![]() Just like the endlessly fussed-over magazine of the title, this endlessly fussed-over movie showcases a deliberately comic disproportion between effort expended and results achieved. To use a literary term from the culture that the movie venerates, The French Dispatch is an example of mise en abyme, a self-reflexive work of art that contains its own reproduction in miniature. To the extent these three stories and the interstitial material that frames them share a thematic throughline, it has to do with the characters’ shared love for the power of the written word and the joy of collaborative creation. Get ready for fleeting cameos from Saoirse Ronan, Elisabeth Moss, Henry Winkler, and Christoph Waltz, as well as full-sized performances from many actors Anderson has never worked with before: Timothée Chalamet, Benicio del Toro, Liev Schreiber, Jeffrey Wright. Then again, essentially every broom-wielding extra in The French Dispatch is a movie star. Nearly every actor from the de facto stock company Anderson has been building over the years makes an appearance: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Ed Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Bob Balaban, Frances McDormand, Mathieu Amalric, Willem Dafoe. It contains all the director’s tics-the symmetrical compositions, the intricate cross-sectioned sets, the deadpan line delivery-boiled down to their bone-broth essence. If Wes Anderson films are licorice, The French Dispatch is one of those Scandinavian salted varieties that appeals to hardcore fans alone. Send me updates about Slate special offers. But there’s no disputing that Anderson is an artist, and an inimitable one with a unique place in the current filmmaking landscape. Just what his movies are trying to say, what they want the viewer to think and feel and remember, can be hard to discern under the matte perfection of their richly colored surfaces. I’ve written before, more than once, about how Anderson seems like an artist in dire need of enlarging his thematic scope and experimenting with his visual style. But even the films of his that I’ve outright disliked ( The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited) are packed with marvels of production and costume design, cleverly conceived sight gags, and extra-dry dialogue delivered in the trademark rat-a-tat style he prefers. Fox) I’ve loved so long I all but know them by heart. I would never miss a Wes Anderson release, and even though some of his most widely loved films ( The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom) have left me cold, there are others ( Rushmore, Fantastic Mr. That may sound like the starting point for a critique or a dismissal, but the fact is, I’m a sometimes-reluctant collector. ![]() Wes Anderson pictures, even the less beguiling ones, are collectible items, meticulously crafted toys meant to be lined up and rearranged like the stop-motion miniatures he loves to put into his movies (sometimes even the live-action ones). ![]() ![]() Either way, “curio” is le mot juste, not just for this movie but for all 10 the fastidious Texan-turned-Parisian has made to date. The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney calls Anderson’s new movie, The French Dispatch, a “ beguiling curio.” Whether that image makes you want to pick up the nearest tchotchke and hurl it against the wall or open a browser window to buy a ticket is a good test of whether this movie is for you. No director now working makes films that more closely resemble that divisive root-based candy than Wes Anderson, with the result that a discussion of any one of his movies tends to turn into a referendum on his whole cinematic output. Some filmmakers are like licorice: You either like them or you don’t, and members of both camps are firmly convinced of the rightness of their choice. ![]()
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