Lost in Translation

 

Sofia Coppola with her famous Dad, Francis Ford Coppola

Writer/director Sofia Coppola

Coppola on the set with Scarlett Johansson

Coppola and Johansson

Coppola on the set with Bill Murray

LOST IN TRANSLATION          A-                                                                                           USA  Japan  (102 mi)  2002  d: Sofia Coppola

I spent a lot of time in Tokyo in my twenties and I really wanted to make a film around my experience of just being there.  That was the starting point.  I got married not long before and kind of felt isolated.  I was in this stage where I wasn’t sure if I’d made the right choices or what I was doing in the post-college beginning of my adult life.                                  —Writer/director Sofia Coppola in Simon Brand interview from Little White Lies, August 26, 2018, Sofia Coppola on Lost in Translation at 15 

Listed at #1 on the 2003 year-end Village Voice Film Poll and Best Movies of 2003 | Film Comment's 2003 Critics' Poll, becoming a huge commercial success, where a $4 million dollar movie earned nearly $120 million dollars, yet this is the movie that drew attention to female directors.  Yes, Sofia Coppola is the daughter of celebrated director Francis Ford Coppola, so she has a leg up on everybody else, but nonetheless, this drew plenty of critical praise, drawing attention to what was uniquely different about her style and that of her infamous father, who served as an executive producer of the film.  While this didn’t start a feminist revolution in the industry, it was among the first times that a woman’s film was taken seriously, provoking different reactions from men and women, pitting mainstream Hollywood versus independent, feminism and auterism, in many ways altering our view in how we evaluate motion pictures.  Even critics who appreciated the film also derided Coppola for displaying a lack of depth, expressing a mindset that she was simply handed the reins, along with boatloads of money, from her more distinguished father in order to make the films she wanted, as many seemed obsessed with her status as the daughter of a major American filmmaker, given special privilege and offered opportunities other women lacked, all of which suggests a cinema of self-indulgence.  When French New Wave directors, almost exclusively male, rejected the traditional cinema of old and injected a more personal flair into their movies, it was met with a euphoric wave of approval, where the term “liberating” suggested a generational passing of the torch.  Sofia Coppola’s films, on the other hand, while not explicitly feminist, lay a foundation for an alternate path that repositions the male aesthetic into a cinema that at the very least expresses an awareness of female concerns, more interested in exploring a rich, interior life, drawing heavily from her own personal experiences, while at the same time engaging in an adversarial position from the traditional Hollywood model.  While Coppola’s privileged position in Hollywood does set her apart from other women filmmakers, her films embody a post-feminist culture that empowers women in radically different ways, providing the perspective of a young, female protagonist, often without voice in their environment, serving as a prolonged exploration into the way they are objectified, idealized, and defined by their surrounding society, and then subverts those expectations by introducing a different style and texture to the film itself, where the style actually becomes the substance, offering a challenging new way to view and interpret what we’re seeing onscreen, though in many ways it resembles a European arthouse sensibility.  For instance, the opening shot of the film is a prolonged take of a transparently pink, panty-clad rear end lying on a hotel bed facing away from the audience, Lost In Translation - Opening Scene - YouTube (2:11), with Charlotte, Scarlett Johansson, only 17 at the time, first appearing in the Coen brother’s THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE (2001) and Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World (2001), typically viewed as an object of desire from the male gaze, much like the obligatory shot of Brigitte Bardot’s naked backside in Godard’s Contempt (Le Mépris) (1963), yet as the camera lingers, viewers become a participant in the changing experience.  Charlotte is often seen lounging around the hotel room in various states of undress, wearing just a T-shirt and panties, curled up against a windowpane, staring out a hotel window in an aerial view from an upper floor of the far-reaching panoramic landscape of the city below, with the camera looking over her shoulder, asking viewers to gaze along with her, not at her, far more interested in conveying her personalized experience, LOST IN TRANSLATION - I'll be at the Bar YouTube (1:42).

Coppola claimed she had Johansson in mind ever since seeing Lisa Krueger’s girls-on-the-run movie, MANNY AND LO (1996), narrated by Johansson, “She was like 12 years old and I just loved her.  She had that husky voice even then and seemed mature beyond her years.  There was some quality about her that stood out and I connected with.  She’s able to convey a lot without saying anything.  I had a feeling about her.  I wasn’t surprised she went on to do lots of different things after but I’m surprised when I look back at how young she was.  She was only 17.”  The jet-lagged setting in Tokyo was largely influenced by the director’s own experiences when visiting Japan, having stayed in the luxurious accommodations of the Park Hyatt Tokyo Japan hotel located on the top 14 floors of the 52 story Shinjuku Park Tower building when promoting her first film, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES (1999).  This minimalist film builds on the independent film tradition that emerged out of the 1990’s with the commercial success of the Sundance Film Festival, as well as the introduction of the DVD, which made independent films readily available, allowing film studies to develop courses around a burgeoning film movement set apart from the conventional or mainstream cinema.  Coppola’s Oscar-winning script, unusually short at only seventy pages, (Lost In Translation script), was written with the low-key, deadpan style of comedian Bill Murray in mind, claiming the film would never have been made without him, not only trapped in a foreign country with no safety net, but also caught in the uncertainties of an existential mid-life crisis.  It’s also easy to see the personal connection between the filmmaker and neglected wife Charlotte, a recent Yale philosophy graduate who acknowledges a directionless aspect to her life, disappointed with her attempts at writing and photography, fields Coppola explored before becoming a filmmaker, while Charlotte’s self-involved photographer husband John (Giovanni Ribisi, the narrator in THE VIRGIN SUICIDES), hasn’t a clue what his wife is experiencing, always abandoning her to run off on an all-day and sometimes into-the-night work assignment, resembling Coppola’s husband at the time, film and music-video director Spike Jonze, maker of Being John Malkovich (1999), ADAPTATION (2002), and Her (2013), initially meeting on the set of a Sonic Youth music video, with the couple filing for divorce two months after the release of the film.  With a small film crew in tow, led by cinematographer Lance Acord, who also worked with Spike Jonze, they employed a mobile, guerilla style of shooting, appearing in random locations throughout Tokyo, shooting on the fly, never securing permits, relying upon bystanders on the street as extras, yet this gives the film a documentary style, while also allowing improvisation both in dialogue and in shooting extended wordless sequences to take the place of the sparsely written script, with second-unit footage of the city shot by Coppola’s older brother Roman.  They did encounter unexpected delays from having to translate with those who were hired locally, resulting in some cross-cultural misunderstandings, becoming a key component to the film, exaggerated to comic effect with Bob Harris (Bill Murray) shooting his whisky commercial, an aging film star where the lure of $2 million dollars brings him to Tokyo, yet the lengthy directions aggressively spoken to him in Japanese followed by such a passive and shortly-worded English translation is reduced to skit-like parody, causing confusion and disorientation, where viewers are just as easily confounded.  In an amusing aside, when Francis Ford Coppola was in the Philippines preparing to shoot APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), he discovered that Japanese legend Akira Kurosawa was struggling to finance his next picture, so he and George Lucas agreed to help him out, with Coppola flying to Japan to star in a Suntory whisky commercial with Kurosawa, an event that provided a source of inspiration for this film.   While other films of the era were relying upon a conversion to digital cameras, Coppola bucked the trend and preferred shooting on 35mm, which elevates the color saturation, particularly in night shots, where the neon-lit Tokyo skyline is particularly compelling, enhanced by an otherworldly feel that Tokyo naturally exudes, matched only by the luminous Tokyo sequences in Edward Yang’s Yi Yi: A One and a Two... (2000).  The predominate theme is dislocation, yet the experience of being isolated in such a massive foreign metropolis, cut off from language and any sense of familiarity, allows Coppola to convey that unintelligible feeling purely by mood and atmosphere, where not much ever happens, yet viewers deeply internalize the experience.  

Reminiscent of Lawrence Kasdan’s romantic drama THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST (1988), which delves into the complications of relations, with numerous shifts of tone within a compressed emotional range, these “accidental tourists” are similarly lost amidst a fast-paced, modernist landscape that occasionally borders on the absurd, embellishing what amounts to a “brief encounter.”  Charlotte, in her early 20’s, is just half the age of Bob, yet she’s just beginning to experience the transformative process of growing into herself as an individual, while Bob is inundated by the shifting priorities in the second half of life, where his wife and kids have learned to live without him during his long absences, while he’s forced to re-examine his life in a different context.  Accordingly, during his nighttime arrival in Tokyo, with a bleary-eyed, jet-lagged view of the city from the back of his cab, he’s only semi-consciously awake in the ride to the hotel, yet there’s a surreal moment, like a dream landscape, when he sees a brightly lit billboard containing his own image in a Suntory whisky ad, Lost In Translation: Bill Murray first time in Tokyo (Death in Vegas - Girls) YouTube (1:25).  Both Charlotte and Bob suffer from insomnia at night, leading to late-night visits to the bar, which is how they meet, Lost in Translation (2003) - 'What Are You Doing Here' Clip YouTube (3:11), developing an immediate rapport, as she laughs at all his jokes, and in a sea of culture shock confusion that is enveloping them, they actually have intelligent conversations, where it’s her astutely discerning, grown-up responses to his off-the-cuff remarks that initially attract his interest, both providing effortless and naturalistic performances that are among the best in their entire careers (Murray has indicated this is his personal favorite), where their extraordinary performances really ARE the film.  While he is lost and disoriented in the streets, unable to mix with locals because of language and cultural barriers, inevitably ending up back in his hotel room channel surfing through bizarre local shows, much of this film is seen through the muted yet curious eyes of Charlotte, who has no one else to talk to, much less confide in, as she takes solitary excursions on her own, often overwhelmed by the exotic allure of Japan, with its Zen-like connection to historical antiquity, equally fascinated by the manic obsession with Western culture, amused by the sheer excitement of their fandom.  With both characters fighting to maintain a spirit of independence, refusing to be defined by others, she dons a pink wig, copied by Natalie Portman in CLOSER (2004), as they go on a zany adventure together through the labyrinth of the city, where their memorable choices of karaoke songs are reflective of their inner feelings, Lost in Translation | Scarlett Johansson & Bill Murray's Wild Night in Tokyo YouTube (7:02).  Even her unconventional connection to Bob is not based on attraction or lust, but deeper human connections, both feeling excluded in their marriages, having to look inward for answers, yet getting philosophical about your own life leaves you on the outside looking in, feeling distanced and melancholic, as we mostly experience the city through her eyes.  Bob, and especially Charlotte, are sometimes bored and often confused by the strip clubs, karaoke bars, and Buddhist temples they visit, yet one solitary journey to Kyoto to visit the Nanzen-ji temple becomes an enthralling sequence, a lovely ode to the poetic beauty of Japan, perfectly capturing the transcendent stillness in a wordless cinematic reverie accompanied by an electronic instrumental track from Air, Alone in Kyoto - Lost in Translation (HD) YouTube (2:56).  The film did not play well before Japanese audiences while receiving backlash from critics who claimed it not only stereotyped Japan, but reduced Japanese characters to racist tropes, subject to offensive humor that would not be acceptable today.  While that may be true, it does reflect how visitors to another country bring their own racist values with them, never pretending to provide an accurate view of Japan, but the film is intentionally distorted, hence the title, to reflect a spectator’s skewed conception.  In this regard it shares a distinctly Western gaze into the East with the same incomprehensible fascination as Wim Wenders’ pilgrimage honoring Ozu in Tokyo-Ga (1985), similarly caught up in the mysteries of the surreal landscape, with both films turning into exercises of empathy.

While the limitations of their respective marriages are glaringly exposed, John never seems to have a moment to spare for Catherine, and when he does finally show up he’s too exhausted to stay awake, where his insufferable snoring is a constant reminder of why she can’t sleep.  John seems to respond much more animatedly to the fawning attention from a ditzy blond actress (Anna Faris) they run into at the hotel than he does to her (a veiled reference to actress Cameron Diaz), suggesting their relationship lacks the spontaneity and emotional depth she craves, while Bob’s life is continually interrupted by faxes from his wife Lydia reminding him of banal duties he needs to fulfill when he gets home, who’s birthday he forgot, what child’s recital is coming up, even sending him cabinet specifications and carpet samples that he needs to select for a home project.  He’s inundated by the trivialization of their unhappy phone calls which sound so coldly impersonal (voiced by the film’s costume designer, Nancy Steiner), where the weight of the mundane aspects of marriage have suddenly taken over, leaving him exasperated and wanting to escape.  Charlotte, on the other hand, tries to divert herself from her unhappy marriage by seeking knowledge and comfort in various aspects of Japanese culture, listening to monks chanting in a Buddhist temple, or learning the art of flower arranging, even adding ornamental touches to her hotel room, but discovers the unfathomable divide is too great, and instead is left feeling shallow and empty, where listening to a self-help audio tape offers no relief, with both seemingly stuck at a lonely impasse.  Even if only fleetingly, Bob and Catherine seem to hit it off in a faraway land, displaying a quick wit, communing on the same wavelength while trying to figure it out, bombarded by a language and culture they fail to understand, where furtive glances and long silences become the language of choice, dropping visual clues, exuding in the restraint of Rohmer’s CLAIRE’S KNEE (1970), where the mere suggestion of a touch resonates deeply.  Part of the beauty of the film is how it encapsulates the importance of all these fleeting moments that seem small, but are actually monumental, as we’re never immersed in the totality of their lives, but in the profound significance of this particular moment in this particular place, always accentuated by an incredible soundtrack that exists in perfect harmony, like subliminal messages accentuating interior themes, Lost in Translation - Soundtrack - Full Album (2003) YouTube (53:59).  With constantly shifting nocturnal images of the sleepless nights, they find themselves drinking sake and watching Fellini’s LA DOLCE VITA (1960) on television in Japanese, yet this also provides an opportunity to open up and share a personal moment together, shot with reflective glass images, offering a window into their souls in one of the most poignant and tender scenes, actually getting lost in each other, while still keeping a safe distance, Lost in Translation | Scarlett Johansson & Bill Murray's Sleepover Heart-to-Heart YouTube (7:41).  Dwarfed by the rapturous elegance of a spatial divide, it’s all about their tenuous relationship to that space, finding texture in architectural designs, gorgeous city landscapes, and bustling street activity, where there’s even an Olympic-size swimming pool surrounded by full-length windows, as the hotel room becomes a protective cocoon, emblematic of their subdued confinement within that space, surrounded by plush accommodations that only the rich can afford, and while this hits the mark in Coppola’s case, there’s a kind of wish-fulfillment aspect to this artificially created dreamscape, an imaginary tourist excursion that most of us can never afford, creating a kind of fantasyland for viewers.  Yet the emotional impact of the film is unmistakable, and completely accessible, built by a developing level of intimacy that feels authentic, where viewers are transported into the psychological depth of their experience, finding it intoxicating in many respects, each character obviously moved by the other, invested by the rush of emotions extending into the ambiguity of the finale, Lost in Translation, by Sofia Coppola - Ending scene (2003) (with Scarlett Johanson & Bill Murray) YouTube (5:16).  This is Sofia Coppola’s finest hour, buoyed by the magic of her understated, observational style and those endearing lead performances. 

Loneliness alone and surrounded by others (Lost In Translation)  wordless visual commentary from Frauke Cosemans set to the music of Air, YouTube (3:23)

Sofia Coppola Lost in Translation - The Directors Series  video analysis from Cameron Beyl, YouTube (13:12)

The French Dispatch

 

Director Wes Anderson

Anderson shooting Frances McDormand

Anderson shooting Benicio del Toro

Anderson on the set

THE FRENCH DISPATCH                    B                                                                                 USA  Germany  (107 mi)  2021  d: Wes Anderson

In Paris, anytime I walk down a street I don’t know well, it’s like going to the movies.  It’s just entertaining.  There’s also a sort of isolation living abroad, which can be good, or it can be bad.  It can be lonely, certainly.  But you’re also always on a kind of adventure, which can be inspiring.

—Wes Anderson, New Yorker interview, September 5, 2021, How Wes Anderson Turned The New Yorker Into “The French ...

Following in the same hyperbolic mindset as The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), yet accentuated even further, where this may be viewed as a magnum opus for Anderson, an expat living in Paris, throwing out any pretense of a narrative while heightening the densely layered, exaggerated effect by squeezing so much into each perfectly framed composition, drawing attention to the extraordinary intricacy of each shot, matching that same subversive tone he has always utilized, going for moment-to-moment exhilaration, like a 1930’s screwball comedy, arguably utilizing more words here than is humanly possible, literally racing to get them all said, with many more dancing on the screen to be read, much more than can be comprehended in a single viewing, again using a cavalcade of stars (most onscreen for barely a minute) to provide that deadpan look he is going for.  Paying homage to The New Yorker magazine and the eccentric intelligentsia style of stories they have tended to print, perhaps targeting bookworms, this overtly literary film provides a you-were-there attitude, taking viewers inside the story by individualizing the experience through the perspective of each writer, journalists working abroad for an American audience, combining four separate stories, bringing each to life, while also adding the perspective of the editor, Bill Murray as Arthur Howitzer, editor of The French Dispatch, inspired by Harold Ross, the founding editor of The New Yorker, published in the picturesque yet fictional French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé, which translates to Jaded Boredom or Indifference, a stand-in for the artist’s cynical perspective of the real world, avoiding it at all costs, instead inventing a parallel universe of exacting precision, a flippant parody on the modern world that exhibits an air of scoffing smugness, literally thumbing his nose at the rest of us mere mortals with a kind of snobbish superiority while bathing his artificially constructed characters with tenderness and loving affection.  While the film literally races through each story with an adrenal rush, Anjelica Huston adds her own elaborate commentary through a wry narration, with each of the writers adding their own personalized narrative commentary, yet the problem with this wildly formalized style is there is simply no character development, as the performers aren’t really acting, but feel more like controlled mannequins reading a script without a hint of emotion.  Instead, the dominant attention is focused on the ostentatiously stylized development of each frame, accenting a static, meticulously composed tableaux, often incorporating carefully choreographed background action, merging exterior locations with painted backdrops that can slide off the screen, mixing models and miniatures with live-action photography, changing aspect ratios, skewing sightlines, while mixing black and white with color, and pushing the film to an absurd surrealism, where the precision of each shot requires a dolly, beautifully represented by a distinguished tracking shot through a police station, French Dispatch long shot - Vimeo (1:33).  You’d have to go back to 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: #3 Moonrise Kingdom to find a Wes Anderson film that actually advances the narrative through an elevated attention to character, where the audience investment into the tender emotional world of the child protagonists actually pays off in the end.  That simply doesn’t happen here, where the characters are purely at the disposal of the exaggerated look of the film, polarizing audiences more sharply than usual, as style matters more than substance.  For many viewers, that’s enough, as Anderson’s artistry is in mastering the staggering detail of each image (and has even produced a website, Accidentally Wes Anderson), but that wasn’t always the case, as his earlier films like Rushmore (1998) relied more upon a clever and hilariously written script.  Yet all artists change and evolve over time, with Anderson clearly more comfortable with creating meticulously designed sets, like a dollhouse in miniature, with characters playing a secondary role and having a significantly reduced influence, yet this film received a 9-minute standing ovation when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, winning no awards but was thoroughly appreciated, like entering an enchanted land, sort of like reading a children’s book, where the adventure mostly plays out in the imagination of the reader, listed at #6 on the end of the year Top Ten list from Cahiers du Cinéma, Cahiers du Cinéma: Top Ten Films of 2021 - Year-End Lists.  Beautifully shot by Robert D. Yeoman, who has shot nearly all his films, missing only the animated features FANTASTIC MR. FOX (2009) and 2018 Top Ten List #7 Isle of Dogs, with astonishing production design by Adam Stockhausen, while another surprising development is the Erik Satie-like musical score written by Alexandre Desplat, at times becoming a ticking clock driving a distinct visual rhythm of the film, featuring exquisite piano solos by Jean-Yves Thibaudet.  Interestingly, this is the second film in a row, after Bruno Dumont’s France (2021), dedicated to the recently deceased musical composer Christophe, who died from Covid.   

Essentially a series of short stories and vignettes, offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how these articles came to fruition, becoming something a journalistic exposé on the art of writing, getting into the minds of the writers themselves, while exalting in the freedom and joy of taking poetic license, yet also accentuating the editing process, where Howitzer encourages his writers to produce diverse stories of human interest, allowing them to be totally themselves in their articles, as his one mantra is “try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose,” mirroring the challenging storytelling abilities of a film director, yet the wacky quirkiness of Wes Anderson exists in its own imaginary realm, separate and apart, suggesting a world of elitism and privilege that thrives in a luminous glow of well-executed construction.  Mostly set in the 60’s, much of the film is actually shot in the city of Angoulême, accentuating cats gathering along the rooftops, balconies overlooking narrow streets, with residents peering out their open windows at the myriad of meticulously choreographed street activity, all captured in vibrant colors that offer such a tantalizing view, incorporating a carefully calibrated rhythm established in the very first shot.  Told in flashback, the film opens with the death of Kansas-born publisher Arthur Howitzer, founder of The French Dispatch, the weekly arts and culture supplement of a large Midwestern newspaper based in the American heartland, The Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, which he inherited from his father, initially convincing his father to fund his college education and transatlantic adventures that would produce a series of travelogue articles published locally in the Sunday supplement, raising a few eyebrows, eventually opening an offshoot bureau of the newspaper in France, traveling to Europe as a young man and simply never returned.  Howitzer assembled a team of the best expatriate journalists of the time, along with a few eccentrics, one apparently a voracious reader who never writes a single word, with their articles blossoming into the entitled publication, which was known for their rigorous fact checking and copy editing, along with an exacting inspection of grammar usage, yet his passing dictates the end of the publication, following one final farewell issue in which four articles are published along with an obituary.  Identifying the articles, authors, and pages of the magazine as we go along, simulating the experience of reading the magazine, the stories are told in chapter headings, often shifting from color to black and white and then back again, jumping headlong into the quaint charm of the small provincial French town of Ennui, as Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson, narrating his own segment, inspired by New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell), otherwise known as the cycling reporter, writes about his favorite subjects, rats, hobos, pimps, and junkies, taking us around the city on his bicycle, offering a seamy working man’s perspective on a subterranean layer of the city most never see, like marauding children attacking unsuspecting victims, an alley of pickpockets, a corner of the red-light district, or dead bodies collected from the river, comparing images of the past with the present, showing how little has changed, with a pervasive air of pickpockets, dead bodies, prisons, cemeteries, and other dreary subject matter.  The grim brevity of the piece simply whets our appetites, like an appetizer or an amuse-bouche, as what follows may be the most delectable item on the menu, featuring a lecture and accompanying slideshow by arts reporter J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton, inspired by art critic and historian Rosamond Bernier), taking us back to examine how such a majestically avant-garde art creation was formed, a large-scale painting of epic proportion, a series of frames that resemble Rorschach inkblots, subject to one’s imagination, each sharing a common theme, but that only becomes evident with some backstory taking us into the deranged mind of a mental patient who committed a brutal double-murder, Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio Del Toro), convicted of decapitating two men in a barroom brawl and imprisoned for life, yet we observe him at work painting a nude subject, Simone (Léa Seydoux), a rare standard of beauty that may symbolize an idealized vision of France, demonstrating enormous elasticity in posing for long durations, which sets her apart, able to hold difficult positions even in extreme cold, yet when he comes too close, she flicks his paintbrushes away and orders him back to his easel.  Shortly afterwards, she changes into her prison guard uniform and places him in a straightjacket, leading him back to his cell, where he struggles with a tortured artist’s existence of manic depression and suicidal intentions, miraculously saved by needed therapy from the prison arts and crafts program where he happens to meet Simone, exhibiting a kind of gallows humor, Léa Seydoux In (The French Dispatch) "I grew up on a farm." YouTube (1:00).  The bright colors of Berensen in the present are a remarkable contrast to the black and white images inside the prison, as Berensen describes the weird symbiotic relations that can occur between a ruthless convict and a secret admirer, exuding an extraordinary bond that defies belief, yet she serves as his behind-bars mentor and model throughout his artistic career. 

In something of a demented turn of events, Rosenthaler’s art is discovered while in prison by unscrupulous art patron and tax dodger Julien Cadazio (Adrien Brody), inspired by S. N. Behrman’s 1951 six-part profile on Lord Duveen entitled The Days of Duveen, The Days of Duveen | The New Yorker, immediately contacting his uncles (Henry Winkler and Bob Balaban) after his release, heavily promoting his work in their art gallery where his paintings skyrocket in value, but they encounter difficulties in attempting to obtain more artworks to sell, with Rosenthal stubbornly refusing, yet they believe he’s working in secret on a massive project.  Eventually setting a deadline, they round up all the significant patrons of the art world and head to France, while paying enormous sums of money in bribes in order to allow them all inside the prison grounds to inspect his latest masterwork, yet when they arrive, the artist defers, claiming he needs another year, but Simone quickly acknowledges it’s ready.  What’s unveiled, however, is not what they expect, challenging their prevailing views of art, revealing a magically abstract set of ten fresco works imprinted into the concrete walls of the prison.  Cadazio calls it a masterwork before realizing he can’t haul it out of there, impulsively assaulting Rosenthal, going for his throat, leading to mayhem and a massive prison riot where lives are lost, expressed in a single freeze frame, yet for his exemplary behavior in saving lives, Rosenthal is released on probation, while Simone also departs the prison after receiving a large sum of money, and neither ever see one another again, while the frescos are airlifted out of the prison into a private museum in the middle of a Kansas cornfield where Berensen is conducting her lecture.  Yet the heart of the 60’s is embodied by an ode to the student rebellions of May 1968 in France, reported on by Lucinda Kremetz (Frances McDormand), inspired by New Yorker writer Mavis Gallant, specifically her two-part article, The Events in May: A Paris Notebook~I | The New Yorker and The Events in May: A Paris Notebook—II | The New Yorker.  Expressed with mocking sarcasm, which does a great disservice to what actually happened (Kristin Ross; May '68 and its Afterlives), the revolutionary spirit in the air is initially inspired by narcissistic concerns over access to a girl’s dormitory, The French Dispatch - Timothée Chalamet opening sequence YouTube (57 seconds), yet when police intervene, an overreaction of epic proportion, the students are radicalized, becoming a youth movement who split on their ever-expanding demands, with the opposite sides best expressed by two young student revolutionaries, Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet) and Juliette (Lyna Khoudri), a reference to Italian stage and film director Franco Zeffirelli and his breakout international film version of ROMEO AND JULIET (1968), with aging radical Kremetz trying to remain detached, but takes a romanticized interest in the youthful Zeffirelli, actually having an affair while helping him write a manifesto, including an appendix.  With Juliette evidently growing jealous of their closeness, Kremetz urges them to “Stop bickering.  Go make love,” turning into a star-crossed romance that unfortunately ends in tragedy, with the story resurrected years later in the form of a theatrical stage play.  The final story is written by erudite food journalist Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright), an amalgamation of James Baldwin wandering through Paris reflecting on his outsider status, james baldwin - collected essays (pdf), and A. J. Liebling commenting on food, profiling the Police Commissioner (Mathieu Amalric) and his famed chef Nescaffier (Stephen Park).  Soon a gastronomy lesson on police cooking morphs into a kidnapping, with Wright seen interviewed years later by a Talk Show Host (Liv Schreiber, inspired by Dick Cavett), The French Dispatch - Never Ask a Man Why YouTube (2:00) as he recollects, with typographic memory, the Commissioner’s missing son and the harrowing events to recapture him alive, with shoot-outs and showdowns, expressed in near cartoonish fashion, including hand-drawn animation, yet the connecting threads are the meals prepared by Nescaffier, a specialist in French haute cuisine, described in intimate detail.  In this instance a food review turns into a wacky adventure story, filled with unexpected thrills and heightened suspense, including a coda back inside the offices of the Dispatch, where Howitzer hears Wright’s reasons for deleting a private conversation with Nescaffier, conflicted by his own feelings as an outsider, but prefers to include it, contending it’s the essential aspect of the story, interjecting a strangely compelling ruminative quality.  While there’s plenty of wit and obvious affection on display, exhibiting an undisputed poetic artistry expanding the realms of cinema that can be uniquely attributed to this director, nonetheless much of this feels coldly manufactured and self-reverential, a product of his own self-confining aesthetic, lacking an emotional center while missing dramatic impact, leaving viewers impressed by the magnitude of a visual collage in time with a strict choreography of action, but hardly moved by it all.  It’s essentially a nostalgia piece about memory that tries to replicate what these writers embodied, but fails to reach the depths of their passion and unbridled imaginations, creating instead an irreverent kind of mocking tribute that some might find mesmerizing, visually sumptuous, with occasional moments of brilliance, yet can also feel insufferable, an overwhelming experience that may leave viewers exhausted and emotionally drained, having little or nothing to do with the real world.  In an epilogue, the Dispatch staff congregate to mourn Howitzer’s death, putting together a final issue to honor his memory, with a series of New Yorker magazine covers designed by Javi Aznarez seen in the closing credits that capture the look and playful humor of the magazine, with the film paying tribute to a host of New Yorker writers that include Harold Ross, William Shawn, Rosamond Bernier, Mavis Gallant, James Baldwin, A. J. Liebling, S. N. Behrman, Lillian Ross, Janet Flanner, Lucy Sante, James Thurber, Joseph Mitchell, Wolcott Gibbs, St. Clair McKelway, Ved Mehta, Brendan Gill, E. B. White, and Katharine White.   

The Absurd Intricacy of The French Dispatch video essay pointing out the level of formal detail borders on absurdism, by Thomas Flight on YouTube (13:35)