Canada: Friday, October 22, 2021
Searchlight Pictures
for graphic nudity, some sexual references and language
THE FRENCH DISPATCH brings to life a collection of stories from the final issue of an American magazine published in a fictional 20th-century Fench city.
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Gregory M. - Rated it 3 out of 5
"The French Dispatch" From the visionary mind of Wes Anderson, "The French Dispatch" brings to life a collection of stories from the final issue of an 'American' magazine published in a fictional '20th-century' 'French' city. Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (Bill Murray), the revered founder and editor of 'The French Dispatch Of The Liberty', 'Kansas Evening Sun', died of an apparent heart attack in his offices located in 'The Printer’s District, Ennui-sur-Blasé', France. On the occasion of the death of it's beloved Kansas-born editor, the staff of 'The French Dispatch', convenes to write his obituary. His hand-picked staff, including 'The Cartoonist' Hermes Jones (Jason Schwartzman), 'The Story Editor' (Griffin Dunne), 'The Legal Advisor' (Fisher Stevens), 'The Copy Editor' Alumna (Elisabeth Moss), 'The Proofreader' (Anjelica Bette Fellini) and a cheery Writer (Wallace Wolodarsky), who has haunted 'The French Dispatch' offices for years but never written a single word, assembles over the body to collaborate on an obituary. They're led by Howitzer’s beloved writers, who he coddled and encouraged, and dressed down and built up, earning him their devotion and their love: There’s Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson), the intrepid 'Cycling Reporter', drawn to the most unsettling and unsavory aspects of the far-flung cities he visits. J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton), the critic and chronicler on intimate terms with every side of the modern art world. Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand), the solitary essayist who guards her journalistic integrity as closely as her private passions and Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright), the lonely expatriate polymath with a typographic memory, discovered and rescued by Howitzer under humiliating circumstances. Four surprising, complex, immaculately crafted, richly detailed, unexpectedly funny and even more unexpectedly moving stories collected within the pages of the lovingly crafted magazine. Memories of Howitzer flow into the creation of four stories: a travelogue of the seediest sections of the city itself from'The Cycling Reporter', 'The Concrete Masterpiece', about a criminally insane painter, his guard and muse, and his ravenous dealers; 'Revisions To A Manifesto', a chronicle of love and death on the barricades at the height of student revolt; and 'The Private Dining Room Of The Police Commissioner', a suspenseful tale of drugs, kidnapping and fine dining. Sazerac’s tour through 'Ennui-sur-Blasé' itself, an aging city on a hill with it's ancient cathedral towers, it's narrow-cobbled streets winding through rows of aging stone structures, it's charms and it's degradations, with it's nightlife and it's lowlife, where all eras seem to dissolve into the timeless essence of France, flowing like the waters of the nearby 'Blasé River'. Berenson’s 'The Concrete Masterpiece', in which the work of criminally insane painter Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro) is discovered, ruthlessly promoted and sold for increasingly astronomical prices by art dealer Julian Cadazio (Adrien Brody) and his uncles Nick (Bob Balaban) and Joe (Henry Winkler), and whose breathlessly anticipated, years-in-the-making masterpiece, inspired by his prison guard and muse Simone (Léa Seydoux), is unveiled with great fanfare to an impatient art world, including renowned Kansas art collector and likely buyer Upshur Clampette (Lois Smith). Lucinda Krementz’s 'Revisions To A Manifesto', a first-hand account of the grievances and the passions, political and sexual, that drive the romantically disenchanted youth of Ennui (Antonia Desplat) to go to war with their adult masters and initiate a tumultuous general strike that leads to the shutdown of the entire country. Krementz’s charismatic hero and heroine are the star-crossed leaders of the movement, the dreamy Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet) and the hard-nosed Juliette (Lyna Khoudri). Roebuck-Wright’s 'The Private Dining Room Of The Police Commissioner' is an assigned portrait of the legendary chef Nescaffier (Stephen Park), who serves at the pleasure of 'Ennui-sur-Blasé’s Commissaire' (Mathieu Amalric), that unexpectedly explodes into a nail-biting, ticking-clock suspense story when a group of thugs led by 'The Chauffeur' (Edward Norton) kidnap the Commissaire’s beloved son and crime-solving protégé Gigi (Winsen Ait Hellal) and threaten to kill him unless the local crime syndicates recently arrested accountant Albert, the Albacus (Willem Dafoe) is released from jail. The official name of 'The New Yorker'-inspired magazine is, 'The French Dispatch Of The Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun', a publication inspired by the history of 'The New Yorker' and the origins of two of the people who made it what it's: Harold Ross, the magazine’s co-founder, and William Shawn, his successor, both inspirations for the Arthur Howitzer, Jr. character and both born in 'The Midwest'. Herbsaint Sazerac, who takes his readers on a tour of 'Ennui-sur-Blasé', a fictional town that seems to embody the poetic heart of France itself, is in the spirit of writers like Joseph Mitchell, whose pieces were collected in the book 'Up In The Old Hotel', and 'Luc Sante'. The character of Rosenthaler is inspired by one particular film by Renoir called "Boudu Saved From Drowning", Rosenthaler’s magnum opus, a series of abstract frescoes painted on the prison walls, were done by the artist Sandro Kopp. 'Revisions To A Manifesto” is a refracted version of one of the central events in '20th Century' 'French' history, the events of 'May ’68', when student protests led to a massive movement that shut down the entire country. The storyline is loosely inspired by student leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s call for sexual freedom at 'The French University' in Nanterre, but it really begins less than a block away from the apartment in Paris, near 'Montparnasse' where Mavis Gallant lived,” referring to 'The Canadian' writer who inspired the character of Lucinda Krementz. The film uses an 'Arabian Nights'-like structure of stories within stories, by way of a play based on the memoirs of a youth who becomes radicalized and deserts the army. While set in the 1960s, it’s impossible not to see similarities to other protests throughout history and especially those happening today, led largely by the nation’s youth. The film juxtaposes the perspectives of old and young through Juliette and Lucinda’s characters as they argue over Zeffirelli’s role in 'The Chess Board Revolution', while Lucinda does her best to maintain journalistic neutrality. The third and perhaps most densely packed section, 'The Private Dining Room Of The Police Commissioner', is framed within the recitation of the story by it's author Roebuck Wright on a Dick Cavett/David Susskind-style talk show hosted by Liev Schreiber. The story proper, about a brilliant police commissioner and his renowned personal chef, which takes an unexpected turn when the commissioner’s son Gigi is kidnapped, carries strong overtones of 'French' crime dramas of the '30s', '40s' and '50s'. At a crucial juncture the story shifts to animation reminiscent of 'French' comic books. French cinema begins when cinema begins, with 'The Lumière Brothers" and Georges Méliès. "The French Dispatch" is many things, a bounty of stories within stories within memories within frameworks that converges into one organic whole, a cabinet of cinematic wonders of all shapes and sizes in constant dynamic motion, a love letter to the printed word in general, to France and to 'French' movies; a moving meditation on living far from home. And it's never just one of those elements at a time, but usually all at once. It’s about the type of magazine article that you would read that would bring you somewhere, before 'Google' and live streaming. It gives you a sense of place, the smells and the taste and the character, through the words of somebody with this ability to evoke images in your mind. In "The French Dispatch", the visuals might shift suddenly from black and white to color or from widescreen to 'Academy' ratio, subtitles might arrive in any corner of the frame and the emotional register can turn on a dime from comedy to lyricism to the deepest yearning. It's always full of changing colors, and it always stops and starts at the most unpredictable moments. There's much vivid detail within the frame and there’s much attention to not only language and words but also the specificity of composition that each frame is in and of itself a story within the story. It’s a film that celebrates the written word in a way that’s a healthy thing for our country now, when we’ve lost an appreciation for language and for intelligence as expressed through language. It’s a love letter to internationalism, culture and the blessed art of independent journalism. written by Gregory Mann
