I’ve seen the trailer for this, and it looks very clever, but I wonder: if I’m exhausted from just watching this much, what would happen if I watched the entire movie?
Trailers can be misleading, and I’m sure it’s far more watchable when you actually see the whole movie.
But it looks like a movie where every frame is so packed with detail that it’s like an artwork. It’s probably going to be best watched on video, where you can keep pausing and going back to enjoy a scene.
Wes Anderson has done the same kind of thing before, but perhaps not to the same extent – particularly in The Grand Budapest Hotel.
There are often scenes that you just have to pause to enjoy. Sometimes there are documents that are only shown on screen for only a second or two, but if you pause you can read them, and they are absolutely packed with detail and quirky humor.
I’m really looking forward to it.
It’s getting some killer reviews. I love Wes Anderson and would want to see this first on the big screen. It may get us back into the cinema where even James Bond could not.
Since you say the trailer leaves you exhausted I have to wonder how familiar are you with the films of Wes Anderson? Have you seen any of his other films? I feel they are all very specific in tone and how they set up and tell their story. He happens to be one of my favorite filmmakers currently working but I know more than a few people who find his work off putting for different reasons.
The point being, if you’ve have seen and enjoyed his other work then I would expect you would enjoy this film as well.
I don’t have to catch everything the first time I watch a movie - that’s what repeat viewings (and the internet) are for. Despite his stylistic trappings, Wes Anderson is actually a very coherent storyteller. I doubt I’ll have any problem following the plot.
One of our local movie critics liked it, but explained it like this:
If you had a machine learning algorithm watch every Wes Anderson movie and use it as the basis to write a movie, it would come up with this movie.
I saw it a week ago and liked it. Not as much as some Wes Anderson movies but more than some others. (I think The Royal Tenenbaums is my favorite.) Note that it’s an anthology, so it’s composed of three separate stories, with a framing story. And the whole thing is sort of a love letter to or about The New Yorker.
Well, I’ve seen it, and it wasn’t as good as I thought it would be. It was better. I can’t remember the last time a movie saddened me so much just by ending. Why just three stories? Why not four? Ten?
Possibly the best Wes Anderson movie; definitely the MOST Wes Anderson movie.
The most common reaction is that, although it’s a good film, it’s not quite one of Anderson’s best. Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Royal Tenenbaums seem to be the most popular. Maybe you can watch them after or before seeing The French Dispatch.
I’ve seen them all, most of them in the theaters.
That’s fine, but really I was telling Son_of_a_Rich that if he hasn’t seen those other Anderson films it might be better to start by seeing them first.
BTW, if you haven’t seen this, here is the trailer for The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders, a 2013 SNL parody of Wes Anderson films. (From the review bits in the trailer, “The New York Times says, ‘You had me at Wes Anderson.’”)
I watched The French Dispatch, and I would say it’s not one of Wes Anderson’s best.
Every single moment is packed to overflowing with quirkiness, to the point where it’s excessive even by Wes Anderson’s standards. I wished it would just slow down for a moment and be a little less self-indulgent.
The main problem for me is that there’s no emotional engagement. There were no characters I could empathize with. It’s coldly and clinically intellectual. Whenever there’s any emotion, it’s only an intellectual take on emotion – emotion at a remove.
Visually it’s exceptional, and every frame is richly filled with minute details. The scenes flash by so quickly that you’d have to keep pausing every few seconds to enjoy those details.
It’s Wes Anderson on speed, ultra Wes Anderson. It would be impossible to satirize because it’s already Wes Anderson’s own satire on Wes Anderson.
The movie is a tribute to the New Yorker magazine. There are innumerable references (apparently) to writers, editors, and articles in the New Yorker, but you’d need to be an expert on the history of the New Yorker (as Wes Anderson is) to get them.
The humor is certainly there throughout, but it’s a ‘New Yorker cartoon’ style of humor, subtle, obscure, and intellectual.
It may seem better on a second viewing, but for me it doesn’t have anywhere near the same impact or pleasure as Moonrise Kingdom or Grand Budapest Hotel.
One of the interesting facts about Anderson that I only learned after watching the film is that there is a simple reason as to why it’s set in France and has so much dialogue in French. Wes Anderson lives in France with his French girlfriend and their daughter. I was surprised to learn that, just as I was also surprised recently to learn that Quentin Tarantino is married to an Israeli woman and lives in Israel with his wife and their son.
I’d like to respectfully disagree with you on a couple of points.
The fact that the movie’s plots moved so quickly, with so much going on all the time, meant that the it spend less time lingering on all of the directors’ idiosyncrasies. If the film had slowed down a bit, I think that to me, it would have actually been more self-indulgent. I never felt the need to catch every detail - instead, I just let the quirkiness wash over me.
I felt that the fact that the movie kept us at arm’s length a bit more than usual for Anderson made the emotional moments hit much harder. Moments like when Del Toro asked Brody, sadly: “… so you don’t like it?”, or Wright’s interview with the Chef (or his monologue on food, for that matter) were stronger than anything I’ve felt in any of his films because they were doled out so sparingly.
Again, just my take on the movie.
I saw it this past weekend (it’s now on HBO/HBO Max), and @GreenWyvern 's review pretty much nailed it for me. But, I will definitely watch at least once more, because I’m certain there are infinite details I missed. For example, one that I just happened to catch:
There is a description of Frances McDormand that ends with a comment that she smelled of burnt toast. Cue a scene ~5 minutes later, of her character’s apartment, and on a small plate in the lower-right corner on a table: a pile of burnt toast. It’s barely in-frame.
My description: this movie wasn’t filmed; it was assembled. I don’t recall a single set in a scene that was “real”, natural. Even The Grand Budapest Hotel had plenty of outdoor footage on-location, and though the lobby of the hotel was purpose-built, it was built to look real. Nothing like that exists in this film; not the jails or streets or airplanes. OK, maybe the cars are real. But I somehow doubt it.
The entire film could have been animated and told the same story effectively.
That’s not necessarily a complaint, but an observation, and perhaps one explanation why I just didn’t feel an emotional connection to it; I mean, it’s a film devoid of emotion, frankly, though it tries to evoke some from the viewer. The nearly-ever-present narration further makes this seem like a documentary.
I did laugh out loud a half-dozen times, and I was amused by the whole thing, but I just kept feeling it tried too hard, like a stew containing everything in the Anderson spice cabinet.
OK the trailer for The French Dispatch and for The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders are virtually identical. And I think I prefer the latter as a film. It’s a bit less quirky, and seems to have a plot.
Of all the Wes Anderson films, TFD is the most wesandersony.
I actually found it better on second viewing as I was better able to tie all the vignettes together. But I would agree, the number of stories made it difficult to get emotionally invested in the characters. I guess I couldn’t figure out who I was supposed to actually care about. The characters in each of the stories? The writers? Arthur Howitzer?
I guess for all the minutiae and detail thrown into it, I never really felt like Wes Anderson transports us to Ennui-sur-Blasé in the same way he does in his other films.