The French Dispatch
A collection of stories published in "The French Dispatch Magazine" comes to life.
Metadata
| Director | Wes Anderson |
| Year | 2021 |
| Writer | Wes Anderson |
| Stars | Owen Wilson, Benicio del Toro, Tony Revolori |
The Movie in 3 Sentences
The French Dispatch is structured like the final issue of a fictional American magazine published from a small French city. Each section becomes its own story—an imprisoned artist, student revolutionaries, a food writer caught up in a kidnapping plot—while the editor quietly holds the whole publication together. It feels less like watching one continuous movie and more like flipping through an exquisitely designed magazine where every article has been turned into its own miniature film.
The problem for me is that the stories themselves are all so surreal, eccentric, and aggressively Wes Anderson that I imagine most people will love some sections and completely lose interest in others. I was definitely in that camp. As a whole, I never became particularly invested in the plot or the characters.
Visually, though, the movie is incredible. The cinematography, production design, shifting aspect ratios, elaborate sets, and strange theatrical compositions are probably the real reason to watch it. There are moments where the filmmaking itself becomes the entertainment, like the wonderfully clever transition showing the imprisoned artist moving from his younger self to his older incarnation.
So this ended up being one of those movies I admired much more than I actually enjoyed. I wasn’t especially interested in what was happening, but I was constantly impressed by how beautifully and inventively it was happening.