Starring Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Alex Lawther, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson.
SHORT CONTENT:
Wes Anderson packs three stories, plus a prologue and an epilogue, into one film in his latest work, the anthology film The French Dispatch. It moves at a fast clip and features many of the director’s trademarks, including freestanding characters that may or may not resonate with you.
Either you get the Wes Anderson movies or you don’t get them. There isn’t much middle ground in the writer/director’s work, which can best be described as adult storybooks. Each of his films is rich in detail, begging for a still image to understand all the little nuances and jokes. I’m glad he wasn’t a filmmaker in the pre-home video era.
his latest work, The French Dispatch, is an anthology film whose premise is that each of its segments is an article in the magazine’s latest issue, which was inspired by The New Yorker. The magazine’s editor, Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray), is based on the notoriously mercurial Harold Ross, founder and first editor of The New Yorker, while the magazine’s editors drew inspiration from the work of James Thurber, James Baldwin, and many other early New Yorker writers, all of whom are thanked during the credits.
Each writer tells his piece, starting with cycling reporter Herbsaint Sazerac, who gives the viewer a tour of the town of Ennui-sur-Blasé, which is as comically French as you can imagine. The prologue sets the tone for the rest of a film best described as ‘jaunty’.
From there, we’re treated to the three main articles in the final issue, starting with art critic JKL Berensen (Tilda Swinton), who tells us the story of Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro), a psychotic killer who has a gift for abstract paintings. A fellow inmate (Julien Cadazio, played by Adrien Brody), who happens to be an art dealer, decides to buy Moses’ latest work and use his wealthy uncles to create a buzz in the art world. Everything goes according to plan until Cadazio shows up three years later and demands to see Moses’ latest masterpiece.
Next, Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) reports on the “Chessboard Revolution,” a student-led uprising that begins as anger at the lack of access to the girls’ dormitory and turns into a storm of protest over a student’s military service. Krementz becomes romantically involved with Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet), the leader of the revolution, and later writes a play based on her article.
Finally, food writer Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) chronicles the culinary escapades of Lieutenant Nescaffer (Stephen Park), a police officer who also serves as his department’s head chef. When the police chief’s son is kidnapped, Nescaffier uses his culinary skills to save the day.
I don’t think I’m ruining anything by noting that there’s an epilogue in the form of an obituary for Howitzer, whose death kicks off the movie. His will contained a stipulation that the magazine — a transformation of the Sunday insert of Howitzer’s hometown newspaper in Liberty, Kansas — would be closed upon his death, which is why we are aware of the contents of the latter issue.
Each of the three main stories in the film could have been a movie in its own right, especially the third, which is rich in secondary characters who only get bits of screen time. As result, The French Dispatch is a dense film that moves through its stories in a fast clip, giving more opportunities to freeze certain scenes than Anderson’s other films.
However, while I ultimately enjoyed the film, I struggled to connect with any of the characters in the same way that I was able to connect with the denizens of many of its other cinematic worlds, in particular The Royal Tenenbaums, Life in the water with Steve Zissou, Fantastic Mr Fox, and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Anderson’s characters always have a certain detachment, but those in The French Dispatch are all so cold and remote that I could appreciate them in the same way as a painting in an art gallery, without the desire to have it hanging in my house.
Your mileage may of course vary. If you are a Wes Anderson fan who is also steeped in the history of The New Yorker, you could end up enjoying this movie a lot more than I do. I’ve read the magazine, but I’m not one to necessarily catch all the winks and nods The French Dispatch.
Disney gave me a Movies Anywhere code for this review. The trailer is the only extra to be found in the digital version of the film, and I assume it will be the same for the disc-based releases coming out towards the end of the month.
