Review: The French Dispatch

Image courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Meticulous. That's the best word to describe the films of Wes Anderson, especially "The French Dispatch," which could very well be the most Wes Anderson movie that Anderson has ever made. There have been times when critics have complained over Anderson's fussy attention to detail - and make no mistake, literally every object in every shot appears to have been fussed over to great lengths - but in the case of his latest film, it works so well. With only "The Grand Budapest Hotel" as its rival, this new picture could be the director's best in 20 years.

There's not a plot, in the typical sense, in "The French Dispatch," but rather an extended opening sequence describing the creation of and goings-on of the fictional titular publication - a weekly addition to a Kansas newspaper operated by an ex-pat named Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray, always an asset), who draws from a roster of - what else - eccentric writers abroad. Howitzer's two mottos are "no crying" and "just make sure it sounds like you wrote it that way on purpose."

After we run quickly through a slew of characters - Elisabeth Moss's strict grammarian is only in a brief scene or two, while Jason Schwartzman's cartoonist is barely present - on the staff, the film moves on to a prologue of sorts about the town in which much of the action is set. By the way, nobody but Wes Anderson could get away with a fictional French town called Ennui. The narrator is Owen Wilson, one of the magazine's writers, and his regaling of the ins-and-outs of Ennui are matched with a frenetic series of scenes about town, complete with a number of classic Anderson dioramas. 

The remainder of the film is split up into three chapters, all of which represent three stories that have run in various publications of The French Dispatch at some point during the 20th century. The lead characters in all three pieces are primarily the writers. In the first, Tilda Swinton narrates a story about a convict artist (Benicio del Toro in a growling performance) whose model (Lea Seydoux) is a female prison guard with whom he's fallen love. Adrien Brody, Bob Balaban and Henry Winkler plays the rich financiers who see the potential in the artist's work and want to bankroll a major show.

In the second scenario, Frances McDormand plays a writer who runs into the problem of not being able to distance herself from her subject matter after she becomes fascinated with - and a little smitten by - a young French wannabe revolutionary played by Timothy Chalamet, whose big showdown with the police and the town's mayor involves a tense game of chess.

In the final - and, in my opinion, best - story, Jeffrey Wright plays Roeback Wright, a writer with a self-described topographic memory who's on a talk show describing to the host - played by Liev Schreiber - how a piece on a chef (Steve Park) who works at a police station somehow led him to the story of the kidnapping of the police chief's (Mathieu Amalric) son by a group of anarchists (led by Edward Norton and Saoirse Ronan). 

Some of the year's biggest laugh-out-loud moments can be found in "The French Dispatch" - a fight during an art opening, a cartoon involving a man in spandex riding around on the hood of a car during a chase and, my personal favorite, a crack about the effects of communion wine on altar boys. 

Even more impressive is the insane attention to detail throughout the film. This is an immaculate film, from a visual standpoint. In nearly every shot, there's something interesting going on, and occasionally there are several things going on at the same time within the frame. The film is often bursting with energy, and every shot is just so.

While Anderson's previous films - especially "Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "The Grand Budapest Hotel" - often mix hilarity with pathos, and some occasional emotional gut punches, "The French Dispatch" mostly avoids that for much of the film. Its coda, however, involves a death at the magazine, its effect on the publication and a group memorial, of sorts. It's here that Anderson's film sneaks up on you. 

"The French Dispatch" is a labor of love and love letter that pays tribute to The New Yorker issues of yesteryear and the writers who filled their pages with fascinating stories. It seems obvious that Anderson reveres these journalists and the magic they can create by simply crafting what they've witnessed into great storytelling, just as a viewer might admire how deftly this film's director uses remarkable attention to detail, camerawork, humor, nostalgia and wit to make something magical like "The French Dispatch."