![]() ![]() Anderson turns his apparent heroes into bundles of quirk, making their work seem silly and mannered rather than probing. A James Baldwin stand-in ( Jeffrey Wright) is merely a loquacious dandy with no political context, and no sense of the shape of his own writing. A brittle reporter ( Frances McDormand) sleeps with her young subject ( Timothée Chalamet) for inexplicable reasons. His fascination with New Yorker writers of old-to whom he dedicates the film in a closing title card-leads him to similarly empty places. But The French Dispatch abuses that investment, insisting that we watch it preen and digress and advertise its creator’s smarts while giving us little to care about. Of course, we generally hope for a certainty of style from auteurs-the whole point of a Wes Anderson movie is that it’s a Wes Anderson movie. ![]() ![]() Where Anderson’s past elaborate worlds have invited us in with all their cozy detail, The French Dispatch’s seems to haughtily sniff in our direction it doesn’t much care if we get it. The film-structured as an issue of a New Yorker-esque magazine-is fussy, ornate, difficult to grasp onto. And then there’s Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, which isn’t about the filmmaker himself, but is intensely devoted to his personal fixations in a way that precludes outside engagement. This year’s Cannes has been filled with directorial self reflection: the memoir rumination of The Souvenir Part II, Mia Hansen-Løve’s meta mulling of her own craft in Bergman Island, Nadav Lapid’s similar filmmaker roman a clef in Ahed’s Knee. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |