New Year's Countdown...of Excellence: 1 - The French Dispatch (mulligan selection)

 1
The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun
2021, d. Wes Anderson - rental

(Note:I had intended to watch Moonlight as my 2010's selection but not only did I run out of time but I didn't have immediate access to it on a streaming service.  I was willing to pay for it, but The French Distpatch was our New Year's Eve viewing selection and yeah, it was Excellence.  We had intended to see this in theatres, but the theatre experience was relatively short lived before COVID started making it a challenge again).

The Story (in two paragraphs or less)
In the wake of the death of the magazine's editor, The French Dispatch is the final issue of the magazine in cinematic form.  Consisting of six segments, the first being the introduction.  The second is a roving report on the home of the magazine's offices in Ennui, France.  The third is the arts and culture report on the artistic accomplishment of convicted murderer Moses Rosenthaler.  It follows both the artist and his tumultuous relationship with a female prison guard, as well as the art dealer who invested heavily on his success.  

The fourth is about a generational war in Ennui between the youth, protesting over restrictions in a girls dormitory, which flares after one of their ranks is conscripted into military service.  Reporter Lucinda Krementz gets involved with the leader of the youth protesters, both gaining an inside perspective as well as losing her journalistic neutrality.  The fifth story follows Roebuck Wright as his dinner with Ennui's police Commissaire (to report on the police cuisine of police chef Nescaffier), when the Commissaire's son is kidnapped.  The finale is the obituary for the magazine's editor.

What did I think I was in for?
A lot of artistically composed, highly intricate and ornate shots, as well as much whimsy, wit and the odd turn of melancholy.  It's Wes Anderson.  He has his things.  I love those things, and love how he applies them.

What did I get out of it?

Anderson's film is a love letter to The New Yorker, it's erudite, fastidious, pretentious but he's also bemused by it all, so there's a sense of both honouring that type of outdated, worldly journalism and poking fun at it for its staunchness.  

As intricate as Anderson's compositions have been in the past, he's at another level here, staging basically living photographs frequently throughout, just the most elaborate static shots, that aren't exactly static.  His set designs as well start at the top of what he's accomplished in prior movies (I think about the cross-cut of Steve Zissou's freighter, and how he does that with a building for what's only a momentary scene).  The initial five minutes of the film are just a wonder about his particular sense of detail.  His scenes are not so much choreographed but more of a fascinating Rube Goldberg machine which has to go off just right in order for it to work, cobbled together out of so many disparate pieces making such a fascinating whole.

His preferred cast of performers has ballooned in size over the years, and The French Dispatch accommodates many of them in peripheral roles (Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe) while bringing new faces - Benicio Del Toro, Lea Seydoux, Timothee Chalamet, Francis McDormand, and Jeffrey Wright - as the key players in the three main stories.  The cast is stacked, and over 300 names are credited in the cast at the end of the film.

The stories themselves are each a unique piece.  The bicycle tour of Ennui is just a showcase for Anderson's niche of curious visual marvels, the second is an intriguingly bizarre tale that embraces the power of art and pokes fun at the pretentiousness of the arts establishment.  The student protest tale is perhaps the lowest of the three - yes, as it gets the heaviest -- but it is also challenged by it's ultra-quick patter, which makes it hard to glom onto the particular story at hand.  At the same time, catching just a smattering of the wit in the dialogue make it easy enough to push through the confusion.  The tale of the kidnapping is bracingly whimsical, filled with classic Anderson quirkiness that makes it just sail until it's big Tin Tin-style animated action sequence.  But there's an undercurrent of pathos and sincerity that make it a satiating dessert, rather than too sweet.

Much of the film is in black and white.  The three main stories have colour elements, which are the "modern' telling of the story as it was published in the Dispatch.  For "The Concrete Masterpiece", reporter J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton) presents the story on stage to an audience at an arts gala.  In "Revisions to a Masterpiece", McDormand's reporter Krementz has adapted and expanded part of her story into a stage play.  For "The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner", Jeffrey Wright as reporter Wright, retells his story word-for-word (thanks to his typographic memory) to a studio audience on a talk show.  There are layers of storytelling happening here, almost Inception-style, overlapping in unanticipated ways, and hard to fully decipher on first viewing, but they stylistically make themselves aware.

Do I think it's a classic?

The AV Club named The French Dispatch as it's top movie of the year, which is probably a result of the weighting of the individual ballots their reviewers post, rather than it being any singular choice, and I don't necessarily agree that it's the year's best since it's still so fresh to me and there's so many films I haven't seen, but it's definitely a wonderfully entertaining and visually outstanding picture. It's not Anderson's best-ever (still arguably The Grand Budapest Hotel) but it's still him operating at the height of his decadence powers. 

People complain about Anderson doing his "Wes Anderson" thing, and I don't understand why.  At this stage he's developed his voice into exactly what he wants it to be.  If you don't like it, then you don't need to watch it, but he delivers every time on who he is and the stories he likes to tell.  His films always of consistent quality, but the stories vary in their interest or appeal.  Here the stories are a range, from middling (for him) to approaching his best work.

If it's not a classic, it feels classic.  Anderson's penchant for 50's, 60s and 70s aesthetics give the film a very aged feel.  Watching this feels almost like picking up something unexpectedly aged and wonderful, like  M or The Third Man, just something I should have seen long ago, but missed.

Did I like watching this?
Every minute of it.

Would I watch it again?
I can't believe I'm not watching it again right now.  Of all the films I watched for this year's Countdown, this I can tell you will be the one I watch most often.