes his hawk, Mordecai, flying through the air. Mordecai lands and Richie can hardly believe that his beloved bird came back.
In the elevator, Richie begins to ask Royal for help dealing with Eli, and Royal is immediately on board. The scene shifts and we see Eli sitting around a coffee table with some friends sorting through a large assortment of drugs. There’s a knock on the door and Richie and Royal come in. Richie tells Eli that he wants to get him some help for his drug problem, sitting beside him and asking if they’re still friends. “I heard about you and Margot,” Richie says, and Eli apologizes, saying, “I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum, you know.” Richie hugs Eli as Eli admits that he has a drug problem and wants to get better. Eli leaves the room saying that he’s going to gather his stuff, but when Pagoda looks out the window, he sees that Eli is, in fact, running away and getting in a taxi.
Royal and Margot get ice cream at a fancy restaurant. Margot is anxious to leave quickly, but Royal convinces her to stay, telling her that Richie is in anguish over their affair. “Can’t a person be a shit their whole life and try to repair the damage?” Royal asks, when Margot doesn’t want to discuss it. Margot asks him to say her middle name, but he can’t remember it, even though it’s his mother’s name.
Royal throws pebbles up at a window at the Tenenbaums. When Uzi and Ari go to the window, Royal asks if they want to get burgers and go to the cemetery, but Chas closes the window on him. We see Royal visiting Chas’ wife’s grave. We then see Ethel and Henry coming out of Henry’s apartment, when Royal approaches them and serves Ethel divorce papers. He compliments Henry’s building as Ethel signs the papers, and congratulates the couple as he leaves. “I didn’t think so much of him at first, but now I get it, he’s everything that I’m not,” says Royal, pointing to Henry.
Chapter 8. We see an invitation for Ethel and Henry’s wedding at the Tenenbaum residence. A dirty cab pulls up and Royal gets out. Inside, Richie visits Henry as he gets ready, and Henry introduces Richie to his son, Walter. Chas comes in and talks to Henry about the fact that they’re both widowers.
Ethel gets ready in the mirror as Margot sucks on a nicotine inhaler. Outside, Royal speaks to the priest, when suddenly Eli, with face paint on, speeds and crashes his car into the front of the Tenenbaum residence. Chas rushes outside to make sure his sons are okay. They are, because Royal pulled them out of the way of the car. Just then, Eli pops his head out the window and asks if he hit anyone. Chas goes running after him, pushing the priest down the stairs in the process. Eli makes a run for it, but Chas apprehends him outside and fights him, eventually throwing him over the wall of the garden.
Chas jumps over the wall to confront Eli face to face. He lies down beside Eli, who asks if he hit the dog with his car, which he did. “I need help,” says Eli, to which Chas responds, “So do I.” Royal and Henry go to investigate what happened to Chas and Eli. On the way Royal says, “I’ve always been an asshole for as long as I can remember. That’s really just my style, but I’d really feel blue if I didn’t think you were going to forgive me.” Henry replies, “I don’t think you’re an asshole. I just think you’re a son of a bitch,” which satisfies Royal.
The priest is taken away in an ambulance after being pushed down the stairs. Elsewhere, Eli speaks to a policeman about what happened, and the policeman compliments his work as a writer. Ethel brings Ari and Uzi inside, and Royal buys a Dalmatian, named “Sparkplug,” from the firemen to give to Chas and the boys. Chas thanks his father and weeps a little, saying he’s had a rough year.
Later, Richie handles Mordecai on the roof, while Margot sits nearby. She pulls an old carton of cigarettes out of a hiding place on the roof. She lights two cigarettes and gives one to Richie, who takes it and smokes with her. The narrator begins to narrate in voiceover once again and we see the Tenenbaum men burying Buckley, the dog, in the backyard, then Ethel and Henry getting married, then Margot standing outside a theater where her new play is being produced, which he tells us ran for less than two weeks and got mixed reviews. The narrator then tells us that “Raleigh and Dudley went on a lecture tour” to promote their book, Eli went to rehab in North Dakota, and Richie started teaching tennis to kids.
We see Royal, Uzi, Ari, and Chas riding on the back of a garbage truck. The narrator tells us that Royal had a heart attack when he was 68, and Chas saw him die.
Everyone gathers for Royal’s funeral. “No one spoke at the funeral…but it was agreed among them that Royal would have found the event to be most satisfactory,” the narrator tells us.
Analysis
The film maintains its alignment with Royal throughout. By the end of the film, he hasn’t really learned how to be a better father, but he is certainly trying. On the roof, he listens to Richie describe his dilemma about Margot, and tries to offer some words of advice. When he finds himself out of his depth, he decides to take back everything he’s said and admits to his son that he doesn’t know how to advise him. Royal isn’t suited to talks about ethics or feelings, and can barely advise his kids on what to do to help themselves. At the end, it seems that perhaps the biggest lesson Royal has learned is the limitations of his own ability to be there, his inability to be accountable, and a way to admit that he isn’t a good father.
One way that Royal is able to be there for his children when they need it is when he accompanies Richie to Eli’s apartment. This confrontation is part intervention and part amends, as Richie tells his friend that he thinks he needs help, then forgives him for sleeping with Margot. Pagoda and Royal stand by listening to the conversation and bearing witness to Richie repairing his relationship with his old friend. While he has been absent and selfish for much of the rest of the movie, here Royal is able to step back and be a supportive father when Richie most needs it.
As a justification for his betrayal, Eli admits to Richie that he has always wanted to be a Tenenbaum. In a comic echo, Royal says, “Me too,” and then Pagoda says, “Me too.” It seems that everyone in the film, even the patriarch of the Tenenbaums himself, wants to be a Tenenbaum. While the family’s glory has faded in the eyes of the public, and the precocious Tenenbaum children have not lived up to their promise as children, the dream and fantasy of the family unit still holds a certain promise in the eyes of its members and friends. The title uses the father’s name to give the family name an elevated status, as though they are a royal family. The characters search to reestablish and earn their place in the once-illustrious coterie, and to live up to some kind of abstract hype.
The film comes to a chaotic climax when Eli, clearly high on drugs, drives his car into the Tenenbaum residence, causing damage to the building and killing Ari and Uzi’s dog. Chas then chases Eli through the house and throws him over a wall. The chase and fight are cartoonish and comical, and no one in the film is a very skilled or accomplished fighter. In the process, Chas manages to push the priest for the wedding down a flight of stairs, injuring his ankle. Yet again, violence bursts forth in unexpected and over-the-top ways, a cathartic answer for the stilted and unaddressed conflicts between the characters.
The film ends on a bittersweet note with the death of Royal. While riding on the back of a garbage truck with Ari, Uzi, and now Chas, Royal suffers a heart attack. His idiosyncratic indulgences come back to get him in the end, and he winds up dying in the back of an ambulance. His untimely death ensures that Royal Tenenbaum, in spite of being the patriarch of the family, remains a marginal figure, neither beloved nor deified. The silence of his funeral, which the narrator suspects Royal would have found “satisfactory,” mirrors the ambivalence that those close to him feel. Royal becomes a kind of cult figure, a shadowy fixture of an unusual family, but a man who lived his life heartily, if not thoughtfully.
