The French Dispatch
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Oh, I wish I could rate The French Dispatch higher, because it is such a technical treat from Wes Anderson. He truly feels like he is only getting better and better as a visionary auteur, and his work with his usual team (cinematographer Robert Yeoman, editor Andrew Weisblum, and composer Alexandre Desplat) is as reliable as ever. As a portfolio of Anderson’s singular style elements, The French Dispatch is as good as any film of his can be. After The Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs, however, I was getting more acquainted with the heartfelt side of Anderson: the angle that pops up in his earlier works like Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, but it can occasionally get lost when he gets carried away with his signature vision. With The Grand Budapest Hotel, it was looking like Anderson was able to balance his escalating style and his ability to really connect with audiences. Isle of Dogs — his most emotional effort yet — only furthered this notion.
I left The French Dispatch stunned by what I saw, but nearly completely placid by the film as a connective experience. That’s not good news already, but it’s even worse when you’re looking at an anthology film, and none of the stories hit home for me in any spectacular way. I can understand the purpose of all three major tales (and the minor, ongoing storyline of the titular newspaper and how it is coming up to a close after the death of its head editor), but I’m going to remember them more for how Anderson shaped them rather than what the stories themselves even said. We have “The Concrete Masterpiece”, where a murderer/artist gets intimate with a prison officer and acquainted with a snobbish art collector that is interested in his latest piece. Then there’s “Revisions to a Manifesto”, where a journalist becomes romantically entangled with a much younger student rebel who is on the verge of becoming the face of a revolution. Finally, there is “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner”: an interview that is halted by the recollection of the kidnapping of The Commissaire’s son. All of these tales take place in similar areas. They’re all framed as if we are holding the final issue of The French Dispatch in our hands, and we’re avidly reading these pieces from page one to the final word.
The French Dispatch is a brilliant idea that is only pleasant in execution.
On paper, The French Dispatch is a fantastic idea. It’s as if we are experiencing this actual newspaper in a cinematic form. Its execution feels more like a memento or ephemera picked up from the Wes Anderson gift shop. It’s a great add-on to the filmography of one of cinema’s quirkiest minds, but I cannot foresee this film really expanding his legacy beyond the array of interesting technical achievements. I have been a critic since 2009, and I have had the luxury of getting to review Anderson’s films during his renaissance (starting off with Fantastic Mr. Fox). This is the first time I kind of feel like the naysayers that I try to justify Anderson to: the people who believe he is style over substance, too literary to connect with, and more focused on the calamity of details and cameos than telling an impressionable story. I still like The French Dispatch, and I had a laugh here and there, a dropped jaw quite often (because of the numerous interesting visual ideas), and a familiar coziness that I get watching his films. I just don’t love it, because it feels like the first Wes Anderson film (since I became a reviewer) that didn’t quite love me back. It respected my mind and what I could decipher from Anderson’s singular identity as an artist, but all of the camera tricks, focuses on symmetry, remarkable characters, and moments of laughter can’t hide the fact that The French Dispatch really doesn’t leave much of an impact outside of its flair.
It’s a cute, fun, and whimsical trinket for Wes Anderson fans to cling on to (like myself), but that’s really it. All I know is that I was more emotionally invested in Hotel Chevalier (a thirteen minute short) than three miniature stories that wrapped up once they started really getting good (because the majority of their existences serve the purpose of building up these miniature worlds of Anderson’s with dazzling visual exposition flashes). This is the appetizer board of the Wes Anderson restaurant, and it’s as if our meals got whisked away after we had two bites only. I’m content with what I saw, but not really satisfied enough, and my stomach is grumbling. That was a fine enough bite, I suppose, but I guess it’s still early enough in the evening. I’ll stop by the neighbouring restaurant and try that reliable Grand Budapest Hotel dish (with Rushmore for dessert, perhaps).
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.