Director Wes Anderson has always had an affinity for French films.
In fact, his first short film, "Bottle Rocket," featured a shot-for-shot homage to "400 Blows" — the debut film from French new wave director Francois Truffaut.
"From a very early age, he was obsessed with all things French," critic Matt Zoller Seitz told Wisconsin Public Radio’s "BETA" of the Texas-born filmmaker. "(Anderson) made Dallas, which among other things is not known for its architecturally dazzling qualities, look like it could be France in the 50s."
As it happens, Seitz was a young film critic living in the Dallas area at the time of Anderson’s emergence. He was the first (and perhaps only) person to review the "Bottle Rocket" short critically and the two forged a friendship that’s lasted over 30 years.
"I've gotten to watch him evolve over that span of time, professionally and personally," Seitz said.
Nearly three decades later, Anderson would fulfill his obsession with French cinema with the release of his 2021 film, "The French Dispatch," an homage to and inspired by The New Yorker magazine and the writers that contributed to it.
Once again, Seitz was available to chronicle and critique Anderson's creative process. He has captured it all in the official eponymous companion book, "The French Dispatch," as part of his Wes Anderson Collection.
In fact, it was Seitz himself who may have kickstarted Anderson’s interest with The New Yorker history.
"I do know that he always loved The New Yorker from the time he was in high school," Seitz said. "He got his subscription in college, and he has every issue of The New Yorker that he ever received in leather-bound editions in his New York offices."
Sensing Anderson's fandom of The New Yorker, Seitz recommended famed contributor Joseph Mitchell’s book, "Up in the Old Hotel and Other Stories," to Anderson.
"It was kind of this incredible breakout thing that introduced the writing of Mitchell to a wide audience that didn't even know his name," Seitz said. "I gave (Anderson) a copy of the book, which he still has, and that was what got him into the history of The New Yorker."
"I think his research into the history of The New Yorker and all the books and articles that have been written about The New Yorker and contributors and editors — that’s what ultimately led to 'The French Dispatch,'" Seitz said.
The movie is about an American magazine — originally called Picnic before ultimately the titular Dispatch — that covers the culture and lifestyle and politics of Anderson’s Paris stand-in, the superfluously named Ennui sur Blasé.
The plot of the film is roughly centered around the abrupt passing of the editor-in-chief, Arthur Howitzer, Jr., played by Bill Murray. The film depicts the final edition of the magazine being put together and is formatted into vignettes based on the articles of its best writers, who are all loosely based on real life The New Yorker writers like Mitchell and James Baldwin.
"'The French Dispatch' is more like a mosaic or a collection, really. Everything is self-contained, but it is kind of loosely united by the story of the publisher having assembled these writers and having created this magazine in the first place. And when he dies, it dies," Seitz said.
Seitz said this framing device and Anderson's overall writing process isn’t as meticulous as the rest of Anderson’s perfectionist ways. He said that Anderson never comes to a film with the story fully conceived — that he often treats it like a group exercise in organic story telling.
"He needs other people to create the story with him, and he does the story conference thing where it'll be himself and a kind of rotating group of collaborators. There might be one person, there might be two, there might be three people in the room with him. But they will start with an idea for a scene or a story or a sequence, and then they will work their way through it," Seitz said.
The three main vignettes follow the various sections of the magazine. The first follows an imprisoned artist, Benicio Del Toro, and his rise to fame and is a meditation on the consumerism of art. The second, starring Timothy Chalamet and Frances McDormand, centers around a loose interpretation of the French youth riots of the 60s and the idolization of martyrdom in rebellious leaders.
The final act perhaps best captures Anderson’s own view of himself as a global director and citizen. On the surface, this section deals with Jeffrey Wright’s food writer profiling Stephen Park’s immigrant chef of the Ennui police department, but reveals much more when you unpack it.
“It's also a really nice meditation on what it means to be a foreigner or an immigrant or a stranger in a strange land and that's kind of what both of those guys are," Seitz said. “There's one moment at the end where the two of them speak to each other and kind of acknowledge each other's fundamental connectedness. It's, I think, one of the most touching scenes in any of his films and also one that I think says a lot about Wes, who started traveling abroad when he was promoting 'The Royal Tenenbaums' and never entirely came back to America."
While Seitz admitted the film’s look, rich on Anderson’s unmistakable diorama style, can be inspired by French cinema, the work itself won't be mistaken for it. Even still, he said the French response to the film is mainly one of flattery and respect.
"Olivia Peissel, who is one of the producers of the film (and) holds dual French and American citizenship, was talking to me about how when French people watch 'The French Dispatch.' What they're seeing reflected back at them is a kind of American version of France — an idealized, almost mythological version of France. And even though it's not true, they appreciate it in probably the same way that Americans appreciated the version of the American West that the Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone presented to them in his spaghetti Westerns."