The French Dispatch
The staff of an American magazine based in France puts out its last issue, with stories featuring an artist sentenced to life imprisonment, student riots, and a kidnapping resolved by a chef.
- Released: 2021-10-21
- Runtime: 108 minutes
- Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
- Stars: Bill Murray, Benicio del Toro, Frances McDormand, Jeffrey Wright, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Owen Wilson, Timothée Chalamet, Léa Seydoux, Mathieu Amalric, Lyna Khoudri, Steve Park, Liev Schreiber, Elisabeth Moss, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Lois Smith, Saoirse Ronan, Christoph Waltz, Cécile de France, Guillaume Gallienne, Jason Schwartzman, Tony Revolori, Rupert Friend, Henry Winkler, Bob Balaban, Hippolyte Girardot, Anjelica Huston, Denis Ménochet, Alex Lawther, Vincent Lacoste, Benjamin Lavernhe, Vincent Macaigne, Félix Moati, Wallace Wolodarsky, Fisher Stevens, Griffin Dunne, Stéphane Bak, Anjelica Bette Fellini, Lily Taïeb, Mohamed Belhadjine, Nicolas Avinée, Winsen Ait Hellal, Toheeb Jimoh, Larry Pine, Tom Hudson, Jarvis Cocker, Bruno Delbonnel, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, Damien Bonnard, Morgane Polanski, Antonia Desplat, Sam Haygarth, Pablo Pauly
- Director: Wes Anderson
Comments
- charzsmith - 2 July 2024
An enduring film about the endurance of art
Let it be known that I'm a huge fan of journalist movies and of Wes Anderson. However, my love of journalism movies led me to have entirely different expectations for this than I should have. That being said, I was blown away by this movie.
This is far more than an homage to Anderson's love of the New Yorker; this is an art piece depicting the longevity and immovability of art. Structured as an issue of a fictional magazine, the movie is bookmarked by an obituary for the editor and founder of the magazine. However, the stories between don't explore his life, but rather three unique stories. To Anderson, nothing can do justice to the deceased editor more than his life's work: the magazine. The three stories between are the perfect balance of moving, comedic, and engaging. The acting, particularly from Benicio del Toro and Jeffrey Wright is spectacular, and the use of colour blew me away. For instance, a shot displaying the red artwork of Moses cuts to the red lecture hall where Berensen presents a lecture about the artist. She then moves forward and tells a tragic story. Though she does so in a light-hearted, warm manner her face appears in two TV screens at the front, lit in blue lighting. Though her external facade is orange and warm, the internal truth of the story is cold and traumatic. Moments like this are dotted throughout with the youth presented in yellow warmth and the elderly or lonely in cold blue. The typical Anderson fixed camera shots are replaced by shaky, hand-held moments when characters are anguished and return to stillness for moments of hurt or calm. Every single decision is subtle, but excellent and I struggled to find one that didn't work, felt out of place, or too heavy handed.
The only reason this isn't 5 stars, is because I think that, as in all anthology movies, some stories work better for me personally than others, and some dragged. The last story has perhaps the most impactful dialogue, but only Roebuck Wright resonated with me personally. - matt_hew - 26 October 2023
Anthology or Miscellany?
If you were to freeze frame or isolate any of the visuals or scenes from this movie you'd see it as a thing of beauty.
Every scene looks beautiful, is wonderfully composed and meticulously shot. The attention to every single detail is so precise (even for a Wes Anderson movie) it's almost intense.
All of the Wes Anderson tropes are in there - in abundance - but this seems to be at the forfeit of the actual story.
'The Concrete Masterpiece' is the masterpiece of the film but from there the other stories get more convoluted and dull and by the end becomes a bore.
As an anthology it doesn't really work as a whole. It plays more like a series of ideas & visuals strung together which of the viewer becomes so much less than the sum of its parts.
