Wes Anderson “The French Dispatch”: A love letter to print journalism with a cast of greats

The tenth movie of Wes Anderson, The drama French Dispatch, rated as the most Andersonska Among all his films (which came out shortly thereafter The Gran Hotel Budapest) and deserve it Nine minutes to a standing ovation Standing on Monday 12, when it was first shown in the 74th edition of Cannes Film Festival. If we had to take literally the definitions Anderson gave his movie during its shooting (“The story is not easy to explain, it’s about an American journalist who lives in France And the creation of this magazine” or “It’s a love letter to the press”) the reaction of the public may be incomprehensible.

However, other elements help to understand why this happened. For example, French Dispatch Featuring some of the director’s favorite actors The Royal TenembaumsSeven of them are winners Oscars: Frances McDormandAnd the Tilda SwintonBenicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Angelica Huston, and Christoph Waltz s Fisher Stevens; As well as some of the nominated stories: Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Edward Norton, Owen Wilson, Timothée Chalamet, Saoirse Ronan s Bob Balaban. With star groups like Elizabeth MossAnd the Mathieu Amalric s Jeffrey Wright Risk of the sky falling.

The film is also a tribute to one of the world’s most respected cultural products United Statemagazine New YorkerHe said about it himself New Yorker: “It is about chores in a fictitious weekly much like–and was inspired, in fact, by– New Yorker. The editor and editors of this fictional magazine and the stories it publishes – three of which are staged in the film – are also vaguely inspired by The New Yorker.

Remember some of the names of these writers in the real life post: Truman Capote, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Ross, J.D. Salinger, John Updike, Alice Monroe, Julian Barnes, John Schaeffer, Joan Didion, Woody Allen, John Cassidy, E.B. White, Pauline Keel, John O’Hara, Edmund Wilson, Susan Sontag, Rebecca West, Malcolm Gladwell, Seymour Hirsch, Renata Adler, John Lee Anderson, Susan Orlean, Ian Frazier, Masha Jessen s Calvin Trillen For example, but not limited.

As a good connoisseur of New Yorker (Anderson read it since he was a teenager and has a set of hardcover copies going back to the 1940s.) He put the film together as a special edition, an anthology with some light text and three heavy stories. It is, in fact, a unique number: the end, since 1975 and founder and publisher send (Murray, on his ninth collaboration with Director Travel to Darjeeling) just died. It is undoubtedly the end of an era. In the event of a lack of clarity, he ordered in his will that the magazine die with him.

The magazine is the European bureau of the Kansas newspaper and Arthur Howitzer Jr., Murray’s character who hardly hides the legend Harold RossHe wants to be the cultural radar of his time. “It’s rather a picture of this man, of this journalist who is struggling to write what he wants,” Anderson added, without elaborating much. “It’s not a movie about freedom of the press, but when you talk about journalists, you also talk about what’s happening in the real world.”

Howitzer has two rules: “Don’t cry” and “Try to make it sound as if you wrote it that way on purpose.” The imaginary town in which he established his headquarters is called Ennui-sur-le-Blasé, or Boredom upon Boredom. Two stories told since 1975, harken back to the glory years of سنوات send, Fifty and sixty these stories are in color, while most, if not all, of the past is back in black and white.

article New Yorker He detailed some similarities, as well as those of Murray and Ross: Herbsaint Sazerac (Wilson) emerged from the writer Joseph Mitchell; Julian Cadazio (Brody) inspired by Lord Dauphin, the protagonist of the profile SN Berman publicó en 1951; Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) Evoca A James Baldwin and Lucinda Krementz (McDormand) to Mavis Galant.

Anyway, in the reality represented by fiction, Swinton is art critic J.K.L. Berensen, responsible for telling the story of Moses Rosenthaler (del Toro), a great assassin and better artist who paints his muse and guardian Simon (Leah Seydoux), while art dealer Cadazio tries to let the world see the future of art. McDormand’s Krementz covers the revolutionary students of the 1960s and their leader Zeffirelli (Chalamet), whom he deals with naked in the bathtub; Wright Wright is a food critic who recalls the time he quit his quiet job amid the kidnapping of a police chief’s son (Amalric) by a gangster (Norton).

has evolved New Yorker He is a suitable husband for Anderson, who parodies abound Youtube like imitators Elvis On Las vigas, according to critics like BBC: “French Dispatch It has to be one of the most complex movies out there. Make The Gran Hotel Budapest Sounds impromptu on the weekend and taped to a phone. Don’t see an unadorned scene split into two, frozen frame, comment, voice in turning offChange from black and white to color or change the screen ratio.

Anderson’s new work that Hits theaters in the US and UK on October 22, was predicted long before Cannes: a pandemic COVID-19 Delayed first show. but according to Indiewire, the directors had no problem waiting for him: “For independent movie fans, the new Wes Anderson movie holds all the expectations one would expect. marvel For fans of comics. “

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