Another one of director Wes Anderson’s aesthetically pleasing movies recently came out on October 22: ‘The French Dispatch.’ Anderson calls it a “love letter to journalists.” The movie follows three different storylines set in a fictional 20th century city as the French foreign bureau of a newspaper creates its final issue to be published. 

Overall, the movie had the standard Wes Anderson look to it. The director’s films are known to be quite eccentric with a very distinctive visual and narrative style. 

The storyline deals with the slight decay in print media that we have noticed since everything became digital. The movie as a whole shows that while the characters are struggling to publish their final issue, print media is still alive and well. It comforts me to see such a thing be alluded to in this type of a film with the storytelling Anderson provides. 

Casting for the movie was definitely one of the reasons behind the success of ‘The French Dispatch,’ having celebrities such as Timothée Chalamet, Tilda Swinton, and Owen Wilson be some of the characters in the movie. The cast did an excellent job at acting out the storyline and having it fit extremely well with their characters as well.  

The visual aspects of the movie were very satisfying to the eye, making it even more vibrant in the eyes of the viewer. The color scheme was a standard part of any Wes Anderson film, but it truly did add a completely different view of the movie to take in. It felt like I was reading a book, especially with how Anderson separated the movie into different parts. 

Anderson’s films usually go on the more aesthetically pleasing side of filmmaking, with little interest in the actual plot. However, I did feel a bit bored at times with the pacing of the storyline, and thought that the film’s main purpose was to simply look pretty. 

Despite all of that, I thought it made the experience even more interesting because I had to pay extra attention to what was going on in order to enjoy the artistic elements of the movie.