Yes exactly! There are some directors that have a very distinct style (Wes Anderson, Edgar Wright, Tarantino and -yes- even Michael Bay come to mind) and while I do not personally enjoy every movie they make, I am still extremely thankful that they keep getting the opportunity to show us their visions and take us into worlds very different (or ometimes with eerie similarity) to our own.
Jason Schwartzman seemed to move on fine from that role so I’m sure Wes will come up with a Timothee-replacement to carry the torch in the not too distant future.
He’s not worried about Timothee getting other roles but nobody else getting that specific kind of role but him.
I caught this yesterday and loved it. In a weird way, it reminded me of Tenet? Meticulous, intricate, and relentlessly-paced, and more concerned with form and structure than plot or emotional beats. And both left me wishing for a feature length documentary on the production.
I can’t wait for a home release so I can pause and rewind. Feels like there was so much going on in each frame that it was impossible to take it all in.
Would agree with this comment, and also the complaints of others that the framing device doesn’t really hold it together well enough. Still enjoyed it a lot, and it is of course beautiful to look at and very witty, but overall it’s one of his weaker films I feel.
Yeah, I’d love to see how those “freezeframe” shots were done - it almost looks like the objects are just held up with piano wire, but some don’t seem like that would work.
I think I need to see it again.
I think it’s the most distilled essence of Andersons cinematic techniques, but definitely not of his storytelling. He’s trying to fit three movies into one, and it ends up losing what to me is one of the most important things about a Wes Anderson movie, and that’s the love he pours into his characters when he takes the time.
A Wes Anderson character is someone who is deeply flawed, maybe even deplorable, but nearly always still worthy of your sympathy in the end.
The first segment with Seydoux and Del Toro is the only one where that really comes off. The second one goes way too fast. In a longer movie I’d have a chance to understand McDormand, Chalamet and the bike helmet, but in this format they have to wrap things up way too fast to leave me with any real insight. McDormands character is moving so fast she’s a blur who barely makes sense. When Chalamet bows out I felt nothing because I had no idea who his character was, he was just a very handsome sketch.
The third one is all about technique. Sure, I like a rolling camera, and I sure as heck love a crazed Willem Dafoe in a chicken coop, but beyond aesthetics and gags, there really wasn’t a lot of movie there to support it.
Which really blows, because I like Jeffrey Wright, and now I’ve seen him in two movies by my favourite directors that haven’t been great, the other one being Hold the Dark.
I think the first segment is perfect because it keeps it relatively simple. Crazed saw murderer falls for cold correctional goddess, brilliant gag about the French splatter school, something something mural, and everything comes together in the end.
There’s just not enough time in this movie. Isle of Dogs was also extremely fast, very literally, both in the cuts and the dialogue. I didn’t entirely grasp everything that was going on until I saw it the second time. But I think it’s a much better movie, because even at breakneck speed, the characters still have a whole movie in which to live and do things.
There are a couple of indulgences that I think should’ve been cut, like the play in the second segment, which spends time he doesn’t have to show things he doesn’t need to, and the Hergé tribute in the third segment. I had the idea that this movie was a tribute to 20th century French (and French-Belgian) culture, so I thought I knew why it was there, but it really clashed for me. It felt like francophile fan service, and it took me out of it.
I was surprised to read that Anderson intended it to be a tribute to The New Yorker. I never got that from watching it.
The thing that got me the most about The French Dispatch is how it totally nails the feel of fancy old French and Italian movies. The kind where you catch a glimpse, and it just looks so fricken perfect, like fine art, like even the trash is beautiful and filled with longing in monotone versions of Italy and France, and you feel like you’re a philistine, and you’ve wasted your life by not having seen that movie.
Even if the movie itself is actually pretentious convoluted crap that you could never sit through, it still just looks like the finest thing in the world when you glimpse something from it.
A lot of the scenes in the second segment gave me that feeling, and the shot with the police cars speeding through the narrow streets in the third was just stunning to me.
That aesthetic was probably my favorite thing about the movie. I don’t think it’s terrible, but I would really like Anderson to take his foot off the gas. It seems to me like he’s rushing more and more (I genuinely didn’t realize the pun until I read that to myself) and much as I respect the jazzy editing, if he does it at the expense of telling a story, I think that’s a regression.
Yorgos Lanthimos! Speaking of directors distilling their essence, Nimic is everything that is brilliant about a Yorgos Lanthimos movie, crammed into 9 perfect minutes of film. I wish Andersons vignettes could’ve been as cunningly compressed for this one.
Ha! This is hilarious. I recently, finally watched Cleo From 5 to 7 and felt exactly this.
I think Tilda Swinton was my favorite thing about The French Dispatch.
FTFY.
God, she is fantastic.
There were so many performances I liked, which goes for pretty much any Wes Anderson movie.
I think the only time I’ve ever really disagreed with him is Bruce Willis in Moonrise Kingdom.
More than any other Wes Anderson movie I’ve seen, The French Dispatch treats story as a secondary concern to style. I’m not sure any of the segments or the movie as whole can even be seen as stories, there’s no plot and characters are defined by quirks without any human trait or feeling of depth.
But it works like a Loony Tunes short works, sequences of inventive visual gags and exaggerated characters, with a strong sense of its own style. Also, allusions to things that are clearly important to the director, even if I don’t care about some and don’t recognize others. Maybe the whole film is a New Yorker cover illustration in the form of a movie.
And Tilda Swinton really is the best thing here, along with Adrien Brody and the animated parts of the kidnapping segment.
I stand by my statement that The French Dispatch is Wes Anderson’s Tenet.
What about Seydoux and Del Toro?
I feel like Del Toro was born to play that part. Half snarling animal, half sensitive artist. I think it’s a brilliant character sketch.
The whole movie is brilliant sketches. I’m just not sure it hangs together.