After a couple of delays and a bunch of small trailers Wes Anderson‘s newest film hit the cinema finally. „The French Dispatch“ marks his 10th movie and the successor to „Grand Budapest Hotel“ (2014) and the stop motion animation movie „Isle of Dogs“ (2018). With an overwhelming cast and a flair of fine details „The French Dispatch“ looks like his most ambitious movie until now.
A new Wes Anderson movie is every time a special thing, and with „The French Dispatch“ he reaches new highs in complexity and scene details. It‘s definitive impossible to catch all the fine details with the first spot. And this fact already appears with one of the first scenes. It‘s the opening part with the waitress. It‘s still wonderful how Anderson direct such simple scenes and give them a smile. „The French Dispatch“ tells us the story about a print magazine lead by Arthur Howitzer Jr. (played by Bill Murray) and their most exiting stories. The movie is splitted in four stories.
The first one „The Cycling Reporter“ is about the small city Ennui in wich the magazine is located. Herbsaint Sazerac (played by Owen Wilson) reports about Ennui and the small changes here and there. It acts more like an intro to the main stories.
„The Concrete Masterpiece“ tells us something about the doomed murderer Moses Rosenthaler (played by Benitio del Toro) and the matron Simone (played by Léa Seydoux). She stands by him as a nude model and muse in prison. As art critic Julian Cadazio (played by Adrien Brody) discovered a picture by Rosenthaler the story takes off.
„Revisions to a Manifesto“ is the story about the french student revolt. The main part will be played by the political journalist Lucinda Krementz (played by Frances McDormand). She repots about the leader Zeffirelli (played by Timothée Chalamet) and his female counterpart Juliette (played by Lyna Khoudri).
„The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner“ is about the police commissioner Roebuck Wright (played by Jeffrey Wright) who was intended to write a report about his police cook, Nescaffier (played by Steve Park) but in the meantime his son was kidnapped. It‘s a wonderful hunting story about the commissioner and the kidnappers gang. It includes one of my favourite parts of the movie: The Chase. Like in the Grand Budapest Hotel Anderson shifts from the typical movie style to a comic one. Such a great sequence!
As written in the opening lines, it‘s impossible to spot all the fine details by watching the movie the first time. At some scenes Anderson tends to overstrained the audience by the amount of scene changes. In addition to that some dialogs of „Revisions to a Minfesto“ were in the original language. Because of the fast dialogs it‘s not that easy to catch all translated subtitles there. But what remains at the end is an overwhelming cinema experience with and extraordinary cast. There are not so many producers out there to catch such a star ensamble every time again. It‘s a beautiful movie and it takes place in the Wes Anderson history of masterpieces like „The Royal Tenenbaums“, „The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou“ and „Grand Budapest Hotel“. I can‘t wait to rewatch the movie once again!
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