The French Dispatch

Or: The New Yorker, The Movie

The position of critic (if you will forgive the presumption on my part, dear reader) hinges not on the ability to make refined, or at least emphatic judgments, but to tell a prospective audience about the most essential part of a work of art, the crucial bit of information that should tip, in the readers mind, the choice on where to spend their money and hard earned time.

The most important thing to know about Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, the most vital piece to its enjoyment is that it’s not really a film at all, it’s a magazine. The eponymous publication (a burgeoning supplement of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Star) is not only the subject of the movie but also its format, three features and a small aperitif, that apart from being the happenings in the city of Ennui-Sur-Blase, France.

The stories are not interconnected, they don’t build to some grand revelation: they are just the writings of four verbose, midcentury essayists tracking stories under the guidance of the chief editor Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray). There isn’t the usual central clockwork moving the miniatures of an Anderson film (father and/or son seeks glory and/or reconciliation and/or crime.) The other elements are all present: the gorgeous composition, the ornate script, the marvelous things that a camera can do. But if you go in expecting a three act meal you’re going to come up short and miss the point and ignore the box of chocolates.

Think of it more like the Canterbury Tales. The point was never to get to Canterbury.

Our first story, The Concrete Masterpiece, relates the life of incarcerated artist Moses Rosenthaler (Bianco Del Toro) and his rise to prominence with the help of Simone (Lea Seydoux), his model, and his agent, the chaotic Julian Cadazio (Adrian Brody). The Second, Revisions to a Manifesto, follows reporter Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) impeded in a student protest and her friendship with its charasmatic but callow leader Zeffirelli (Timothee Chalamet). And the final, The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner, is a high octane tail of food and death, when Roebuck Wright (Jeffery Wright)’s attempt to sample the cuisine of Lt. Nesscafier (Stephen Park), the pride of the the cities police force, gets embroiled in a kidnapping of the commissioner’s son (Winston Ait Hellal).

Shot almost entirely in the real life town Angouleme, replete with all kinds of naturally occurring “Wes Anderson” architecture, Ennui is augmented by shifts in color and stage like transformations (sometimes of actual plays, sometimes hinges of romance and exuberance (one point even jumping straight a hilarious cartoon). But the principal joy of the film, set like jewels in an elegant band, is the chance for its actors to shine. Rather than be crowded in (like the Isle of Dogs, for instance) everyone has a chance to shine. No small parts, indeed, nor any small actors to be found.

McDormand’s patented minimalist responses make her in the slightly over saturated “Manifesto,” matched by Wright’s incandescent performance, so full of care and delicacy and pain. (I also must tip my hat to Liev Schreiber or rather who ever cast him the roll of an American Talk show host. He is the perfect blend of suave of unsettling, the perfect interlocutor for Wright and the perfect scene partner for his actor).

Granted the movie can be a little risqué if you’re not prepared for it. Sights of Seydoux modeling in a complete state of nature pop up without warning, though the actor and Del Toro make a wonderful power play between them. Nudity is used to more humorous affect with Chalamet (“I’m ashamed of my new muscles”), or tragic, in a pop up appearance by Saoirse Ronan as Dissolute Showgirl, but some dialog is pressed more to the grindstone of earlier projects which I had hoped we had outgrown.

Nevertheless I found myself captivated, even in the strangest portions, and coming across the different seasons, the separate blooms, of the magazine I felt each reflected the visual and audial treasure of the others without having to dip its fingers into its own pots. The whole reflected the glory of each part, in other words, or more simply, to paraphrase Howitzer “It’s clear that you wrote that way on purpose.”

You don’t have to read the New Yorker to get in the spirt of things, but it helps. Most of the staff are drawn from or at least shadowed after the feathered famous of the magazine’s past (Roebuck Wright, effete food columnist and half lidded spur of American society, cannot be clocked for anyone but James Baldwin come again). But the heights of serious absurdity are pure Wes Anderson: from the first minute when he see a waiter laden a tray with variety of signature drinks then scale absurd sights to get to the magazines office. Though he may not be to everyone’s taste, the director has an undeniable talent for bringing together the talents of others (composer par excellence Alexandre Desplat, or the character flash and depth of of Lois Smith (Upshur “Maw” Clampette) to make a captivating, laugh out loud, absolutely gorgeous film.

The French Dispatch does for the scribbling professions what the Grand Budapest Hotel did for the service industry, sets it in the far of country of the past and shows how to take delight in tiny things, and unlikely people, finding the radiant in the grubbiest of corners.