The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (2021)
Directed by Wes Anderson
The staff of an American magazine based in France puts out its last issue, with stories featuring an artist sentenced to life imprisonment, student riots, and a kidnapping resolved by a chef.
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What critics say influenced The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun
“The French Dispatch” will require multiple watches in order to pick apart the subtle references thrown in for those eagle eyed viewers (How about a nod to William Inge’s “Picnic”).
Director
Jean-Luc Godard
Critics compare The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun to 2 of Godard’s films.
“Revisions to a Manifesto” draws on Jean-Luc Godard’s Masculin féminin —even borrowing Chantal Goya’s pop song, “Tu m’as trop menti.”
On the other hand, it reminded me of “Masculin Féminin,” one of my favorite Godard movies.
There’s the aforementioned sheer concentration of material, of course, but also the unabashed New Yorker fandom (many if not most of the French Dispatch staff have real-life New Yorker counterparts, and at least two of the tales are based on real pieces), the cinematic homages to the French New Wave (especially Godard’s La Chinoise in the second section), and the nostalgic veneration of high/fine/French culture.
Si se quiere se trata de un homenaje a la cultura francesa desde el que recorrer, entre 1950 y 1970, todos y cada uno de los arquetipos que han configurado una forma de ver el mundo a la que no son ajenas ni el cine de Jacques Tati o Carné o Truffaut ni el Tour ni La Chinoise .
Director
Wes Anderson
Critics compare The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun to 9 of Anderson’s own films.
Where “The Grand Budapest Hotel” served as an homage to a single writer, Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, “The French Dispatch” is Anderson’s arms-wide-open tribute to a generation of complicated geniuses, so the winks come as dense and dizzying as guilty-pleasure movie references do in a Quentin Tarantino picture.
If you’re not familiar with the Wes Anderson oeuvre, you might not appreciate The French Dispatch , a delightfully offbeat comedy that feels like a spiritual companion to The Grand Budapest Hotel , maybe crossed with “60 Minutes.”
From “The Royal Tenenbaums” to “Rushmore,” from “The Grand Budapest Hotel” to “Moonrise Kingdom,” the writer-director Wes Anderson is a greatly skilled miniaturist who consistently produces finely honed, exquisitely rendered works that inspire great admiration while usually leaving one a little bit … chilly.
It’s a perfect match of a foreign bureau complementing personalities, the kind Anderson served up in previous films, such as “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Moonrise Kingdom” and “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.”
The French Dispatch may be packed with obscure references that reward those invested in similar interests to Anderson, but while less inherently audience-friendly than The Royal Tenenbaums or The Grand Budapest Hotel , the film does use this first story to show audiences how to watch the movie.
If you don’t already dig Anderson’s vibe from works like “The Royal Tanenbaums” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “French Dispatch” might be polarizing because all of the filmmaker's idiosyncrasies are on full display.
From “The Royal Tenenbaums” to “Rushmore,” from “The Grand Budapest Hotel” to “Moonrise Kingdom,” the writer-director Wes Anderson is a greatly skilled miniaturist who consistently produces finely honed, exquisitely rendered works that inspire great admiration while usually leaving one a little bit … chilly.
The French Dispatch may be packed with obscure references that reward those invested in similar interests to Anderson, but while less inherently audience-friendly than The Royal Tenenbaums or The Grand Budapest Hotel , the film does use this first story to show audiences how to watch the movie.
It's set in a fictional French metropolis called "Ennui," which is a skewed version of Paris not unlike the New York City of The Royal Tenenbaums.
But mostly, I had the sinking feeling that the Jaguar Shark encounter wasn’t earned in the same way as Ben Stiller’s battered conciliation at the close of The Royal Tenenbaums (“it’s been a rough year, Dad”)—and even worse, that the mechanical, inorganic emotionalism of this new, ornately ostentatious film rendered me retrospectively distrustful of the predecessors that meant so much to me.
Anderson was the rare filmmaker whose sentiments one responded to personally; he made the best family movies other than Spielberg (his tribal comedy The Royal Tenenbaums borrowed the short-story caprices of New Yorker writer J. D. Salinger).
Wes Anderson has always had a penchant for dysfunctional underdogs—the eccentric high schooler Max Fischer of Rushmore, the failed family of geniuses in The Royal Tenenbaums, the herd of garbage-dwelling canines in Isle of Dogs.
From “The Royal Tenenbaums” to “Rushmore,” from “The Grand Budapest Hotel” to “Moonrise Kingdom,” the writer-director Wes Anderson is a greatly skilled miniaturist who consistently produces finely honed, exquisitely rendered works that inspire great admiration while usually leaving one a little bit … chilly.
And the themes and subject matter couldn’t be accused of indulging anyone’s inner child, wonderful as the likes of Rushmore and Fantastic Mr. Fox remain.
Wes Anderson has always had a penchant for dysfunctional underdogs—the eccentric high schooler Max Fischer of Rushmore, the failed family of geniuses in The Royal Tenenbaums, the herd of garbage-dwelling canines in Isle of Dogs.
I would never miss a Wes Anderson release, and even though some of his most widely loved films ( The Royal Tenenbaums , Moonrise Kingdom ) have left me cold, there are others ( Rushmore , Fantastic Mr. Fox ) I’ve loved so long I all but know them by heart.
From the layered pastries and rococo decor of Grand Budapest Hotel to Max's packed slate of extracurriculars in Rushmore, the filmmaker has produced a suite of works that are vehicles for both halting sentiment and formal pleasure, with an air of self-awareness often subverting their softest parts.
There was his debut, Bottle Rocket, a lo-fi comedy about inept would-be criminals played by Luke and Owen Wilson that looks downright naturalistic compared with what would come after.
There are ten of them in all, to date, ranging from this latest release all the way back to his debut Bottle Rocket in 1996.
The road from “Bottle Rocket” (1996) to “Isle of Dogs” (2018) has been winding, Turkish carpeted, and very often enchanting.
Wes Anderson movies, from the very beginning with Bottle Rocket , have always unearthed deep melancholy, incredible silliness, and every other crack in the facade of upper-crust white society.
Swirling through these narratives, like flakes in an exquisitely designed snow globe, are members of Anderson’s long-established repertoire group (including a breezy opening segment about a bicycling reporter played by Owen Wilson, who starred in Anderson’s first short film, Bottle Rocket, way back in 1994).
But while The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou paid specific tribute to Jacques Cousteau, or The Darjeeling Limited to Satyajit Ray, his latest tries to honor too broad of a subject.
It’s a perfect match of a foreign bureau complementing personalities, the kind Anderson served up in previous films, such as “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Moonrise Kingdom” and “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.”
Anderson used Mark Mothersbaugh to score his historic run of Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, but in the mid-2000s he switched to Desplat, whose work here rivals the best of Mothersbaugh.
In truth, almost all Anderson’s movies, hitherto, have borne an air of packing; think of the boat in “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” (2004), the train carriages in “The Darjeeling Limited” (2007), or “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (2014), with its stacks of servants and guests.
After a stretch of dry, high style, low-soul movies in the aughts such as “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” and “The Darjeeling Limited,” Anderson again found his footing in the ’10s with the wondrous “Moonrise Kingdom” and the Best Picture Oscar nominee “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”
From “The Royal Tenenbaums” to “Rushmore,” from “The Grand Budapest Hotel” to “Moonrise Kingdom,” the writer-director Wes Anderson is a greatly skilled miniaturist who consistently produces finely honed, exquisitely rendered works that inspire great admiration while usually leaving one a little bit … chilly.
It’s a perfect match of a foreign bureau complementing personalities, the kind Anderson served up in previous films, such as “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Moonrise Kingdom” and “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.”
The French Dispatch also has no shortage of excuses for Anderson and cinematographer Robert Yeoman (who previously collaborated with him on The Grand Budapest Hotel and Moonrise Kingdom , among others) to employ carousels of whimsy in every packed scene, as well as a purposeful trading of art styles and color filters meant to evoke the contrast between past, present, and future.
I would never miss a Wes Anderson release, and even though some of his most widely loved films ( The Royal Tenenbaums , Moonrise Kingdom ) have left me cold, there are others ( Rushmore , Fantastic Mr. Fox ) I’ve loved so long I all but know them by heart.
But in the league of “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012), “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001) and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (2014) it is not.
Wes Anderson ( Moonrise Kingdom , The Grand Budapest Hotel ) digs deep in his bag of director's tricks to dazzle you.
If Isle of Dogs was a feature-length tribute to the Japanese artists who inspire him, The French Dispatch is a playground for Anderson to explore the various modes and styles of French expression.
Continuing a trajectory he started with “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Isle of Dogs,” he’s less invested in the particulars of family bonds or idiosyncratic journeymen than the way those sort of personalities feed into the larger equation of an enigmatic existence.
Wes Anderson has always had a penchant for dysfunctional underdogs—the eccentric high schooler Max Fischer of Rushmore, the failed family of geniuses in The Royal Tenenbaums, the herd of garbage-dwelling canines in Isle of Dogs.
The road from “Bottle Rocket” (1996) to “Isle of Dogs” (2018) has been winding, Turkish carpeted, and very often enchanting.
Anderson did change paths with his 2018 stop-motion animated film Isle of Dogs, but here he gets back to live-action.
But even the films of his that I’ve outright disliked ( The Life Aquatic , The Darjeeling Limited ) are packed with marvels of production and costume design, cleverly conceived sight gags, and extra-dry dialogue delivered in the trademark rat-a-tat style he prefers.
In truth, almost all Anderson’s movies, hitherto, have borne an air of packing; think of the boat in “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” (2004), the train carriages in “The Darjeeling Limited” (2007), or “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (2014), with its stacks of servants and guests.
After a stretch of dry, high style, low-soul movies in the aughts such as “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” and “The Darjeeling Limited,” Anderson again found his footing in the ’10s with the wondrous “Moonrise Kingdom” and the Best Picture Oscar nominee “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”
For me, and up through The Darjeeling Limited , what I liked best about Wes Anderson was his sometimes shockingly effective grappling with absent fathers and broken families.
The film becomes a wry showcase for the director’s evolution as a creative who has been refining an unparalleled style for over two decades, with a sharper humor but without the more deeply felt pulse of films like The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox or most recently, and most effectively, The Grand Budapest Hotel.
And the themes and subject matter couldn’t be accused of indulging anyone’s inner child, wonderful as the likes of Rushmore and Fantastic Mr. Fox remain.
I would never miss a Wes Anderson release, and even though some of his most widely loved films ( The Royal Tenenbaums , Moonrise Kingdom ) have left me cold, there are others ( Rushmore , Fantastic Mr. Fox ) I’ve loved so long I all but know them by heart.
Outside of his animated efforts Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs , the films of Wes Anderson have never really appealed to me beyond aesthetic appreciation and some amusing deadpan humour.
Ever since Anderson delved into stop-motion animation with Fantastic Mr. Fox, even the director’s live-action movies have begun to feel animated in spirit, the control-freak perfection of his images proving themselves to be too alive to what images can do to stick to the straight story.
It’s a genuinely joyful and overwhelming experience, perhaps the closest that Anderson’s come to equalling Fantastic Mr. Fox , which is what I consider to be his crowning achievement.
Indeed, The French Dispatch resembles one of his stop-motion efforts—Fantastic Mr. Fox, Isle of Dogs—more than his live-action films, only with actors instead of puppets.
(I'm not sure why, but good for her.) Lucinda was based on a real journo, and there's an obvious homage to Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet," although I'm also not sure why.
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Director
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Critics compare The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun to 2 of Clouzot’s films.
That relationship is a nod to the one in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s “Quai des Orfèvres” (1947).
This segment takes a great deal from the Grand Guignol-influenced crime films of that late ’50s like Clouzot’s Diabolique , with a healthy dose of early Hitchcock, when he was finding his ground between the silent age and the sound era, and descends into genuine animated fantasy, as its bizarre and quite-funny car chase around the streets of Ennui is rendered in a Herge-like cartoon.
All of which is a mini-film unto itself, and also a loving nod, I’d guess, to “Le Modèle,” the final chapter in the greatest of all portmanteaux, Max Ophüls’s “Le Plaisir” (1952).
It is in that space several folks, including the Cartoonist (Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman), the Story Editor (Fisher Stevens, “Short Circuit”) and the Copy Editor (Elisabeth Moss, “The Handmaid’s Tale”) have come to plan the obit and grieve for their fallen leader.
The opening of “Concrete” bows to Jacques Rivette’s “La Belle Noiseuse” (1991).
McDormand’s composite Edna St. Vincent Millay figure is similarly facile, as are Del Toro’s tortured-artist intrigues, mixed with Léa Seydoux parodying the nudity in Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse, while Adrien Brody lampoons art-savant greed.
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Director
Jacques Tati
Critics compare The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun to 2 of Tati’s films.
After an early sequence that steals directly from Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle (an exterior establishing shot of the dilapidated Dispatch building, through which a waiter passes by various windows and stairways), much of the movie fills the screen with props, sets, and busy backdrops.
Rug repair bills aside, from essentially the first moment that the dazzled viewer is introduced to the moving picture’s location – a French town glorying in the moniker Ennui-sur-Blasé, on which an average of 190,000 flakes of snow fall per year and from whose canal an average of 8.2 bodies are dredged per week – Mr. Anderson delivers such a dense and barmy barrage of minutely imagined wonders (not least a complete and perfect recreation of the famously ramshackle house from Mr. Jacques Tati‘s “Mon Oncle“) that it leaves one in something of a quandary.
Bringing to life a big-screen city unlike any we’ve seen before, Anderson has built himself the biggest Parisian playground since Jacques Tati doomed himself to financial ruin erecting the stages for his masterpiece Playtime.
Most journalists can’t relate to “All the President’s Men” – changing the world with our words and looking like Robert Redford while doing so.
It flatters the field, after all, just not in the way that Pulitzer-centric mega-scoop sagas “All the President’s Men” or “Spotlight” may have done before.