Wes Anderson is a subgenre unto himself. From Rushmore to Moonrise Kingdom, the quirky auteur’s films are so uniformly meticulous and bizarre that they could not be mistaken for anyone else’s work. Regardless of the individual movie’s specific genre or plot, Anderson has consistently brought the same style and tone to all his films. His latest work, The French Dispatch, is no exception, as it is perhaps the most Wes Andersony movie Wes Anderson could have made. If you are a fan of his hyper-stylized world, the film is an absolute delight, that being said, for those uninitiated into his particular brand of off-beat, this film will be wildly inaccessible. With perfectly, uniformly symmetrical shot compositions and intentionally stilted, hyper-specific dialogue, The French Dispatch achieves its goal of being yet another beautifully weird Wes Anderson mess.
The film doesn’t much follow a singular narrative as it is more of an anthology movie, depicting the dramatization of the titular newspaper’s final issue. For every article featured in the Dispatch, we get a different self-contained short film, each with its own cast of characters, narrated by and starring the reporter who broke the story. First, a travel guide section, then the story of a controversial avant-garde artist, followed by a student revolution, and finally a kidnapping reported by the paper’s resident True Crime/Food journalist. All of the stories are incredibly engaging, with A-list stars popping up in the strangest little roles. There isn’t a weak segment in the film. The only real disconnect comes from the anthology nature of the storytelling. At the end of the film, when the stories intersect in the newspaper’s main office, it felt somewhat hollow. I barely knew who the characters were in relation to each other. Still, if you’re the type of audience member who can engage with a series of small stories as opposed to one big one, I doubt there would be much of a problem.
Of course, you can’t talk about a Wes Anderson movie without discussing the visuals. The cinematography and blocking in French Dispatch are as meticulous as ever. Everything is framed in perfect symmetry, often with very unusual angles. It’s filled with striking and beautiful images, just like most Wes Anderson films. In fact, if there is a main fault to be found in this movie, it’s how similar it is to his other work. At a certain point, applying this style to every film he makes stops being charming and becomes a bit repetitive. I fear with French Dispatch we’ve reached that point. It’s kind of weird that a film as unique as this one feels identical to a dozen other movies. It should be noted that the dialogue is just as whimsical and stylized as the visuals, with characters speaking in detailed lists instead of conventional sentences. Essentially from top to bottom, this is a thoroughly quirky piece of filmmaking, for better or for worse.
The French Dispatch is an incredibly dense film. There are stretches where the hyper-stylization of both the visuals and the language can be overwhelming, but if you’re already on board for this bizarre ride, there is plenty of fun to be had. Not Wes Anderson’s best movie, but far from his worst, The French Dispatch is one profoundly quirky filmmaker’s love letter to print journalism, and the unusual worlds it can inhabit.
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