It opens with the content. An Obituary, a brief Travelogue, and three feature stories; A movie of the making of a magazine issue and at the same time the reading (or watching) of the same. It is a magazine filmed into a movie. Wes Anderson’s tenth film, I feel is a pinnacle of his style. From the lavish stylization of each moment and scene, curated like pages of a magazine issue with microcosmic attention to detail, to the controlled rhythm of all the actors, background characters, sets and even cats (one of my favorite scene is of Owen Wilson’s character placing a single saucer of milk in contrast to the abnormal amount of cats, on the slanting roofs). The scene where the town slowly wakes up feels like a visual presentation of a paragraph of a travelogue. Each action dispensed like a concise written description.
Even the fictional town of Ennui, everything, reminded me of an interview by Matt Zoller Seitz in the Wes Anderson Collection for The Grand Budapest Hotel. He asks, “OK, here’s a big one: ‘In your filmic universe, is there a God, and if so, does God stand aloof or intervene?’”
After a long pause Wes answers, “God Intervenes.”
The Cycling reporter
Herbsaint SAZERAC
Through ‘Poetic license’ Sazerac takes us through the fictional town of Ennui-sur-Blasé. It’s past and its present, while Anderson uses ‘Cinematic license’ to visualize Sazerac’s monologue, using split screen comparisons, fast cuts, stationary shots, sets that fall apart to reveal CG monstrosities. His knack for bending physical spaces to get across ideas without being jarring to the senses is a mark of a seasoned auteur comfortable with his style. Maybe Wes is also drawing parallels to Cinema and poetry being on the same plane.
The Concrete Masterpiece
J.K.L BERENSEN
I caught my breath at Moses Rosentaler’s admission of his frail mental state. Wanting to keep his hands busy so as not to kill himself. An admission on my part in relation; I keep busy to hold my addiction at bay.
“I’ve got something new.”
Adrien Brody’s comedic timing was a joy to watch. He, in my opinion, stole all the scenes he was in. Him convincing his uncles of the greatness of ‘Simone, Naked, Cell Block J. Hobby Room’; peeling back the pretentiousness of considering something ‘Modern Art’ and the hilarity of that construct. Sprouting his philosophy of what makes an artist an artist. Sucking up to “Maw” Clampette without waiting to think or catch his breath. So much so that he fails to catch her remark that the paintings were a–
Fresco.
Set in concrete. Painted and dried. A future set in stone. Untouchable.
“It’s all Simone,”
Revisions to a Manifesto
Lucinda KREMENTZ
Snatches of scenes.
Flop Quarter. Le Sans Blague.
Zeffirelli’s youthful romanticism. Poetic, sometimes in a bad way. The unusual pairing of an old and young couple. A call back to Rushmore. The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Aline playing. Zeffirelli and Juliette stand beside a juke box glaring a challenge at each other, then, just on beat, they turn away. Juliette poses staring at her paddle pad, Zeffirelli exhales blue smoke as the walls of the Le Sans Blague clatters away to give way to a protest ravaged desolate street. The God interfering to give us a piece of cinematic brilliance.
An observation, four preceding scenes with Aline playing three times in the background with different mixes; maybe it is my infatuation with the song, a perceived sacredness, an idea of overuse floats by. The contrast of Aline exhaustingly playing in the background while Zeffirelli reads their manifesto and when Misses Krementz writes the final line of the article wearing a gas mask, a reminder of the Touching Narcissism of the young; that sometimes they burn out in their youth, made martyrs on T-shirts, while their parents hold hands on a lonely taxi ride to identify the body, crying; “Zeffirelli, Zeffirelli,”.
“He is not an invincible comet speeding on its guided arc towards the outer reaches of the galaxy in cosmic space time.”
The swinging antenna on the yellow roof, the symmetrical lights beside the road, the lit up “TAXI”, the rain drops reflecting the lights outside as they roll down the wind shields. The melancholic strings of Adagio (Bof Compte A Rebours) soothe us in our struggling acceptance of Zeffirelli’s death and his death scene that almost blinks away in its fast cuts.
“Poetic, not necessarily in a bad way, reads as follows: ‘PostScript to a burst Appendix . . .’”
Remembering Zeffirelli through these lines.
Revised.
The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner
Roebuck Wright
A fatigue sets in on my first watch, no fault in part of the Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner. A symptom aroused from the investment in the elaborate stories which had extraordinary detail in terms of each object, dialogue, set and character on screen. A situation comparable, in part, to the excitement of reading your favorite Reader’s Digest and wanting to binge through it but you find yourself tired as you reach the slow burners.
A ennui threatens to set in.
But that does not take anything away from the story. It starts with Roebuck on a talk show re-accounting the Host’s favorite article by him; the story about Lt. Chef Nescaffier, and the kidnapping of the Police Commissioner’s son. Roebuck has a typographic memory and re-accounts the article word by word.
The scrapped page which entails a conversation between Lt. Nescaffier and Roebuck, a shared understanding of a sad situation, does indeed form the core of the story. “That’s the best part of the whole thing. That’s the reason for it to be written.”
Behind all the humor of the characters and the precariously curated world they inhibit, no matter how unattached and artificial they are made to seem, at its core, the stories Wes Anderson tells always have something humane.
Though, I have yet to figure out if they are meant to hide behind all the selected garnishes or that it is an unwavering statement— no matter how detached we build our lives, our humanity will always find a string to tug our better angels. The cruelest environment often creates the most empathetic person. Roebuck’s infatuation with food throughout his writing career, though puzzling to others(including the Talk show host) especially after reaching a point in his career where he could write about anything he wanted, when peeled back, I admit, is a sad reality, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t the most beautiful and pure connection. It is endearing, an ode to human resilience. There is no shame in solitude.
“Seeking something missing, missing something left behind,”
“Maybe with good luck we will find what eluded us in the places we once called home.”
The French Dispatch was my first introduction to Wes Anderson’s cinematic world. And I’m glad I discovered him when I did. The only connection I had to Wes’ work previously was snatches of scenes from The Darjeeling Limited. The fact that it was shot in India meant it received an extended coverage in Indian media. I would stumble across short reviews of the movie on magazines as a kid. The color blue and Adrien Brody in a disheveled suit had stuck with me since. I remember my father, the Commissioner of the T.V remote, once keeping the channel on when the movie aired on HBO. A cultural shock seeing something Indian on a Hollywood channel. But that is a story for a different day.
