Hating Wes Anderson with gusto
Wes Anderson is likely to be a genius, which is probably why I hate him so much. Or maybe The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) is what made me a h8r: I must be the only person on Earth to have stopped watching that movie and refused to try to watch it again because I considered one can mock only so much the events that cost the lives of so many people, such as WWI. (Incidentally, this is also why I despise Iannucci’s film The Death of Stalin (2017): satire or not, the over-caricaturing of how Stalin’s regime worked is a slap in the face of his victims.)
This being said, the problem I’m currently having with Wes Anderson’s productions is that his latest, The French Dispatch (labeled 2021, but premiered in 2020), can currently only be watched in cinema theaters, no matter where you reside. No streaming service, nothing. Screw the pandemic, people must go to a cinema to watch it!
There are also some 15 featurettes about the movie in this playlist. (Side note: the chicks might be interested in The Rise of Timothée Chalamet, methinks. Nosotros, we can have Léa Seydoux.)
This film seems to be the supreme retro-kitsch, but so have been most of Wes Anderson’s creations, especially The Darjeeling Limited (2007) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). I hate the kitsch, and the retro-kitsch even more, but there’s something that creates a love-hate relationship with this guy’s film. Some of the techniques used to create this magic are explained in the following video:
Just for the fun of it:
Of course, this guy is a professional thief:
Also, The French Dispatch seems to be an exasperating portmanteau picture. Well, honestly, I’ve seen much worse, given that 99% of what Hollywood, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO and the others produce is pure garbage.
But I like Wes Anderson’s colors! Set aside the filming techniques and whatever else make his signature, what the reviewers never stress enough about his films is the color palette of them! Retro, vintage, saturated earth colors or whatever the case is, but combined with his “flat” style and his filming angles, the result is overly spectacular.
Wes, I bloody hate you.
BONUS: I wholeheartedly recommend you the book Accidentally Wes Anderson. It has nothing to do with him.
Watched “The French Dispatch” last night, dozed off a few times and the wife – who is a big fan – only once.
I would not recommend it to anyone, except as a means to battle insomnia.
The cast is nice, the cinematics are fine, but come on…
So insistent to be seen as intellectual, and so tedious.