The French Dispatch (2021)

 The anthology film, a feature length presentation consisting of a number of shorts built around a common theme has long been out of style. A relic, these kind of films were most common in the 40's and 50's, and subsequently mostly used to repackage episodes of horror TV shows in the 80's, or to introduce short works from multiple directors like in 'New York Stories' or 'Lumiere and Company'. In 2018 The Coen brothers brought an auteur approach to the format and produced 'The Ballad of Buster Scruggs', the anthology western I didn't know I wanted.

Wes Anderson now takes a crack at it with 'The French Dispatch', which manages simultaneously to be both the most visually fun work of a famously visually fun director (I include his two stop motion films in this assessment) as well as to my mind his most Oscar worthy screenplay. 

The (fictional) film concerns the 1975 final issue of an English language France based periodical called 'The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun.' This magazine grew out of the weekend supplement of a small town Kansas newspaper and the first overseas trip of its publishers son, who fell in love with the place, set up shop and turned his little curio into a world wide publishing success. 

The framing story has the magazines founder (played by Bill Murry) passing away, and per the instructions of his will the magazine is to put out one final issue. The movie consists of 5 vignettes said to comprise the contents of that issue, an obituary of the founder publisher, a travel log of Ennui, France where the magazine is published, and three feature stories, one concerning an eccentric artiest, the other a martyred 60's student radical, and the last the kidnapping of a police commissionaires son. 

Your eyes will pop, there is so much going on, it's really worth seeing on a big screen, there are so many little bits of business happening, often in the periphery, which might get lost or be hard to spot on a smaller screen. The film goes back and forth between color and black and white, there is also an animated sequence. The set design, and visual compositions are fantastic. The content is generally amusing to laugh out loud funny, but contains moments of melancholy. 

The travel log portion is so fast and compact that it's the one I most want to go back and watch again, I'm sure I missed a lot. However the sequence about the artist (Benicio del Torro) and his muse (Lea' Seydoux) is probably the strongest, with the student radical piece being the most like the directors earlier work and the kidnapping piece most like his children's films. The large cast is wonderful, a nice mix of returning favorites from the directors stock company, and other recognizable faces who wanted in on a Wes Anderson film. I found this a thoroughly satisfying time at the movies, and one of the best films of the year. ****