Flipping through "The French Dispatch"
Wes Anderson delivers another delight.
Last Tuesday was Election Day, which meant my kids had the day off school. I took the day off work to spend some time with them. I took Monday off as well, making a long Halloween weekend for myself, and decided to do something I hadn’t done since the pre-pandemic days: take in a double feature.
I dropped the kids off at the bus stop and went straight to the local theater for the first show of the day, which was at about 9:20 a.m. I bought a coffee and went to see the first film, Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho, in a completely empty theater. I pushed the footrest out on the recliner, engaged the heating on the seats and didn’t move until it was time to go across the theater to Wes Anderson’s latest.
It was interesting to go from Soho, where Edgar Wright tries something new, immediately into The French Dispatch, in which Anderson confirms he’s quite happy where he’s at, thank you very much.
As I joked with Perry on a recent episode of We’re Watching Here, the only review you need for this is, “it’s a Wes Anderson movie.” If you’re a fan of his twee aesthetic, you’ll probably enjoy The French Dispatch. And if Anderson’s stringent compositions and deadpan humor drive you nuts, I doubt this is going to flip you.
It took me a while to come around to Anderson. When I first saw Rushmore, I wasn’t at a point where I could appreciate the director’s style. Over the years, I’ve come to enjoy his mix of whimsy, angst and humor. I love his intricate images and the storybook vibe he puts off. Both Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel were on my best-of lists for their respective years, with Budapest sitting atop it (for some reason, I have not seen Isle of Dogs, despite my love for The Fantastic Mr. Fox).
The French Dispatch fits firmly alongside those movies. Anderson’s first anthology, the film is assembled as a series of articles for the fictional publication’s final issue. It’s composed of an obituary — that of the magazine’s editor, whose own death ushers in that of the titular periodical — a travelogue of the French town in which its offices are set, and three features. Anderson works with a cast of regulars, including Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and Owen Wilson, as well as first-time collaborators Benicio del Toro, Lea Seydoux, Timothee Chalamet and Jeffrey Wright to bring these stories together.
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Like I said, Anderson doesn’t stray from his signature style. He’s still fond of static camera placements, symmetrical framing and an aesthetic that highlights its artificiality. But I appreciate how he explores the spaces within the limitations he sets for himself. The opening shot in which we glimpse the offices of the titular publication, has a playful feel as we watch the editor navigate the various floors from afar. The “travelogue” sequence has fun with Owen Wilson’s narrator cruising through town, the camera stationary as his bike moves through the village, often meeting an unfortunate detour. And throughout the film, Anderson challenges himself with increasingly intricate compositions; settings change as if they were part of a stage play, chase sequences suddenly transition into animation. The director also experiments with switching between black and white and color throughout the film, monochromatic dreariness broken when there’s a burst of emotion or artistic breakthrough.
Anderson has described the film as a love letter to journalism (the credits dedicate the film to several writers published in The New Yorker, the obvious inspiration for this film’s publication). But it’s probably better described as a love letter to storytelling and artistry in general. While the film takes the shape of a magazine publication, only one of the stories seems to be told via typewriter. Wilson talks to the camera, the first story is told via a lecture given by its writer (Tilda Swinton), and the third features the writer (Wright) recalling a favorite story during a television interview. Each of the features focus on a creative individual, whether it’s Del Toro’s imprisoned painter, Chalamet’s young manifesto drafter, or a police chef (Lee Park) whose culinary creations play an important role in closing a kidnapping case.
I’m going to be honest that at first blush, I was underwhelmed. While I love to luxuriate in Anderson’s aesthetic, at times the deadpan dialogue, undercut with crude humor or irony, grows grating, even if it’s delivered by some of our greatest actors, who love to play in this sandbox. And while I was often amused and sometimes ravished by the visuals, none of the individual stories grabbed me. It’s an issue I sometimes have with Anderson’s movies; the artificiality of it all can keep me at arm’s length. I was entertained for much of The French Dispatch, but not particularly moved. To use a writing metaphor, Anderson seemed more concerned about sentence structure than the story.
And then a funny thing happened; the film lingered. Throughout the week, I found myself drawn back to an image or a line. Those colorful blasts of emotion and artistry haunted me, and I began to tease out the intricate structure Anderson played with. Even after I stumbled through my thoughts on We’re Watching Here, I continued to pull apart the film and found that what Anderson had created might be among his most meaningful and mature pieces.
One of the reasons The Grand Budapest Hotel worked so well for me, even on first viewing, is because it was a new thematic direction for Anderson. After films that dealt with adult angst and troubled families, he turned to exploring the idea of art, particularly why someone goes to the trouble of creating something ornate and fussed-over. It felt like a mission statement.
The French Dispatch continues that exploration of artistry. But this time, instead of exploring why one gravitates toward a certain style, Anderson seems more interested in the question of why we create at all. As usual, many of his characters are filled with sadness or angst, brought to life wonderfully by the woe on del Toro’s face or regretful tenor of Wright’s voice. Why do we bother to create in such a troubled world? What are we seeking, and are we even aware that we are searching for something? Do we craft for connection, revolution, identity or closure? Or is it something even fleeting; perhaps, to crib from Celine in Before Sunrise, the answer must be in the attempt.
Anderson also seems interested in the collaborative nature of creation, which comes to life in the film’s nesting doll structure. Stories flow into stories, editors lecture writers whose stories we then flash into, digressing again into stage plays and flashbacks. Anderson is aware that writers need subjects, artists need muses, and creatives need audiences. Relationships inspire stories, which inspire masterworks (or maybe the relationships inspire the masterworks, which inspire the stories). And holding it all together, bringing these stories from their homes in France all the way to the good people in Kansas, is a magazine led by an editor who trusts his writers and knows his audience (whether Murray’s editor is a stand-in for Anderson is not entirely clear, but I don’t think it can be dismissed). Even as I draft this review, I realize that now it’s possibly marrying the themes of Grand Budapest Hotel with Anderson’s previous fixation on families found and given.
Individually, not every story holds up (I’m not a fan of the one featuring Chalamet’s budding revolutionary and his dalliance with McDormand’s reporter, who also ghostwrites his manifesto), although when it works (del Toro’s story and the closing feature), it’s sublime. But together, this has a staying power that makes me rethink my initial coolness and eager to pick up the whole thing again.