Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux
Have I Seen it Before: No… Although I did spend 2021 reading most of every edition printed in that year of The New Yorker, so even before the first frame reached my eyes, the film felt familiar.
Did I Like It: It’s a bit sad to report that—unlike the rest of Anderson’s films—this film is merely equal to the sum of its parts. It is meticulously designed. To receive anything less from Anderson would feel like a betrayal. It is persistently charming, and more than occasionally quite amusing. There are few filmmakers working today who work at every level of the filmmaking process to eschew viewer’s expectations of how a film should be put together.
Beyond his normal bag of tricks, Anderson does reach for new surprises beyond putting out the most singularly twee films ever imagined. Several shots in “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner” credibly look like they might have actually been shot in the 1940s. Has any modern director convincingly made a film which feels as if it could have been shot at any other time than the precise moment in which it was produced? A timeless quality will help the film age better than most.
Some might be put off by the aspect ratio, but looking at the shot composition as something akin to the column inches of a publication makes the entire affair fit together like a meticulously crafted work of art, which serves as more evidence that Anderson has once again hit its target.
And yet, not all of the film adds up in a completely satisfying manner. The connective through-line for the film—involving the death of Dispatch publisher Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray, channeling the same understated energy he has brought to a number of Anderson’s films)—is the least engaging main plot of any film in Anderson’s oeuvre. The sudden switch to animation feels jarring. I can’t imagine Anderson didn’t mean to do it that way, but it doesn’t feel as if he did… which does ten to fly in the face of the ethos of the whole film.
And yet, I can’t say I didn’t dislike the film entirely, either. I don’t know if I could stand to read one more word of The New Yorker, but I wouldn’t mind thumbing through an issue or two of the Dispatch. If the slavish homage can outpace the source, then the flaws of either may not matter anymore.