Wes Anderson’s ‘French’ connection

The best directors adhere to a principle championed by François Truffaut: a film must include at least four ideas per minute. In “The French Dispatch,” Wes Anderson’s rate of creativity might even exceed Truffaut’s formulation. It opens with an homage to director to Jacques Tati, as a waiter carries a tray of treats to the office of Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray), the editor of The French Dispatch, a periodical of factual writing that resembles The New Yorker. Overlooking the canals of the fictional burg Ennui-sur-Blasé, Howitzer Jr. gives this sage advice to his charges: “Try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose.” These were different times in the news industry—he doesn’t kill pieces, he happily pays for more pages (and he even takes a lenient view toward reimbursement for incidentals).

Anderson dramatizes the production of one issue of the magazine with a wide ensemble cast that includes too many starry names to mention—in The French Dispatch offices alone, there’s copy editor Alumna (Elisabeth Moss), cartoonist Hermes Jones (Jason Schwartzman), and the writer of the magazine’s front matter, Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson). He delivers a seedy, Joseph Mitchell-style travelogue of the city featuring the great phrase, “Choir boys half-drunk on the blood of Christ...”

The first longform story—“The Concrete Masterpiece” by J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton)—is the one you’ll be most anxious to reread/rewatch. It sketches the life of Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro), a de Kooning-esque artist spending a long spell in prison. Léa Seydoux is a wonder as Simone, Rosenthaler’s prison guard and muse (“No Time to Die” filmmakers can look to this performance from Seydoux and despair at how they failed this excellent actress). Cadazio (Adrien Brody), a briefly imprisoned art dealer, discovers the work of this outsider artist at an exhibition of incarcerated artists. After originally buying a piece for loose cigarettes, Cadazio eventually leverages the work into international fame for Rosenthaler, correctly understanding that artistic geniuses deserve a double-standard of justice. The passage crescendos with an expressionistic, freeze-framed tableau that stands with the best shots Anderson has ever done.

If anything, this near-perfect vignette almost harms the rest of the film, which struggles to reach the same level. We move to the Politics/Poetry section of the magazine for “Revisions to a Manifesto” by Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand). It’s basically May ’68 all over again, but with more stylish clothes and chansons by Jarvis Cocker. Krementz embeds herself with teenage revolutionaries who are, in the writer’s terms, “the pimple cream and wet dream” contingent of the resistance. As Zeffirelli, Timothée Chalamet’s wispy mustache underscores his youthful vulnerability, and he’s overshadowed by both the journalist and his own girlfriend, Juliette (Lyna Khoudri). This section bursts with an almost frantic level of pictorial creativity from Anderson, who jams black and white, color, and animated elements into every inch of the screen.

The final piece is “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner” by Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright). The writer recounts his story to a talk show host (played by Liev Schreiber) and marvelously channels the vibe of the always erudite James Baldwin. He outlines his adventures one night with the Commissaire (Mathieu Amalric), a policeman whose son is kidnapped, thus interrupting Roebuck’s planned meal with Lt. Nescaffier (Stephen Park) a master of “police cooking,” a quickfire cuisine that becomes crucial to solving a mystery.

At The French Dispatch, Arthur Howitzer Jr. gives artists the space to do their work as intended—we can only hope the same applies to Wes Anderson throughout his career.