A Tale of Two Andersons

Wes Anderson reminds me more and more of Paul McCartney, an undeniable talent who finds it difficult to resist a brand of insular whimsy. And with The French Dispatch, he drowns in his own little sandbox. Easily his worst film, The French Dispatch is a curious love letter to The New Yorker, a bastion of insularity all its own that Anderson professes to adore. But he approaches his homage as a child would a playground crush, through endless teasing because you're too underdeveloped to articulate your feelings.

I'm averse to synopses on this blog because the reader can get them elsewhere. But to recount the insufferable story of The French Dispatch here would be truly criminal. It's taxing enough to observe that the titular journal is the French bureau of the Kansas Evening Sun in the postcard ville of, wait for it, Ennui-sur-Blasé. Ya know, cuz French. The film then proceeds in this groan-worthy manner to recount the creation of three storied articles. The first, about a murderer who paints nifty abstracts in prison, echoes the philistine position that a monkey or a child or, hey, even I can produce modern art and the community of dealers and academics conferring value upon it are the lowest of shysters. The second is somehow even worse, an absolute disaster proving Anderson admires the look more than the radical politics of Godard films like La Chinoise as he transforms the student revolts of May 1968 into a game of chess over the rights to access the girls' dormitory. By the third and most successful tale (ugh must I synopsize?), the torrent of proper nouns and exhausting inventiveness comes off like Family Guy's Stewie badgering Lois in the classic "mom mum mommy" scene.

Anderson might have pulled off all this tweeness he had not avoided the emotional implications of each story. But, in what one must assume is a fit of growth stuntedness, he constantly retreats into whimsy when things gets too messy as in the third story when he details a complicated meal in the midst of a potentially harrowing child kidnapping. The "No Crying" sign that hangs in the French Dispatch offices thus applies to the film itself. Too much of an open heart gets in the way of the perpetual irony or satire or whatever the hell Anderson is up to here.

I salute any film that respects the written word. Arthur Howitzer, Jr., the pater familias of the French Dispatch (Bill Murray), nurtures his writers and is even willing to cut ads in order to give them the space they need. Brought to life by Anderson's familiar stock players, it should have displayed all the markings of an ars longa, vita brevis collectivity. Instead, it reeks of privilege and an unwillingness to engage with the world. Anderson needs to pull his thumb out of his mouth (or nose) and film someone else's screenplay for once. 

Where The French Dispatch is implosive and self-absorbed, Licorice Pizza is porous and inexhaustible. Easily Paul Thomas Anderson's best film, Licorice Pizza combines the fever-dream experimentalism of Inherent Vice with the crowd pleasing antics of Boogie Nights. Anderson never once gives you the assurance that his take on San Fernando Valley in 1973 is any kind of final word. Quite to the contrary, the clipped conflicts, episodic structure, and intoxicating sound/image dislocations, the latter especially energizing in a scene at a teen expo with Herman Munster in attendance, suggest a honeycomb for further exploration. And explore we might given how much of the film concerns the rotten glamour of the Hollywood TV and movie industry. Subsequent, obsessive viewings will bring forth exegeses that I, for one, shall welcome on the personalities Anderson parades before us: Lucille Ball, William Holden, Mark Robson, Jon Peters (a hilarious cameo from Bradley Cooper that just might be his best performance to date), as well as names new to me such as child talent agent Mary Grady and Jerry Frick, owner of the Mikado hotel and restaurant. 

And within this maelstrom stands Alana Kane (Alana Haim, from the superb sister act Haim), a directionless twentysomething trying to self-actualize in a field of toxic masculinity. Alana's affection for 15-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman), whose confidence and independence are both alarming and attractive, makes sense given the creepshows she has to deal with including mayoral candidate Joel Wachs (Safdie bro Benny), a closeted gay man who uses Alana as a beard during a dinner date with his frustrated boyfriend Matthew (Joseph Cross). Based on child actor/producer Gary Goetzman, Valentine is a horny teen whose sexual politics are hardly pristine. But the pragmatism he displays in his crazy business ventures into water beds and arcades renders him a perfect partner to Alana in self-actualization. That it never comes for either character gives Licorice Pizza that illusion of unfolding into eternity that is the hallmark of so many great art films. Consistently surprising, endlessly watchable, with a riotous moving truck sequence lifted from the Mike Judge animated series King of the Hill (or is that the 1954 Lucille Ball vehicle The Long, Long Trailer), Licorice Pizza awaits your obsession. 

The French Dispatch: C (and slipping)

Licorice Pizza: A (and rising!)