April Review: The French Dispatch (2021) (Patreon)

One thing I can assure you about this review, I wrote it like I meant to this way.

Wes Anderson is an incredibly impressive director. His whimsical, particular, almost theatrical style is immediately recognizable, and perhaps more impressively, he puts out a new, stunning film every couple years. At this pace and level of creative control, it can be difficult to have a single film stand out from the pack. Experimentation is demanded. Unfortunately for The French Dispatch (2021), experiments sometimes have variable results.

The French Dispatch (2021) is a series of meditations, ostensibly walking the viewer through an issue of the titular publication through three-ish stories told from the voice of their writers. All these tales center the fictional and thematically named French town of Ennui, and the colorful Anderson-esque residents in their perfectly blocked-out lives.

The format of The French Dispatch (2021) is the experimental core at the heart of Anderson's film. The vignettes mimic articles, as though we're flipping through the pages of a magazine complete with cartoon artwork and editor's notes, playing with medium and taking print and putting it to screen. It's a difficult translation, and while interesting, one that could have been pushed further. The film goes largely uninterrupted from one story to the next, loosely held together with editorial meetings between writers and the now-deceased editor of the Dispatch. This flow provides a sentimental insight into the publication itself, but does little to aid the format experiment. Perhaps a few shorter interstitials, akin to Owen Wilson's bicycle escapade at the beginning of the film could have been added to give more of a feeling of flipping through pages, a quick marriage announcement or obituary, a brief political cartoon, even an advertisement. The rigid three-act article structure of The French Dispatch (2021) in some ways ruins the experiment of the film, but clearly sparked something for Anderson, who would go on to direct a series of short films based on the works of Roald Dahl that were much more critically successful. In that way, as a jumping off point for a new format of storytelling, this experiment was a success for its director, at the expense of potential disconnect with its audience.

The French Dispatch (2021) is immediately recognizable as a Wes Anderson feature, with a center-forward cinematography, whimsical production design, and a very consistant, driving pace. It's a style that's worked for Anderson time and time again, inspiring imitators and many a potential film school student. I myself wrote essays about the production design of The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), it's a gorgeous style that's made it's director famous for a reason. The French Dispatch (2021) could never be accused of failing to live up to Anderson's stylistic past, but it often rests on its own laurels, never really creating anything new. That said, it has a few notable moments of glorious production design that could only be accomplished by a director with a budget, and reputation to spend it. A personal favorite is the police precinct walked through in the third story, where it becomes abundantly clear that a massive practical set was assembled in order to facilitate a long tracking shot. It's ridiculously impressive, if not the most visually stunning set Anderson has put to screen.

As with much of Anderson's later work, the cast is star-studded and no one is doing a bad day on set. These films are akin to playing Macbeth, if you want to be a prestige actor, you better find a role in a Wes Anderson film. One performance stands out among the rest, Jeffery Wright as the reporter narrating our third story, Roebuck Wright. His at once factual and empathetic recount feels raw and reel. You believe that Jeffery Wright, and not the reporter of the same name experienced the events. His moments of pensive contemplation as he reads his article to a TV audience perfectly convey a man who has spent years mulling over the events, his performance demonstrating the evolution in emotion from the man experiencing the story, and the one retelling it. If you watch nothing else in The French Dispatch (2021), skip to Jeffery Wright and become hypnotized.

The French Dispatch (2021) is not a failure. It's just simply not a triumph, and for a director who has set their own bar so high, that can seem like a greater loss than it actually is. The experimental nature of The French Dispatch (2021) is less polished, less sure, then a lot of similar era Anderson projects, and that simply isn't going to connect with every member of the audience in the same way. It has a lot of heart, but also a lot of ennui. It's lived-in and raw, and more on the bitter side of bittersweet. There are moments of true meditation on art, on life, but it's hard to identify what the film wants you to learn from it, to take from it. The French Dispatch (2021) is just like picking up the latest issue of your favorite magazine. It's familiar, you'll probably like parts if it, but maybe it isn't the best issue they've ever published.

6 out of 10 Very French Cigarettes