Wes Anderson planned to launch ‘The French Dispatch‘, his latest extravagant fantasy, at Cannes, with the red carpet deployed for his stars, and when Corona canceled the 2020 film festival, the director along with the film’s producers decided to postpone the launch for a year. The delay just increased the curiosity of viewers, and now we can already or will soon (depending on where in the world you are) enjoy watching this movie. Wes Anderson continues in the direction of ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel‘ with a production that gathers on the screen an impressive cast, which could support about ten successful Hollywood films, with a cinematography in which we recognize his distinct visual style, with an inventiveness and combination of modes of expression and genres that look like several chapters of film encyclopedia, and with a main idea (we can even say an obsession) that connects various stories and welds them together in a consistent whole. The obsession this time around is the classic, high-quality printed journalism that was in the American press in the 20th century and which is continued today by very few publications, including the one that directly inspired the film which seems to be ‘The New Yorker’. The film can be considered as a tribute to a certain category of the American periodical press, a tribute made with exquisite means of cinematic expression.
Wes Anderson tried to reconstruct on screen the experience of those who love weekly or monthly magazines that combine current affairs with culture, reporting with investigations, reviews with original literary creations, translating it from a reading experience into a cinematic one. The film is organized into three main sections with a prologue and an epilogue that is also an obituary. Each of the three main articles becomes a short film, but they all share the same directorial / editorial vision. One of them combines the artistic and the judicial chronicle by telling the story of a prisoner convicted of a double murder (Benicio Del Toro) who becomes a famous painter with the help of a sexy guard (Léa Seydoux) and a skilled art dealer (Adrien Brody). The story is told in an ‘academic’ presentation by Tilda Swinton. The second article belongs to the political reporting genre bringing to the screen an episode of student riots in which the reporter at a rip age (Frances McDormand) becoms romantically involved with a revolutionary student (Timothée Chalamet). Finally, the final segment combines the culinary critic with the police chronicle, reporting on an investigation in which the son of the police inspector (Mathieu Amalric) is kidnapped and the services of the culinary chef of the police (Steve Park) are used to catch the criminals. The master conductor is the editor-in-chief of the magazine (Bill Murray), the owner and the enthusiast of the profession in a world where this kind of journalism seems to have become obsolete.
Wes Anderson‘s merit is that he manages to bring to the screen cinematic equivalents of the journalistic genres to which each of the segments belongs. It does so using a sparkling combination of cinematic means: black-and-white, color and artificially colored film, mute comedies and special effects, documentary and animation, screen segmented in all possible ways, and art documentary. And much more. The sequence of celebrities on the screen is also dizzying, I’ve met about ten of my favorite actors again, and many other movie buffs will probably have similar opportunities to rejoice. However, there is a difficulty in following all the details that follow one another at a fast pace, which is a challenge for those who are not familiar with the world of the press or with the French and American cultures. I’m sure that on second viewing I would understand more details, but I’m sure also that there are things that will escape me no matter how many times I see the movie. But that doesn’t diminish the pleasure of watching. ‘The French Dispatch‘ is a film that deserves to be taken seriously just because it doesn’t take itself too seriously.