Every time that Wes Anderson releases a new film, it seems that all of those even vaguely interested in cinema feel the need to rehash the ancient and quite tired arguments about his style, from the aesthetics of his visuals to how his films may or may not represent class struggle in the right way to the semi-sweet melodramedy that suffuses his writing. Each of these points of contention is, well, somehow right in its own way (I’ve heard incredibly compelling arguments from all corners about his work over the years), but this emphasizes exactly what makes him stand out so much in the modern cinematic landscape: It is impossible not to have an opinion about his work, even if you barely follow movies or remember directors’ names or whatever. In an era of blue-orange muddy mediocrity, his work stands out among the pack, even more so than it did when he made those “earlier, funny films” that built his reputation. This is a very roundabout way to say that his new work, The French Dispatch, is perhaps the most Wes Anderson movie that Wes Anderson has ever directed, and a lot of your reaction to it will depend on how you feel about his style versus his substance. If you prefer the former, good God, run out and buy your tickets as soon as you possibly can and see it on the biggest (or coziest) screen you can find.
Some will undoubtedly think that the film is slighter than his other works, but that’s, perhaps, by design: The French Dispatch is an anthology film, which centers around three short tales taken from the pages of The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Star, a fictional cultural powerhouse that has made its home in the exact Middle-of-America cornfield-covered plains. Its publisher and editor-in-chief, Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (Bill Murray), has passed away suddenly, and a tribute issue is planned, of which three stories from the magazine’s storied past will be published as a celebration of his life’s work. As stated in his will, this will be the final issue of the storied journal, and it serves, ultimately, as a kind of literary Irish funeral for a man who was brutal and cutting to his staff (in an amusing way, not in a Swimming With Sharks way) but kind, gentle and generous to the creative talents that he nurtured. Through these stories, we come to learn about the man and the staff of his publication, though given the film’s length — barely 100 minutes — and how divided it is between each segment, featuring dozens of characters who never reoccur and lots of lovely locations around the fictional Ennui, France (a little on-the-nose there, Wes), what follows is a series of lovely aesthetic exercises that delight the eyes as often as they move you visually but can’t, by virtue of its construction, grip one’s heart in the same way as a Life Aquatic or Royal Tenenbaums.
Like Quentin Tarantino’s, Anderson’s later work forgoes a lot of the things that established him in favor of a kind of cinematic fantasy that only he can produce, in a likewise heavily referential fashion. If Isle of Dogs was a feature-length tribute to the Japanese artists who inspire him, The French Dispatch is a playground for Anderson to explore the various modes and styles of French expression. The first story, narrated at an art conference by a hilarious Tilda Swinton, is about an abstract artist (Benicio Del Toro), imprisoned for double homicide, who through happenstance becomes quite famous thanks to a jailhouse meeting with an art dealer (Adrien Brody), who finds himself enchanted by the artist’s illustrations of a guard (Lea Seydoux) that he’s fallen in love with. It’s a lengthy tribute to the likes of Cocteau and Rene Clair, of which the latter’s A Nous la Liberte is a major influence and should be sought out by all after viewing. Its stark greyscale, made even more stunning by the granite-and-steel sets of the prison itself, is occasionally interrupted by an overwhelming color that illustrates the exact sort of impact that Del Toro’s art has on those around him, which is a genuinely rich and vivid use of an old trick that serves its master well.
The second story, a tale of a brief romance between a closed-off middle-aged writer (Frances McDormand) and a young student/chess progidy (Timothée Chalamet) at the height of Ye-Ye and during one of those famous minor student revolutions that even viewers well-parsed in French history might mistake for a real one that they simply just hadn’t heard about yet, offers echoes of the New Wave and what happened when that New Wave crashed against the rocks of ’68. Anderson’s use of metaphor in the segment is particularly funny, as he has Chalamet quite literally engage with the police and town government through a chess match during the occupation, which might be the funniest rendering of negotiation I’ve seen in a movie as of yet that isn’t actually trying to depict it. Stylistically, it’s quite beautiful, with the New Wave tributes being less obvious than one might expect, but thematically it’s lovely as well, an inversion of the typical narrative of the “old, wiser man falling in love with the passionate woman-child” trope, enhanced by the sorrowful semi-sweetness of McDormand’s narration (this is perhaps the closest any of his narrations has come to equalling Alec Baldwin’s in Royal Tenenbaums, as well, and it’s the only segment that simply allows the writer to read their work over as their story plays out). There are evocative, gorgeous images here: McDormand, alone in a stark bedroom, typing away on a rumpled mattress, as she wears a gas mask to keep the tear gas fumes out of the room, or Chalamet and a young acquaintance speeding off on a motorbike, rendered in muted yet sensual color.
It’s in the final installment that you’ll find what I consider to be the richest performance in the entire film: Jeffery Wright’s James Baldwin-styled Roebuck Wright, who narrates a gastronomy-cum-crime story he wrote ages ago (from memory!) to an admiring interviewer (Liev Schriber) on a TV program some years in the future. This is spectacular, show-stopping work from Wright, who manages, thanks to the freedoms inherent in fiction, to fully embody his character, nestled in the shadow of one of our canonical greats, without being beholden to impression. He entertains — indeed, the tale of a group of bandits (Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan, among others) who have kidnapped the son of the local police chief (Mathieu Amalric), and the work of a master chef (Stephen Park) who steps in with the fatal solution to the problem would be a delight on its own — but the glimpses into Wright’s history with Howitzer that provide, perhaps, the best and most illuminating portraits of the publisher’s character, and this work helps to justify the film’s ending. This segment takes a great deal from the Grand Guignol-influenced crime films of that late ’50s like Clouzot’s Diabolique, with a healthy dose of early Hitchcock, when he was finding his ground between the silent age and the sound era, and descends into genuine animated fantasy, as its bizarre and quite-funny car chase around the streets of Ennui is rendered in a Herge-like cartoon.
Importantly, none of these stories could have sustained the runtime of a single film and their narrative tightness ensures that The French Dispatch always keeps you on your toes, whether it’s through rapid-fire exposition or short films documenting the streets or some manner of aesthetic delight. It’s a genuinely joyful and overwhelming experience, perhaps the closest that Anderson’s come to equalling Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is what I consider to be his crowning achievement. But rather than having the general luxury of adaptation, Anderson instead uses the heavy influence of the New Yorker writers, editors, and illustrators that the director idolizes (also the subject of tribute here in this film, but you were already probably aware of that) to provide his film with a sturdy backbone. In a reflexively backward-gazing world, in which the primary modes of cinematic expression are either nostalgic elegies searching for a childhood lost at the turn of the millennium and never seen again or lengthy stylistic tributes that miss the point despite being full of love, it’s wonderful, though bittersweet, to see this format done so well with such an eye and a delightful perspective, whose choices are often at odds with modernity even as he retains his ability to feel cutting-edge and forward-thinking.
I hope Anderson doesn’t scuttle the presses from his achievement here, and this is one film I would not mind him revisiting in the future, given just how many riches are here. Hell, I’d subscribe, and not even have good use for the tote bag.