The French Dispatch (2021)

Score: 3.5 / 5

It might be the most Wes Anderson Wes Anderson movie yet, and that's just what it is. If you like his usual style, you'll probably like this, because he ramps it up about 200% from usual. If you don't like his style, you'll probably hate this because it's just too niche. I've always been on the fence with him, because for me Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Grand Budapest Hotel are wonderful films, especially that last, but I have felt indifferent or negatively toward most of his others, such as his most recent, Isle of Dogs. This most recent is more like Hotel in terms of style, substance, and grandiosity of storytelling, and for those elements I quite enjoyed it. But it's also surprisingly inaccessible, even for people who are willing to let Anderson take them on another funny, weird ride through his unique experience of life in a strange world.

A meditation on journalism -- I think -- The French Dispatch begins with Angelica Huston's voiceover narration about the establishment of the titular magazine. Though it was founded in Liberty, Kansas, where its editor Howitzer (Bill Murray) was born, it is now published in a little French town called Ennui-sur-Blasé, which means something like sophisticated boredom. In rapid succession, we are introduced to Howitzer's loyal staff in their oddly crumbling but quaint offices; the characters are not seen directly at first, and left almost unknowable until they respectively share some of their work with us. The film is divided into sections, one from each of the eccentric journalists, that form what is meant to be the final issue of the magazine. Based on the style of the on-screen font and the unusual focus of the fictional writing staff, it seems that we are meant strongly to think of the Dispatch in the same terms we think of The New Yorker. The secondary opening sequence seems pointedly to satirize (or offer homage to) the New Yorker regular piece "The Talk of the Town," funnily narrated by Owen Wilson in a beret and on a bicycle, riding through the small town and showing us the locations (past and future) when he's not colliding with commoners or falling down holes.

To recount the plot (of which there is essentially none) seems fruitless and even arrogant, as I frankly had trouble with all the characters and their doings. There are three main stories that take up the bulk of screen time, each from a different writer's perspective. One involves an incarcerated painter and his muse who is also his prison guard, and their work with an art dealer on the outside. One involves the writer inserting herself into a student protest led by a moody young revolutionary and the fallout that entails. One involves a legendary chef whose only employ is in the police department kitchen, despite the reporter's best efforts at launching him to fame. The pieces are all shot in Anderson's style, but with various kinds of changing aesthetics; for instance, during a chase scene, everything is presented suddenly as an animated cartoon.

That's shocking, but not really in context of Anderson's work. Everything is usually presented in toybox or dollhouse style in his films, and each piece of the set and props are clearly chosen and altered to cultivate a painfully specific atmosphere. His production design notoriously borders on the obsessive, and here (as in Hotel) that is most clearly sensed. Perhaps that's because it's so removed from most audience members' lived experience. There is almost nothing relatable in this film, at least physically, and yet it seems Anderson wants to transport us to a very real world for which he then wants us to experience some kind of catharsis through nostalgia, even if the nostalgia is for a fantasy. 

I don't really know what else to say about this film. It's a valuable experience, I thought, and one that I'll need to mull over. But even more than in most of his work, here I just couldn't connect to any of the (many, many) characters or even fully understand the setting or themes. I suppose part of the project is to simply appreciate the varied work of specialized journalists, but I'd rather have movies like All the President's Men or The Post than something like this. It just moved far too quickly and with too many moving parts for my taste; I could never really savor the crucial beats in even the expository bits. There's a relentlessness in its pace that denies us access to any thematic underpinnings, even as the experience of Anderson dragging us through his imagination was thrilling.