“Self-reflection is a vice best carried out in private- or not at all.”
-The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun
So, I’m going to try and make it sound like I wrote this blog post this way on purpose, because that would be the only way to do justice to Wes Anderson’s newest film. Somewhat accurately described by some as a love letter to journalism, with obvious nods to The New Yorker in style and in substance, The French Dispatch stands in a unique place of the canon of Anderson. As so many of his films do well, it represents a different style and purpose of filmmaking than say, Dune, which was the last movie I saw in theatres (up to two now in the age of COVID).
This is in part, as I said to a fried of mine, because “it is grossly, obnoxiously Anderson.” To some this will be an absolute turn off, I know several people who simply despise his style on its own standing. Consider here when the setting is a French town named Ennui-sur-Blasé, and you already know what you’re in for. Everything about his style, from the symmetry to the games played with color, perspective, timing, and composition, to the extended animated sequence, to the music, feels as though Anderson has been entirely liberated. Two important developments stem from this: first, that The French Dispatch reeks of love (more on that later) and two, that it succeeds at what Anderson does best: feelings.
I just used two colons in one sentence, someone stop me.
I say feelings but I’m not sure that’s entirely the right word. I feel like if I say aesthetic too many people would roll their eyes. Atmosphere? Zeitgeist? It’s… something. Something uniquely Anderson that he’s just so, so successful at. I believe I’ve disclosed before that The Grand Budapest Hotel is my favorite film, and The French Dispatch displays some of that same charm and… dare I say nostalgia? It’s present in Fantastic Mr. Fox, too. You become overwhelmed by the love of a time and a place you’ve never seen, desiring a world you’d like to live in for all the minute details spread before you but that you know could never exist because it’s too set and yet somehow too alive. It’s a testament to the power of creation, that we should feel so towards something which at once doesn’t exist and yet plays out before us. To borrow a phrase from Budapest, a world that vanished long before we ever entered it.
It’s the power of creation which makes me write earlier of the description of The French Dispatch as a love letter to journalism as only somewhat accurate. It’s a love letter to creativity. Why else would it focus on art, on writing, and on food as its main stories? It may follow the aesthetic and plot of a beloved publication, even in that above setup, but it stresses the creative impulse lying inside all of us. For that reason, the film feels free, and it encourages that freedom from all of us. That world that vanished before we ever entered it exists because we’re able to make it, if only for a little while. If only with words, or film, or food, or music, or painting.
Maybe inspiring is the word I’m looking for.
One leaves the theatre after The French Dispatch fully immersed in that kind of belief, that it is possible to captures feelings like that forever through the creative acts we all use to share our beloved sentiments and passions with each other. It’s the kind of raw idealism that leads to a student protest over chess or a painting of pure devotion to be done in fresco. It stands in opposition to the rights of proper prose, the fiduciary concerns of patrons and audiences, and thrives even within the walls and bars of a police headquarters. It cannot be killed, starved, shut down, or bought, because it is in all of us innately as human beings. That is, what I think, the final issue of the eponymous magazine truly believes.
One of the favorite quotes pinned to my quote board comes from Fran Lebowitz, at least according to a book of writing quotes a friend bought me at random once. It reads: “Until I was about seven, I thought books were just there, like trees. When I learned that people actually wrote them, I wanted to, too, because all children aspire to inhuman feats like flying. Most people grow up to realize they can’t fly. Writers are people who grow up to realize they can’t be God.”
Wes Anderson may not be God, but he is a god. A god of mischief and joy, of nostalgia and imagination. The French Dispatch is his latest trick, a web of stories aimed purely at expressing a love of creation, of times gone by when the written word held more sway than even the visual medium he so excels in, and an invitation for you to join him in playing tricks of your own. Of tasting new flavors, of birthing manifestos, of painting with prison supplies. In that sense, while not his best, it is certainly one of his most memorable.
And remember: No Crying.