Wes Anderson’s most recent movies are like the courtesan au chocolat from Mendl’s. Their instantly recognizable meticulously ornamental design exempts them from being sawed into.
The formalism of The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014, Wes Anderson) and The French Dispatch (2021, Anderson), both visually and textually, is to be marveled at for having achieved the quality wherein the style of the work is what’s most discernably essential to its impact.
Visually, and beginning with Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009, Anderson), the camera is for the most part fixed, and predominately restricted to fluid movement along the x and y axes. Along the x axis this usually means dolly shots. And along the y, booming up. But the key thing here is that the camera remain fixed, so (to a lesser extent) pans are also a part of this visual language.
In The French Dispatch, the travel-guide segment features compositions that showcase something more: movement choreography within the proscenium. Hitchcock once said something about Jaws being the moment Spielberg succeeded in “taking us out of the proscenium.” The French Dispatch delights in adhering to the proscenium in the strictest sense. This feeling of everything having been staged is intentional. The interplay between foreground, mid, and deep background, through its precision and execution can be observed when the empty static frame of the Ennui neighborhood’s drainage system is released first, in the shallow foreground, to be followed by bodies and actions decorating the subsequent space and time in the frame with deliberate exactitude. But there’s stuff that’s fun and spontaneously charming too, like the Owen Wilson character’s rides on his ten-speed. Again, strict dolly tracking shot with his bike noticeably artificial in its staging, fixed with the movement of the camera, precisely choreographed with the pratfall to punctuate the sequence. Or similarly when within the static frame he gets attacked behind an object in the midground and the empty bike moves perfectly along the x axis.
Some of the visual techniques in The French Dispatch can be traced to Anderson’s earlier works, like the cutaway aircraft or ship hull first seen in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004, Anderson). Did he get that from Tout va bien (1972, Jean-Luc Godard)? But there is a growth observable to be seen in some newer devices as well. Tableaux shots are used more. Especially in the first story with the set piece depicting the ascendance of ROSENTHALER’S work—dolly track along x axis linking events occurring at distant places within the film’s diegesis together in the same space, like the bisected train compartments sequence set to “Play with Fire” from The Darjeeling Limited (2007, Anderson). Maybe the most noticeable introduction into Anderson’s lexicon of imagery is the addition of one or more of the same character inhabiting the same physical space simultaneously. Like when Rosenthaler is painting his self-portrait, and we see his crazy-eyed self in the midground, which he in the foreground paints. But also when NESCAFFIER is cooking and there is a tripling of himself in the next compartment.
Structurally, within the stories themselves the following aspects can be considered: 1.) In the travel guide, the writer is absent from the content of the article. 2.) In the first story, the writer’s article is narrated through a lecture she gives; her focus is on abstract art; she discusses the artist and the art (and his subject). 3.) In the second story the writer’s focus is a manifesto; she discusses ideas; she breaks the rule of journalistic neutrality and ultimately becomes the author of the manifesto itself. 4.) In the third story the writer recites the article as a guest on a 60s Dick Cavett type of tv program. What is the focus of his article? It’s the writing itself. He himself becomes a part of it; Nescaffier becomes a part of it; the warden and his son’s kidnapping become a part of it. And when the publisher tells him he left out the most important part, his reply is “I couldn’t agree less.”
Long ago I thought of how Rushmore (1998, Anderson) felt like a play. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, Anderson) felt like a novel. Yet now The French Dispatch not only feels like a magazine, but it’s structured as such. Its menagerie of creative individuals collectively portray the aesthetic contributions of those who enjoy stories (from publisher to patron to audience to connoisseur); and those who tell stories (from stories about art to stories about ideas to stories encompassing the nuances of specialized essays).
10/30/2021 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA
DCP
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