Sometimes, there are oceans between words and actions. People don’t always live by principle. They may “say” but not always “do.” It’s a very human characteristic to not follow up. Most of the time, these instances should be forgiven but are often not. Resentment grows, and the rest is history. In Wes Anderson’s highly composed worlds, you never really have to worry about this phenomenon because the director's words almost always reflect the action. If someone dies, then they die. If someone’s having a hard time, then they’re having a hard time. He simultaneously reinforces one with the other. It’s one of his greatest strengths as an auteur, and The French Dispatch, is perhaps the director’s most reciprocal film yet.
The subject of Anderson’s newest film is a magazine titled, you guessed it, “The French Dispatch.” Based on the early years of The New Yorker with its impressive roster of writers that include everyone from James Baldwin to A.J. Liebling, the film functions like a magazine. Each anthology is a chapter that serves as a piece of investigative journalism. The words and action blend together as if we’re flipping through a newspaper at a newsstand rather than watching a movie, and it’s a marvelous feature of the film.
“The French Dispatch” is anchored by Arthur J. Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray), the editor-in-chief, who famously “brought the world to Kansas.” Inspired by the original founder of The New Yorker, Harold Ross, Howitzer oversees the magazine from his desk in Ennui-sur-Blasé aka Anderson’s version of Paris. He doesn’t permit crying in his office, but his work is led with integrity. People respect him. The articles that are published in “The French Dispatch” are written from the perspective of his loyal and talented staff. Their job is to look at the world and ask the question “before it began, where did it begin.”
And with that we step into the pages of each writer's carefully crafted text. First we meet Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson) in Ennui, who sets the scene with a Jacques Tati’s style opening. As most of his diehards know, part of the fun of a new Anderson film is mapping the intertextuality. The French Dispatch and Ennui are no exception. Both are perfectly French and delightful if not riddled with vermin and stuck in a period of transition, just like the rundown version of Paris in Mon Oncle. It’s twee as Hell and a classic Anderson move. We’re just getting started, and we’re already confronted with the concepts of modernity and modernism in postWar France. As you can imagine this was the moment, it was the “Talk of the Town.”
To summarize each chapter any further would be a disservice to their intricacies. Just know that everyone and everything has an equivalent. Take, for example, the “Chessboard Revolution” that happens in chapter 2. It’s obviously an homage to May 68 and the reporter who Anderson inserted into the narrative, Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand), is based on Mavis Gallant who wrote "The Events in May: A Paris Notebook" for The New Yorker. Luckily, the mise-en-scene is mostly embellishment, so it’s not totally necessary to be well versed in La Nouvelle Vague or the New Yorker lore of yesteryear. If you want it, meaning more intertextuality, it’s definitely there, but you can also just sit back and relax. That’s the beauty of a “Wes Anderson” production. He can actually be pretty straightforward despite his nerdy obsessive nature.
Obviously, all of these stories are fictional, but Anderson shows us how culture is written and absorbed when held in a stylist’s hands, meaning it’s not always factual but it is seductive. In many ways, Anderson is similar to the writers of The New Yorker. He knows how to write, structure, and sell a story. Obviously, he’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you find Anderson’s work charming rather than pretentious, The French Dispatch will not disappoint. It might even inspire you to buy a magazine and throw your phone into the Seine.