The Beauty Of…Rango (2011)

When you think of movies underwritten by existentialist themes, you might not think of animation. It’s even more unlikely that you would think of Rango (2011), a movie centered around an eccentric chameleon thrown into the chaos of a western desert town. But that's what makes Rango so great.

It’s not flashy or self-indulgent, but it still has hidden substance for those that look close enough to discover it. Sure, it’s a witty comedy about a funny lizard, but if you are looking for more than an excuse to munch on popcorn, Rango offers a nuanced tribute to the power of existentialist characters.

I first watched Rango when I was 12, and I won't lie, I thought almost nothing of it. However, when looking for a movie to write my senior year theory essay on, I stumbled back upon it and I'm so glad it did.

Not only does Rango have a captivating story about self-discovery, its visuals more than match the spectacle, offering rich imagery to compliment its acting and script. The animation is crisp and specific, and its often outrageous scenery is full of potential meaning to be unpacked. I would love to go through the whole movie, but in the interest of brevity and not losing an audience, I’ll focus on just one piece of repeated imagery: the framing of Rango himself.

There are three distinct times throughout the film when our protagonist is framed by some sort of rectangular object. Each happens at a pivotal point in the story, and the progressive succession of these moments is key to the development of Rango as a character. The first of these three moments occurs barely 10 minutes into the film, before Rango’s story truly begins.

After a montage of Rango humoring himself by acting out various characters that he’s been working on (for himself), he approaches the screen and subtly breaks the fourth wall by drawing a box around himself on the glass that contains him.

Timestamp: (00:03:42)

Yes, he is framing himself, which first looks like a clear indicator that he is controlling who he is. However, one must also take into account what he is being framed within; his own terrarium. Rango is tricking himself into believing that he is the master of his own identity, but in reality, he is being defined by his surroundings and nothing more. This may seem like a bold claim, but Rango is an actor: he spends his time playing characters, embodying other people’s identities.

So, it's easy to see how identity could be a focal point of this character’s life. In a world where he has almost no control over his life, the one thing Rango can control is himself. In a world where he has almost no control over his life, the one thing Rango can control is himself. His obsession with making an identity for himself is only logical. He makes the screen through which he is to be viewed the glass of his enclosure, defining himself by it just as a movie character is defined by the screen on which they are viewed. Just as a poorly written or two-dimensional character is forgotten as soon as their screen turns off, Rango no longer knows who he is when his tank shatters.

Here, he realizes he can be anybody, he can become a character and take on one of his acting roles. This thought process is visualized once again through framing, as Rango looks into the mirror of the bar and sees himself within the bounds of a broken picture frame.

Timestamp: (00:22:45)

The town is giving him an opportunity to ‘re-frame' himself, an opportunity he takes without a second thought. But it's important to note that although he is choosing who he is going to be, his new identity is “framed” by the town, meaning this identity can only exist within its bounds. He has found a new screen to play a character on, but once again that is all it is: a new screen. When he leaves the town, that identity fades as well. Up to this point, both attempts to concretize an identity are illusionary, and Rango is once again left as an empty character.

The third and final instance of framing is Rango’s character-defining climax. Upon his exile from the town, Rango enters a dream sequence in which he wakes up in a bardo-like space shown once earlier in the film. There, he meets a man named the Spirit of the West, who is a spitting image of Clint Eastwood and a direct reference to the Man with No Name.

For the uninitiated, the Man with No Name is the protagonist of the Dollars movie trilogy and the perfect vessel of existentialism. Without a name, this character is known only by his actions, determining who he is through acts of pure free will. Rango’s third framing sequence is characterized by this man, who not only transcends the need for a name, but transcends the typical character boundary of the screen as well.

The Spirit of the West is no longer a character, but an idea: the fleeting existentialism captured by the idea of the Western genre and the lifestyle of self-definition it depicts. And in Rango’s final frame, he is put in a box by this very idea.

Timestamp: (01:26:08)

Unlike the foregoing scenes, Rango isn’t framed by his location: he’s framed by the embodiment of existentialism itself. And so he finally becomes Rango, realizing that, as the Spirit puts it, “It's the deeds that make the man”. As Rango the character finally becomes defined by his actions, Rango the film becomes a tribute to cinema’s power to make a character so much more than he appears to be on screen.

Rango is a silly, wildly entertaining movie about Johnny Depp as a lizard. But it’s also a self-referential endorsement of existentialism and an ode to the power of the Western genre.