Art on Display in The French Dispatch

Last week was Dennis Villeneuve, this week is Wes Anderson.

In a way, it feels like a mistake to take any of these visuals and render them still; the movement is half the magic.

Anderson is truly a man apart, a unique force in directing. Where Villeneuve’s movies are all masterpieces of direction and experience, Anderson’s filmography is a perfection is a different kind. Anderson’s run is so crazy to me because I can see about every single one of his movies being lauded as his best. He hits the ground running immediately – his first film, Bottle Rocket is remarkably solid for an opening venture, and his second, Rushmore is as strong as anything he’s making now. His next movie, The Royal Tenenbaums, is probably my favourite. He’s only continued to make classics over the years, exploring and expanding his whimsical style. Grand Budapest Hotel rightfully won all sorts of awards, and Fantastic Mr. Fox has been a childhood favourite for many, while also being one of the best Thanksgiving-vibe movies out there. You could pick just about any run of his movies and label them as the best of his career, and have good reasons why.

Despite all that, it took me a while to fully wrap my head around why I so thoroughly enjoyed Wes Anderson. I dug a lot of his style; the sharp, witty dialogue, the gorgeous and meticulously framed cinematography. But I had a hard time scratching past the surface. Anderson has been accused by some of exhibiting style over substance, and while I don’t think that’s true, I can get where the idea comes from. It can be easy to get caught up in the shiny veneer. But after watching The Royal Tenenbaums – a movie I want to write its own article about someday – Anderson fully clicked for me. Because beneath all the whimsical flair, Anderson’s characters always have a clear sense of humanity. His movies are filled with deeply flawed screw-ups finding moments of prescience, seeing the reality of the world through the fancy. Yet it’s a vision of life that’s often bittersweet. Grand Budapest Hotel is often referenced as being borderline cloying in its colour palette, but behind all that is the story of a past long dead and glory days lone gone. There’s a remarkable balance at work beneath the surface of nearly all these stories.

This scene is breathtaking, and the twin release of Dune and French Dispatch are really proof to me that Timothee Chalamet can do anything.

In a way, the stylistic nature of Anderson’s films just paint a more vivid version of life. To make art is, necessarily, to partake in artifice. Some have derided Anderson for the particular style his films all take, the heightened nature of his visuals and dialogue. An Anderson film is so immediately identifiable, so instantly clear on its level of artifice. But it’s through all the fantasy that the realness of his films peeks through. After all, in fantasy you find a more realized view of the world. Art and story can convey truths that we miss in everyday life. Thus, the zaniness of Anderson’s plots and absurdities of some of his characters are merely the layers of artifice that bring access to people who feel true and universal. Maybe it’s for this reason that Anderson so often is bringing in layers upon layers of story to his plots. Rushmore and Moonrise Kingdom both prominently feature plays, Grand Budapest Hotel is a story within a story within a story. But none of his films take these concepts as far as his newest outing, The French Dispatch.

At first, The French Dispatch seems like the director has gone all-in on his stylistic sensibilities. This movie is an insane thing to look at. More than ever before, Anderson is playing with aspect ratios, alternating between colour and black-and-white. His framing is more impressive than ever, creating a beautiful sense of disparate life in the fictional French town of Ennui. The storytelling is more fragmented and niche than ever, functioning more as an anthology than a unified plot. The movie centers around the final publication of the also-fictional paper The French Dispatch, and the three headline stories that make up this last issue. The three stories vary in form and style, each feeling unique and complete in and of themselves. A brilliant artist locked behind bars for vicious crimes. A young revolutionary and his search for life. A foreign cook finding belonging in a world not his own. They seem, initially, to be wholly connected stories. But among the various motifs that wind up tying the different articles together, including their shared scenery in Ennui, I think the most vital is their shared reverence for art.

I prefer to grab stills in landscape, which is hard because of how much of this movie is framed in gorgeous 4:3, but look at it!

More than anything else, The French Dispatch is a love letter to art and artists. Every one of these short stories is narrated by the journalists, each approaching their art in a unique fashion. Tilda Swinton’s character is framed as presenting her findings like a conference, loudly lavishing the audience with her love for painter Moses Rosenthaler, played by the ever-hilarious Benecio del Toro. Francis McDormand works in the field, getting close and personal with her material. Jeffrey Wright is visualized in a talk show with Liev Schreiber, reflecting on one of his favourite articles. Of course, the subjects in all of their writings are, themselves, artists. Rosenthaler is the most typical in his art, being a painter, but his choice of canvas and subject are, themselves, unorthodox. Timothee Chalamet plays young revolutionary Zeffirelli, desperately trying to perfect his manifesto, which he keeps clogging with overly-poetic devices. Wright fixates on the great cook Nescaffier, and the salvific nature of his art, food. For all of them, their art is a source of suffering as well as release. It is a pain and a joy. Perhaps more than anything, it is a necessity.

Yet, no matter the practical nature of art, it is always illuminative. A majority of the stories in this movie are filmed in black-and-white. Then, every once and a while, we are visited with a splash of colour. Sometimes it’s just for a single shot. Sometimes it’s a dazzling pan around a table. But I believe universally these flashes of colour are moments of art. A piece of music that connects two enemies. A dish that is truly transcendent. A portrait unlike anything you’ve ever seen. These moments are ecstatic, taking the viewer out of the typical colour palette and into something brighter, vaster, somehow more real than the norm. Anderson has somehow done the impossible and visualized the proper sensation and impact of art. The fantasy that’s truer than reality.

Adrien Brody is shaping up to be another vital Wes Anderson mainstay, he's so inherently funny here.

The odes to artistry don’t stop there, throughout The French Dispatch Anderson slips in wondrously bizarre cutaways to other mediums. To explain a soldier’s return from war, we are suddenly in a live-theatre depiction. To portray a high-stakes car chase, we jump to stop-motion animation. Not only does it feel like a celebration of art mediums often ignored, but it also seems like an intentional move to jar the viewer out of comfortability. We are always doing something new, something that makes the frame inherently relevant without taking away from what is being framed. The story is only halfway as important as the telling of the story, and the reception of the story. It should be no surprise that a movie about journalists uplifts the ways in which story is conveyed, but Anderson does it on a level that no one else would dare attempt.

And, somehow, even upon all the layers of artifice and storytelling, that glint of humanity still peeks through. The third story in particular, the one told by Jeffrey Wright in all his wonderful charisma, manages to have these sudden pangs of unspeakable sadness. The tragic truth of human existence just comes hurtling through like a bullet. And then we move on. Not in a joke-y, MCU kind of way, but in a way that feels earnest. Sometimes life is inexplicably sad, sometimes beauty and tragedy are intermixed so as to be inseparable. You face it, and then you continue forward. That’s also a part of great art. Training yourself in emotion, in how to feel it, in how to cope with it. The whole film, the final pressing of the titular French Dispatch, is itself in Memorium of the Dispatch’s Arthur Hortizer Jr., portrayed by Bill Murray. It’s all an exercise in grief, a celebration of life. As the film’s conclusion proves, there’s an art to that, too.

In a movie with a lot of busyness and fast-paced dialogue, the moments of quiet stand out all the more.

I wasn’t expecting to be so thoroughly touched by The French Dispatch. A lot of early responses made it seem like perhaps Anderson has flown too close to the sun and dived fully into his own imagination. But I think this movie does a really good job at bringing to life the heart of a lot of Anderson’s filmography. It’s wise and thoughtful while being thoroughly funny throughout. It’s honestly just a really good time. I can’t imagine why anyone already familiar with Anderson would dislike The French Dispatch, because it really just feels like a pure, distilled version of what he’s been doing for a long time. Yet, even so, it’s clear that Anderson is still experimenting, still originating. This movie feels deeply unique on a structural, scene-by-scene level. The choice to make it an anthology is genuinely inspired. More than anything else, it’s just plain fun. It’s a delightful flick with great characters and is a great ride. Anderson is nowhere close to slowing down, and I hope he has a whole lot yet to offer.