BEFORE: OK, I've figured out how I'm going to watch "Dune" at the end of the month, only I can't talk about it yet. It may appear on HBO soon, or become available at a reasonable price, in which case I won't have to do anything shady, so the less said about it right now the better. Hell, it may get re-released in theaters, especially when award season gets a bit closer, or Hollywood runs out of movies. And even though getting to "The French Dispatch" was top priority for me, I had a back-up plan if "Dune" didn't become available, I'd link via Frances McDormand to "City By the Sea" with Robert De Niro, which would then link to "Set Up" with 50 Cent, and I'd re-order January from there, the same exact movies I had planned, only in a different order. This would then move "Spider-Man: No Way Home" to the end of the month, along with today's film, which would then link to my first February film. Thank God it didn't come to that, but it almost did.
I'm still in emergency listing mode, films have been getting released faster than I can possibly make room for them, it's been this way for several months now, as Hollywood has been in "catch-up" mode. If the winter pandemic surge gets any worse, or award season ends, then things may slow down again and I'll have some time to catch up, but for now, half of my work right now consists of keeping track of all the films released in theaters or on streaming that I DON'T have time to watch.
That being said, I'm right where I wanted to be, I could open the year with "Nomadland", starring Frances McDormand, knowing that it could lead me HERE, and from HERE, I can link to just about anything - in fact, whatever I pick is probably going to feel like a let-down, considering all the possibilities that I'll then have to reject, just to focus on one. I don't have many regrets, linking-wise, after my third perfect year, except that there were so many films I watched with HUGE casts, that there were those roads not taken. (I had two films with cameos by Meat Loaf, why on earth couldn't I connect them? Who knows, maybe that would have upset the apple cart and caused a break in the chain...)
Anyway, a new film directed by Wes Anderson gets my attention - I programmed it as soon as I could, bear in mind it was released AFTER my Bill Murray chain last year, in October, and by the time I could first work it in (between two Jeffrey Wright films in November) I'd already filled all of my slots for the year, so this was the earliest I could possibly get to it, without cutting something else. But there are so many great Wes Anderson films - from "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums" to "Moonrise Kingdom" and "The Grand Budapest Hotel", and then there's "Isle of Dogs" and "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" - so let's just say that expectations for this one are high indeed.
THE PLOT: A love letter to journalists set in an outpost of an American newspaper in a fictional twentieth-century French city that brings to life a collection of stories published in "The French Dispatch Magazine".
AFTER: I'm so jazzed by this film, I'm energized just knowing it exists, like I didn't even feel the need to play any games on my phone while watching it, which is how you know that a movie just isn't doing it for me. This film was, like many others, delayed for a whole year because of the pandemic, and so I'm glad that it finally made it to the screen - it's still playing at ONE theater in Manhattan, which isn't how I got to see it, but, you know, it could have been. We're in a bit of a "dead zone" right now, where many films that are still Oscar-eligible have completed their theatrical runs. Many are on streaming services, sure, for that is the way of things now, but some holdout films are still following the old release strategy, which is to appear in theaters for a couple months, as long as the box office will allow, and then disappear, only to re-emerge around Groundhog Day to try to get a little more publicity once the nominations are announced. It's not a typical year, so films were able to be released on streaming simultaneously with theatrical last year and still qualify. Some films like "No Time to Die" and the two that I want to SEE (of course) went dark for January. Of course. And in the old days, I'd just borrow a DVD screener from one of my bosses, return it the next day, and that would be it - but the DVD screener has also gone the way of the dinosaur, BUT some films are streaming on the Academy site, which grants access to the important people. Just saying.
I really hope "The French Dispatch" gets a nomination for Best Picture, that would make me happy, because I like this Wes Anderson guy, even though he looks at life from a very different angle. Pretentious? I guess I can see how some people might think that, I prefer to think of him as quirky, off-beat and able to find the humor and tragedy in seemingly everyday situations. He certainly has a lot of friends and collaborators, people who he can call and offer a role to, and even if that role is just "Junkie #2" and is on the screen for under a minute, they're probably going to say yes, because it's better to be in a Wes Anderson film than to not be. Right? Whether tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of wearing a funny costume, that is the question.
That poster you see is CROWDED, too - it's because this is an anthology film, there are three long stories plus two short ones, and one of the short ones serves as the framing device for the film, it's about a newspaper publisher from Kansas who packed up and moved to France to open a satellite office, one that would put print a newspaper supplement each week, but one that would also be sold in France like a magazine to ex-pat Americans. Umm, I think. Honestly that's a little unclear, but I don't require a Wes Anderson film to make 100% logical sense, it just has to be entertaining and quirky. And this really is the quirkiest, it's perhaps the Wes Andersonniest film that Wes Anderson ever Wes Andersonned, if you catch my meaning.
The poster reminds me a bit of the album cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", even though the Beatles aren't anywhere on the poster, or in the movie. Maybe this film is like Wes Anderon's "Sgt. Pepper", he may have reached the zenith of his career with this one, of course that's always tough to say. Anyway, where the Beatles are concerned, "Sgt. Pepper" is OK, but I've always been more of a "Rubber Soul" man, that's a flawless album. Maybe "Moonrise Kingdom" is his "Rubber Soul" and "Grand Budapest Hotel" is his "Revolver" - you know, some great songs but you can also see the drug influences, and the Fab Four were getting experimental and a bit full of themselves - still, great music though. But I digress.
"The French Dispatch" represents the final issue of the magazine, published shortly after the death of the publisher, who was a cantankerous and difficult man, but still treated his staff and freelance writer coterie like family - supportive, but also capable of being disappointed by them. According to the terms of his will, after his death the magazine would put out one final issue and then cease publication, severance pay would be given to the writers and they'd be freed from their contracts. What the film doesn't make clear is that the final issue will be like a "greatest hits" album, four of the best articles from the past would be published - thus allowing Wes Anderson to not be constrained by the limits of time, space, history or logic. I found that the scenes of the publisher, Arthur Howitzer Jr., doing editing work on these stories was therefore a bit confusing, if he's dead, how is he giving notes to the writers? Ah, but those scenes were in the past, and the stories are now being re-printed. Upon a second viewing, this will probably make much more sense.
The opening short, "The Cycling Reporter", is a bit of a throwaway. Sure, it's great to see Owen Wilson break the fourth wall and speak to the audience as if we're his readers, he's essentially just reading the article about touring the French city of Ennui-sur-Blasé by bicycle, noting the seedier parts where the whores and pickpockets do their work. But then it just devolves into slapstick. But that's about the last of my quibbles with the film, and it's nearly made up for by the fact that the name of the fictional French city, and the river it's located on, translate to "Boredom upon apathy". That's one of (I assume) a couple hundred in-jokes and Easter eggs to be found here.
The second story, "The Concrete Masterpiece", concerns a man incarcerated for murder in a French prison, and as a last-ditch effort to deal with his long sentence and stave off suicide, he joins the arts and crafts club for inmates, and develops an ability to paint. Another inmate, put away for tax evasion, is an art gallery owner and notices the man's talents. He offers to buy the painting, only the artist asks for 70 cigarettes for the piece, and the gallery owner has to convince him to accept francs instead. Once released, the art dealer works to promote the inmate as an "outsider" artist, champions him as the world's greatest unknown modern artist, and even lobbies for his parole, quite unsuccessfully. Nevertheless, he returns in three years to collect the art that the inmate has produced during his incarceration, with quite unexpected results.
The third story, "Revisions to a Manifesto", concerns a group of protesting French college students, who are a little vague about what it is they don't like about French society, but they definitely know that it NEEDS to change, and they're very sort of almost upset about it. The journalist from the French Dispatch does her best to remain impartial and neutral, however that proves to be impossible, as she can't help but offer aid by helping to format the group's manifesto, correct the spelling mistakes and even add an appendix or two. Oh, yeah, she gets emotionally involved with the much younger leader, but hey, this is France in the 1960's, so free love and all that. Much like the previous story, there are quite unexpected results after things spiral out of control.
The fourth story, "The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner", is told by another one of the Dispatch's writers, only he recites it from memory while being interviewed on a talk show in the swinging 1960's. It must have taken place earlier, perhaps in the early 1950's, at the start of his career, shortly after Mr. Howitzer rescued him from indecency charges at the police station by hiring him as a writer. This food journalist was researching an article about a unique sub-culture of the dining industry, that of the foods consumed by police when on duty, which were required to be portable, handheld, and with all sauces and gravies in powder form for easy consumption while doing either police work or paperwork. While visiting the police commissioner and his personal chef (also a police officer) the commissioner's son is kidnapped by criminals demanding the release of the Abacus, a mob accountant. After learning the location of the kidnapping gang holding the young boy, a lengthy stand-off occurs between the cops and the gang, and the police chef is brought in to end the situation, but with quite unexpected results.
I've got maybe one last quibble, and that is that this fourth story turns into a lengthy chase scene, and that's a running theme that I've noticed in Wes Anderson's films. There was a long chase sequence in "The Grand Budapest Hotel", and if you think about it, most of "Moonrise Kingdom" was one long chase scene, too. Perhaps it's easy for Mr. Anderson to slip into this mode, and it's a slightly tedious pattern that he maybe should try to avoid, but on the upside, he was able to AVOID this in four out of the five stories here.
There are other format problems that maybe SHOULD be annoying, like for example some sequences are in black and white, and some are in color. Some people may not like this, but I think that (largely) it all still works - I think in story #4 the flashback scenes are black & white and the present scenes are in color, that makes sense if one part of the story was set in the early 1950's and the other part in the technicolor hippie-dippie 60's. The vast majority of the 2nd story is in black & white also, the same sort of pattern holds but with splashes of color in the flashback scenes, so we can appreciate the beauty of the art pieces. Wow, if you think about it, art museums have been around much longer than movie theaters, and before color movies were a thing, there was really no point in setting a movie in a museum, because it would just look all gray and wrong and with nothing of the vibrancy of painted art. Museums were probably more popular in the 1920's than movie theaters, just because color. Am I right?
I just checked the general predictions online for the Best Picture nominations, and this film doesn't really seem to be on anybody's radar, which is a shame. "Grand Budapest Hotel" got a nomination for Best Picture a few years back, and I think this one's deserving, too - but I may be biased. Plus I haven't seen "Red Rocket" or "Nightmare Alley" or "King Richard" yet, or the other films being bandied about. Part of me would love to champion this film, but at the same time, I realize it may just be too darn quirky for mass appeal. Bear in mind, though, that the Beatles only won 4 Grammys while they were together (Lifetime achievement awards came later) and yep, two of those awards were for the "Sgt. Pepper" album. Just saying. Hang in there, Wes, I think you're doing a great job.
Also starring Benicio del Toro (last seen in "The Hunted"), Adrien Brody (last seen in "The Brothers Bloom"), Tilda Swinton (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Lea Seydoux (last seen in "The Lobster"), Timothée Chalamet (last seen in "Beautiful Boy"), Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright (last seen in "The Goldfinch"), Mathieu Amalric (last seen in "At Eternity's Gate"), Steve Park (last seen in "The Gambler"), Bill Murray (last seen in "The Killing of a Sacred Deer"), Owen Wilson (last seen in "Lost in London"), Bob Balaban (last seen in "Spielberg"), Henry Winkler (last seen in "Scream"), Liev Schreiber (last seen in "Scream 3"), Willem Dafoe (last seen in "The Bill Murray Stories"), Edward Norton (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Saoirse Ronan (last seen in "City of Ember'), Elisabeth Moss (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "A Very Murray Christmas"), Fisher Stevens (last seen in "One for the Money"), Griffin Dunne (last seen in "Broken City"), Lois Smith (last seen in "Lady Bird"), Tony Revolori (last seen in "Please Stand By"), Denis Ménochet (last seen in "Mary Magdalene"), Larry Pine (last seen in "Arbitrage"), Morgane Polanski (last seen in "The Wife"), Félix Moati, Mohamed Belhadjine, Nicolas Avinée, Christoph Waltz (last seen in "Tulip Fever"), Cécile de France (last seen in "Around the World in 80 Days"), Guillaume Gallienne, Rupert Friend (last seen in "The Young Victoria"), Alex Lawther (last seen in "Goodbye Christoper Robin"), Tom Hudson, Lily Taleb, Stéphane Bak, Hippolyte Girardot (last seen in "Paris, Je t'Aime"), Winsen Ait Hellal, Mauricette Coudivat, Damien Bonnard, Rodolphe Pauly, Antonia Desplat (last seen in "Operation Finale"), Pablo Pauly, Wallace Wolodarsky (last seen in "The Polka King"), Anjelica Bette Fellini, Nicolas Saada and the voice of Anjelica Huston (last seen in "Mr. North").
RATING: 7 out of 10 pints of mouthwash
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