Judging by how many actors turned up for the official premier of The French Dispatch at Cannes, Wes Anderson was hoping for a little better reception from the jury than he got. His film was due to premier at last year's festival but it was cancelled due to COVID. Despite a standing ovation by the audience that lasted 9 minutes, the jury ignored the movie. I suppose Spike and the gang wanted something a little more edgy, not a homage to famous foreign correspondents who filled the New Yorker with their quirky articles.
The knock against Wes for some time now is that he is a miniaturist, regaling in the rich details he uses to fill the screen. Then you have the purists, those who still hold up Bottle Rocket and Rushmore as his definitive movies and that everything since has been a sellout to Hollywood. Granted these are very charming movies, but Wes has grown a little since then, even if he still wears his patent brown corduroy suit. His pallet has expanded greatly, taking us on journeys to old Europe, modern India and an imaginary Isle of Dogs in a futuristic Tokyo ruled by an authoritarian mayor who hates dogs, which turned out to be strangely prophetic given the breakout of COVID in late 2019. Each journey has been filled with a star-studded cast that would be the envy of any director. However, there often appears to be so much going on that critics are left wondering exactly what it is the boyish director is trying to say.
This was the case several years ago with The Life Aquatic. No one quite knew what to make of Wes' parody of the late great Jacques Cousteau. Even those who praised it, called it a mess, as the movie appeared to meander all over the place without really going anywhere. Wes has since tightened up his scripts but it seems people still view his movies in the same way. They are steeped in nostalgia but from a detached point of view, which some critics find off-putting.
I suppose you have to have an emotional connection to what Wes is interested in to appreciate his movies. If you haven't seen any Jacques Cousteau movies or television specials, The Life Aquatic won't make much sense to you. Likewise, you need to remember the ads for sea monkeys to appreciate the animated sea creatures he had Henry Selick evoke. I grew up with Jacques and sea monkeys and can't help but marvel at the way Wes has re-imagined the Poseidon of underwater divers in the form of Steve Zissou. You will get far more enjoyment out of it than you will the French movie that paid direct homage to Cousteau.
There is an emotional detachment in all his movies, yet they are surprisingly poignant. Perhaps the best example of this is Moonrise Kingdom. It is ostensibly a children's story of a pair of pre-teen waifs who find themselves so much in love with each other that they try to elope on an island, only to send everyone into a mad scurry trying to find them. Despite the absurd nature of the story and third-person narrative, Wes mines a lot of emotional ground here, much of it probably his own, drawing rich performances out of Bruce Willis, Edward Norton and the two wonderful young actors, Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward.
Even when he offers a more contemporary take on familial relations, as he did in the The Royal Tennenbaums, he is met with incredulity. This despite standout performances by Gene Hackman and Angelica Huston. It was a bitingly funny movie that also had quite a bit of emotional depth, largely because he drew on his own experiences as a child growing up in a dysfunctional family.
He took a bit of a detour with The Fantastic Mr. Fox, indulging in stop-action animation for one of his most enjoyable films. Yet, even here he mines the insecurities of a family as a young fox tries to measure up to the legendary exploits of his father only to find himself repeatedly falling short, while dear old dad still believes he has one great chase left in him. Anderson took Roald Dahl's classic children's story to a whole new level, earning him an Oscar nomination for best animated feature. The voices were a virtual who's who of Hollywood, led by George Clooney and Meryl Streep as Mr. and Mrs. Fox. Unfortunately, Pixar won out as usual.
Wes has a remarkable way of working with any actor, making their lines somehow seem their own, no matter how contrived they may appear at times. Wes related a wonderful anecdote of how he hounded Gene Hackman for two years to play the role of Royal Tennenbaum, as he had written the role with him specifically in mind. Few directors have this ability or patience. By comparison, only a select few actors can pull of Woody Allen's lines, which has made his later movies, like Wonder Wheel, very awkward affairs. This is why so many actors like working with Wes Anderson. One of his biggest fans, Edward Norton, summed it up well, "I've come to think that Wes' films are all about the way your real family disappoints you so you create the family you need."
The actors pretty much become a family on the set, spending a lot of time together, so that the interchanges have a genuine bond. Wes has his personal favorites that appear in many of his movies. Bill Murray has had a part in virtually all his movies, even if it was nothing more than a man trying to catch a train in The Darjeeling Limited, a wonderful piece of misdirection that ends up introducing Adrien Brody instead.
Anderson finally got his due in The Grand Budapest Hotel, the first of his films to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Earlier that year, he won the Golden Globe for best musical or comedy. This after the buzz it had created the previous year at European film festivals. It was probably his most daring and complete film, receiving almost universal acclaim. Leave it to Dave Denby of The New Yorker to throw shade on it.
Wes is also a wonderful auteur. His movies usually have a genesis in a great film or novel from the past, and he likes to prep his actors by having them watch these films and read these books. For The French Dispatch, he had a very lengthy filmography that he urged the actors to watch, and obviously he had back issues of the New Yorker for them to pore over. Most of these references fly over viewers' heads, but it doesn't really matter as Wes tries to make his films stand on their own rights, and judging from the many positive reviews, he appears to have succeeded once again in The French Dispatch.
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