The French Dispatch (2021) For those who dote on the meticulous craftsmanship and obsession with arch irony of West Anderson films.....here's your ultimate wallow.
It's all here for you......the scenes and sets put together like semi animated still photos and the micro-managed posing of actors slyly underplaying characters who are more archetypes than human beings. (as in "The Grand Budapest Hotel", "Moonrise Kingdom, etc.)
And giving you the overall effect of watching an entire movie that exists solely within its own self-contained universe....a movie unspooling inside Wes Anderson's own personal snow globe.
I don't know if it's possible to maintain a neutral opinion about Anderson's filmmaking........either you embrace it and fully accept these voyages into his snow-globes, embracing their cleverness and artistry........or you find them distant, remote and tiresome in their fussy, deliberately cartoonish presentations of scenes and performances.
It's fitting that watching "The French Dispatch", inspired by the writers and articles of New Yorker magazine, feels like you're spending 107 minutes flipping through that magazine's famed cartoons..... that's .a lot of deadpan, dry wit to absorb at one sitting.
After awhile, I began to wonder why Wes Anderson goes to the trouble of still using flesh-and-blood humans for his films.. The actors here don't function for Anderson much differently than stop-motion puppets, a technique the director switched over to for "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" and "Isle Of Dogs". At one point "Dispatch" does actually convert to pen-and-ink animation and the cartoon figures work pretty much the same as their live counterparts.
Bur I'll say this in the film's favor......I couldn't help but stand in awe of Anderson's intricate camerawork and staging,, the constant rat-a-tat firing of the most subtle, smirk-inducing humor and the absolute physical and emotional precision of his actors.
For better or worse, the film's the epitome of Anderson's art. If you go with it, then it's a 4 star (****) feast of Anderson-ia.......but if you find his work pretentious and designed only for film festival culture vultures to salivate over, you'll find your patience tested to its very limit.
View accordingly.
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