The French Dispatch

French Letters

The French Dispatch
USA/Germany 2021
Directed by Wes Anderson

Warning: Very mild spoilers.

A new Wes Anderson movie is always a cause for celebration. He’s a director who, in my humble opinion, has been consistently stunning since fairly early on in his career and when I sat down to watch this, I was fully expecting this to be my favourite film of the year... which it was for the first third of the movie but, although this is indeed another of Anderson’s amazing, cinematic spectacles which once again remind people that you can shoot an intensely personal artistic vision and still turn it into a glorious epic in this kind of medium, I’d have to say the film came up just a little short of being movie of the year for me. But, hey, this would surely be in anybody’s top ten last year once they’ve seen this amazing, visual feast.

The film starts off with the death of the founder of the news magazine The French Dispatch, played by Bill Murray and, in typical Anderson style, the film is presented to the audience as articles in that magazine. The magazine is an American publication but based in France, in the small fictional town of Ennui (Ha! I love that Anderson can boldly get away with ridiculous jokes like this without losing credibility for his elaborately concocted fictions) and, in addition to Bill Murray, includes a whole host of A list actors in all kinds of roles, large and small, such as Benicio Del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Owen Wilson, Bob Balaban, Henry Winkler (yes, The Fonz is back in a movie and doing an unbelievably good job as a perfect, understated Anderson character), Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan and Elisabeth Moss.

So a star studded cast and all caught in little pockets of the story but, as I said, the structure is that for the main sections sandwiched between the obituary and the End Note - Declines and Deaths section, the film is actually four ‘articles’ told from the point of view of one of the main writers of the magazine. So we have The Cycling Reporter from the Travel section (the briefest of the four main ‘articles’ told by Owen Wilson’s character) followed by Tilda Swinton of the Art And Artists section telling us about The Concrete Masterpiece (my favourite section of the movie), Frances McDormand’s Revisions To A Manifesto for the Politics/Poetry section and Jeffrey Wright, who seems to be channeling the performance style of Orson Welles (unless I’m missing a more literary allusion to the basis of his line delivery) to captivate the audience with the tale of The Private Dining Room Of The Police Commissioner for the Tastes And Smells section.

So, what we actually have, rather than one consistent linear narrative, is a medley or showcase of Wes Anderson short films... which is alright by me. The only weakness of the film is the inherent one of taking this format as the break from a single arc, meaning the audience will naturally compare and rate the various sections, as they would do in any kind of portmanteau movie. The ‘hit and miss’ nature of the strength of each episode being part of the territory. That being said, with Anderson being such a master of his craft now, it’s more of a ‘hit and not quite as much of a hit’ affair in terms of quality. In other words... there are no misses.

I’m not sure when each article is set but the death of the editor comes in 1975, with the publication of the last issue of The French Dispatch, which is shut down as part of the provision of the will. Whether these articles are all put together for this final issue or are a selection from various years is not something I could quite make out but, certainly, the Revisions To A Manifesto felt more 1960s to me than some of the other articles.

And once again, Anderson is mixing it up in terms of the different formats of the picture... a lot of it is black and white, some of it is in colour, most of it is in a 4:3 ratio with other moments in widescreen and even split screen where additions to the 4:3 ratio can be added as an appendix or reference to the content of the main shot mixing both colour and monotone simultaneously in one, nice sequence. This is not a division between different sections, more that every section contains all these kinds of treatments within the boundaries of its own ‘magazine article’. He also, uses a couple of animated cartoons to illustrate parts of some of these sections and, as quirky as that is... and also considering his past works where live action and animated styles have co-existed in the same picture (such as The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou or The Grand Budapest Hotel)... I couldn’t help but think that in the second, cartoon animated car chase, the budgetary concerns of shooting such a section may also have come into play as to where best to unleash this technique.

The storytelling of each segment continues the style of the writer/director as sudden tangents to the storyline of each segment are often revealed to be Russian nesting dolls of ideas that ultimately grow from each other to add to the forward momentum of that particular arc.

There’s not much more for me to say on this one but I will reveal one delightful thing which, I suspect, would have had an audience composed of Jean Luc Godard and David Lynch howling with delight if such a situation were possible. When Tony Revolori (Zero from The Grand Budapest Hotel) is playing a young version of the imprisoned, psychotic, homicidal Moses Rosenthaler, he suddenly grows up into the later version of the artist, played by Benicio Del Toro. This is not done with a clever dissolve or other trickery but with the simple and ‘immersive defying’ moment of Revolori vacating his chair as Del Toro then sits in it, while taking his medallion off and putting it around Del Toros neck. One actor handing a character over to another, in fact. A truly nice touch and this one brought my personal house down, so to speak.

And that’s me done on this. If you like Anderson’s quirky, ‘catalogue and categorise’ style of narrative coupled by his squeaky clean shots, quirky physical space negotiations (such as when we track the progress of a character journeying up a tall building by his accelerated appearances at windows and balconies) and truly strong performances by actors investing in larger than life characters, then The French Dispatch should definitely top your list of ‘must see’ movies of 2021. And, of course, it’s all made more sweeter by the needledrop soundtrack selections punctuated by another of Alexandre Desplat’s masterpiece scores... this one very similar to his work on The Grand Budapest Hotel and yet another great triumph in this composer/director relationship. If not the best then, certainly, one of the best of last year.

2010 - Odyssey Two

 
To HAL And Back

2010 - Odyssey Two
(aka 2010 - The Year We Make Contact)
USA 1984 Directed by Peter Hyams
MGM  Blu Ray Zone B

2010 - Odyssey Two is the movie adaptation based on Arthur C. Clarke’s novel of the same name... being a sequel to both the first full length novel (originally a short story) and, of course, Stanley Kubrick’s amazing masterpiece of the cinema, 2001 - A Space Odyssey (reviewed by me here). I remember seeing this when it finally came to the UK in cinemas in 1985 and, even though it’s very different in atmosphere to Kubrick’s milestone, I remember enjoying it a lot.

This one follows character Dr. Heywood Floyd who, with two other American specialists... Dr. Chandra (played here by Bob Balaban) who invented the HAL 9000 computer (voiced again by Douglas Rain) and Dr. Walter Curnow (played by John Lithgow)... accompanies a Russian expedition to the original Discovery, still stranded in orbit above Jupiter by the monolith but with that orbit decaying, which kind of forces the collaboration between the USA and USSR. So the film has a couple of objectives... find out why the HAL 9000 computer malfunctioned and killed all those people; find out what the heck happened to David Bowman (played once again here by Kier Dullea); find out what is going on with the monolith... all the while keeping up good relations with the Russians (led by a young Helen Mirren) who are particularly icy due to the downward spiral with relations between their two respective governments back on Earth.

Floyd is played here by Roy Scheider, who was played by William Sylvester in the original movie and I’m not sure why Sylvester didn’t reprise his role here. Perhaps because of the 16 year time difference between the first film and the sequel but, even so, Roy Scheider is actually 10 years younger than Sylvester in real life... playing a version of Floyd who is obviously supposed to be ten years older than the character as depicted in Kubrick’s odyssey. However, the casting was certainly a good choice because Scheider does wonders with the role, managing to deliver an electrifying performance where not a lot of physical action is required... just talk.

The director makes great use of a variety of shots to give us some great staging and although there is some camera movement, I noticed very early on that the film is primarily made from cutting around static shots but Hyams still manages to get a lot of movement out of it... from scenes which might be very boringly handled by other directors. The beautifully shot opening sequence, for example, where a Russian scientist goes to tell Floyd about the decaying orbit of the Discovery and proposing a joint venture is absolutely electrifying as presented here, when it really is just a bit of, admittedly well written, dialogue between two men talking science and politics.

Similarly, when there are more visually dynamic scenes in the movie such as a spacewalk, Hyams concentrates on the way the characters interact by showing the nervous American being helped through the spacewalk by the Russian, which is followed by a scene where the Russian panics onboard the Discovery. So the approach is reversed by having something visually more interesting pulled back to an emotional sequence of character interactions, which also helps build up a quick relationship with this particular Russian so that, later on in the story, when this Russian character is ‘lost’, it means more to the audience. Again, when the whole set is shaking as the crew of the Russian craft are attempting a possibly perilous way of getting to their destination, Hyams makes it about characters again as one of the young female Russians gets into Scheider’s bed/cabin area with him out of fear... again concentrating on emotion in what is, like the movie before it, a film about a very sterile set of events.

Added to this, the film has some very nice, almost casually introduced shot set ups which, like that opening sequence of the conversation, add the interest to the story where it isn’t necessarily in the main text. For instance, a meeting scene around a table in one shot has one guy with his back to us in silhouette making up a big, vertically blocked area in the centre of the screen with the opposite side of the table on either side of him... Floyd on the left of screen and two Russians on the right... which also serves as a way to keep the ‘them vs us’ international divide as a constant reminder in a visual fashion, to help maintain the underlying sense of tension within the narrative.

Actually, the idea of using static shots works a treat with one of the film’s less scientifically grounded scenes. There’s a wonderful moment where HAL9000 is delivering a message to Floyd and after a while, when HAL is unable to identify the other person relaying the messages, Floyd is asked by HAL to turn his head and look behind him. It’s a great moment as he sees Kier Dullea as David Bowman manifested before him. He follows him to the pod bay room and has a conversation with him but, as he talks to him, Bowman shifts through multiple appearances taken from his final scenes in 2001 - A Space Odyssey. All the transformations are revealed, however, via Scheider’s face reacting to something off screen and then we have a static cut back to Bowman where he’s changed appearance again. If this had been simply tracked with a camera and some computer effects work (which weren’t really available at that scale when this movie was made anyway), then it would have looked incredibly unconvincing. Here, because Hyams has been using a lot of cuts from one shot to another rather than move the camera around, he manages to sell the transformations of this sequence with the aid of the lead actor’s reactions. Well... mostly. There’s a corny bit where ‘the star child’ from the end of the first movie is manifested and... that moment has dated a bit, I think and just seems a little over the top now. But it worked at the time and it’s kinda charming now when you look back on it.

Also, the musical score is quite sparse... and also quite rare still, from what I remember. I have an old Japanese import CD of the score which I bought back in the 1980s that had somehow made its way into Tower Records but I don’t think it’s ever been properly commercially released in either the US or the UK. The score is basically a synth score by David Shire and, it’s used very sparsely and it’s not bad but I think this was ultimately the wrong kind of scoring to have for this film (the first score by another composer had already been rejected). So it’s kind of good that it’s not used that often.

The film opens with a recap following David Bowman’s final transmitted words... “My God... it’s full of stars.” which is a static reminder of the events of 2001 and this is scored with Ligeti music which, as far as I’m concerned, makes any visual accompaniment sound interesting. After this, there is no music until a good ten or more minutes into the film, as David Shire’s score kicks in when Floyd tells his wife that he’s going up into space for a few years. After that, as I say, it’s very sparsely spotted with occasional hits of Shire’s score plus one more (I think) very brief use of Ligeti and a quick nod to the famous Thus Spake Zarathustra in the film’s closing scenes.

I remember loving the ending of this when it was released but looking back on it now, although it’s still a great, if different, kind of film to 2001, I think the ending of this could now maybe have used a little more gravitas and less ‘wonder’ in its end game. It does feel a bit anticlimactic to me now but, then again, I’m much more older and jaded by these things than I used to be so... yeah, that might not be true for a vast majority of the audience.

Asides from the odd ‘things of note’ then, there’s not much more I have to add to this one. Those things to note, though, would be the appearance of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick as illustrations on an issue of time magazine a nurse is holding, Clarke’s cameo as ‘man on bench’ in front of the White House and, just maybe, the interesting fact that Kubrick destroyed all the models and blueprints of the spaceships from the first film to stop anyone ever being tempted to make a sequel (I think, ultimately, I’m with him in terms of not making a sequel but not in destroying models) and so the Discovery had to be rebuilt from looking at the original movie... which must have been a pain.

At the end of the day, if you liked the first movie and don’t mind the less clinical atmosphere of the sequel, 2010 - Odyssey Two is probably something you might quite like and, while in no way comparable to Kubrick’s masterpiece, it’s actually quite a good movie which holds the interest of the subject matter in a very different way to the previous one. Definitely one I will revisit again some day. If you, like me, live in the UK, you won’t be able to get a Blu Ray of this from the likes of Amazon. If you want one, go to either Fopp or HMV where the Blu Ray can be purchased as an HMV chain exclusive. Like a few other films which should be made more widely available in this country.

Isle Of Dogs

I Love Dogs

Isle Of Dogs
2018 USA/Germany
Directed by Wes Anderson
UK cinema release print.

So it’s only April and here we have what may well turn out to be the absolutely best film of the year. Isle Of Dogs is yet another corker from one of the two greatest, living American directors Wes Anderson (the other being Hal Hartley, of course). Now, though I’ve seen almost all of Wes Anderson’s movies, I’d not seen his earlier stop-motion movie Fantastic Mr. Fox (I don’t remember being that impressed with the original Roald Dahl source material as a kid) but I’m now quite keen to see this as I realised, while watching this, that the medium in which Anderson has chosen to work with on this thing in no way compromises or marginalises his artistic signature.

To the contrary, despite the fact that none of this film is live action, it looks and feels unmistakably like a Wes Anderson movie right from the get go. All the usual markers are there including the labelling, the setting out of parameters and the linear, clean shots that mark his work out with a unique fingerprint. In fact, as I was watching the film, I started to wonder if the reason that absolutely no compromise in this director’s style is in evidence here was in fact because his regular, live actions films themselves, in some way, resemble neatly organised, animated works. It’s something I’ll need to ponder on further.

Isle Of Dogs starts with a metaphorical fable (in terms of its relation to the main body of the story) of a boy samurai and his defeat of an enemy that wanted to rid Japan of all dogs. The story then flashes forward to the main setting of the film... a Japan of the future in which the mayor has ordered all dogs, which have pretty much contracted a contagious dog flu, to be dumped on a trash island. It is here that the main human protagonist’s dog ‘Spots’ has been dumped first (also known as Dog Zero) and it’s here that Akira, the boy pilot, flies to rescue him. The film shows how, when he teams up with a pack of ferocious dogs, he goes to find Spots and right the wrongs of the mayor, who is about to poison the entire island and wipe out all the canines.

And it’s great. Just great.

The dogs all speak English and are voiced by various film stars, many of them Wes Anderson regulars. So people like Bryan Cranston, Bill Murray, Liev Shreiber, Edward Norton, Bob Balaban, Harvey Keitel, Greta Gehrig, Frances McDormand, Scarlet Johansson and, seriously, Yoko Ono. Meanwhile, various Japanese human characters, played by a variety of actors and actresses, only talk in their own language and it’s completely raw in the film except where it’s deliberately translated by various people or by electronic gubbins (as pointed out to the audience in the typical Anderson way). So, in some ways, the Japanese humans have the same kind of effect on proceedings as the nonsensical, abstract ‘waaah, waaah, waah’ voices of the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon. Well... unless you happen to speak Japanese, I guess.

The film breezes along and it has all the usual, inventive, witty and sometimes quite moving dialogue moments you'd expect from Anderson, as Atari and an angry stray dog called Chief form an unlikely bond in an attempt to find Spots. The animation is just perfect and some of the expressions the dogs make to the audience where they break the fourth wall like Stan Laurel or Oliver Hardy might do in one of their shorts when they look to the audience for some kind of understanding or validation is great. It’s also got its own visual short-hand going on too, as any filmed footage shown on a TV or screen of the characters is done as a traditional line drawing style cartoon whereas the body of the work is done in a stop-motion style animation. So that was a nice touch.

The music is great too... as you would expect when the great Alexandre Desplat is working with this director. I believe this is their third collaboration and, like the previous two - Moonrise Kingdom (reviewed here) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (reviewed here) it’s absolutely brilliant and quite possibly this will also be the best score of the year too.

Like pretty much all of Anderson’s films, there’s usually a substantial amount of needle-dropped music in his work and although this has kind of calmed down a little since he started working with Desplat, there are still a few places her and there where he goes the needle dropped route in this. One of his listed influences on this film is my favourite director, Akira Kurosawa and there are a few pieces from Kurosawa scores in the movie. The one which made me jump off my seat was in a scene where the theme from Seven Samurai starts playing... a tune which is never far from my mind anyway. There’s also, amongst the odd, assorted songs, a nice and extremely unusual ‘cover version’ of Prokofiev’s Troika thrown into the mix... so, yeah, you can bet I’ll be ordering this CD as soon as I stop typing up this review.

And there’s probably not too much more I can say about this convoluted yet ultimately simply rendered and inventive film. The problem when someone makes such a perfect movie is that there’s not always as much you could say about it as there are no flaws to pick up on. Isle Of Dogs is easily one of the best animated movies I’ve seen for quite some time but it’s also, quite unmistakably, an ‘on brand’ Wes Anderson film and this director just seems to be getting consistently better with every piece of motion picture art he makes. I can’t recommend this film enough to anyone who will listen and, honestly, you’d be really missing out if you don’t see this one at cinemas. Such a great ride.

Lady In The Water

Nymph or Mania?

Lady In The Water
USA 2006 Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Warner Brothers Blue Ray Zone B

Wow. This is a pretty cool movie.

Regular readers of my blog will know that I have an ongoing and strange reaction to the films of M. Night Shyamalan. I try to see them because I always loved Unbreakable but, for the most part, I have found most of his films to be very obvious, unsurprising and disappointing. However, I almost always like the musical scores James Newton Howard composes for Shyamalan... a director who seems to bring out the absolute best in this composer. So I try to see these when I can.

Due to various issues with my life back in 2006, it wasn’t always easy to get to see the latest movies when they hit the cinema and, consequently, Lady In The Water was pretty much the only film by this director which I missed on the big screen. Because it got fairly bad word of mouth and was pretty much a box office failure, I could never really muster up the effort to get around to seeing this one. However, about a year ago I spotted a Blu Ray of the movie going for around £3 and figured I might as well finally get to it. After all, I really like the lead actor Paul Giamatti and, you know, there was that James Newton Howard score to hear within the context of the movie.

I was a little surprised, therefore, when... after a brief narration scene involving cartoon stick figures, giving us a potted background history of the fantasy creatures that are to be found in this tale... I found that the film has a charm and warmth far surpassing my expectations. Right from the outset, when we are introduced to the caretaker of a building, Cleveland Heep, played by Giamatti and the strange water nymph he finds in that building’s swimming pool... ‘Story’, played by Dallas Bryce Howard... I was hooked and wanting to find out just what was going to happen to these people.

Shyamalan’s almost invisible directing style provides us with a window on the many characters who inhabit Heep’s building, gradually introducing a truly amazing cast including Bob Balaban, Freddy Rodriguez, Jeffrey Wright and, of course, Shyamalan himself... who at this point in his career seemed to be writing himself bigger roles with every film he directed. As it happens, he’s pretty amazing in this too so... I can live with that.

Lady In The Water is based on a story M. Night Shyamalan made up to tell his children at bedtime and, as such, this film is a little more whimsical than you might expect from him... dealing, as it does, with water nymphs, their quest to ‘awaken’ a specific person in the world of man, the ferocious grass creatures who seek to stop this and kill said water nymphs and... other story elements which pull together as the film progresses. I don’t want to spoil this one for you so I’ll stop there with the plot details, suffice it to say that the film is about Heep and his quest to identify and slowly gather the necessary people from the tale so he can help Story fulfil her mission and return to her home while, at the same time, trying to protect her from her enemy. And it’s just great, in all honesty.

I’m not quite sure why this got such a bad reaction from people as it’s easily either my favourite or, perhaps, second favourite of this director’s works (although the score is Howard’s least interesting for Shyamalan, it has to be said). Maybe it’s because people are less able to buy into what amounts to almost a fairy tale of a story with adults fulfilling their specific purpose to make the laws of the fantasy world come to life. Or maybe it was just badly publicised by Warner Brothers... who knows? What I do know, though, is that I wish Shyamalan was still making films like this instead of some of the other territory he’s been moving into recently.

The really nice thing about this movie is that Bob Balaban’s character is a film and book critic. Therefore he knows everything about stories and Shyamalan is able to use this element he wrote into the character to slyly stick his tongue into his cheek by simultaneously having this guy deconstruct the elements of the film as they are playing out. It’s almost like he’s poking his tongue out at his critics (but not as a sign of affection in this case, as it might be considered by lovers) and saying to them, “Yeah, this movie is obvious and I know character A is bound to do this and character B will always do this but, actually, that’s not going to stop me from having my cake and eating it by having these characters do these things to move the story forward while I highlight that this is what they are doing anyway.” So it’s kind of cool and I think the last movie before this that I can remember pulling off such a level of self awareness while still using the clichéd elements of its genre rules to play out those very same things was the Stephen Sommers reboot of The Mummy series for Universal back in 1999. Lady In The Water has exactly the same kind of  level of reflexivity in it but it’s even more blatant and spelled out for the audience... and it still manages to get away with it.

Another thing I liked about this one is that there is no expectation of any kind of a twist ending like a great many of this director’s film have. That meant I could feel more relaxed watching it and, although the ending was pretty much a shoe in for the obvious conclusion, I really didn’t mind it and wasn’t in any way disappointed with the film’s denouement either. Which was nice.

All in all, I’d have to heftily recommend Lady In The Water to any of my friends who have a warm heart and like adult fairy tales. It is in no way deserving, in my opinion, of the rating it has on the famous Rotten Tomatoes website and I really don’t know why people are calling it contrived when it’s not something that the writer/director is really trying to hide about this work. So, if you’ve never seen an M. Night Shyamalan film and want to see a good one, check out this one because it’s an unquestionably warm and emotional movie. There aren’t that many of those being made these days, it would seem.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Hotel Recall

The Grand Budapest Hotel
2014 UK/Germany
Directed by Wes Anderson
Playing at UK cinemas now.

There’s something about a Wes Anderson movie that creeps up behind you and just grabs you right from the start, pulling you into the realm of the story and providing a totally immersive experience for their “always too short” running times.

I was trying to pinpoint, after leaving a screening of his latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, just what makes the majority of his movies, as far as I’m concerned, just so perfect. In the end I’m forced to confess that there’s no “one” real signature element of his style which can take the full responsibility for the absolute joy one gets from watching his stories play out in front of you. It’s a terminally infectious combination of all round stylish movie-making infused with an absolute perfection of execution, even at the points where he deliberately dumbs down on the technical expectations to feed the whimsy of his pieces (think the various stop-motion sea life in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou or the high speed ski chase in this movie, by way of example), that feeds your mind and allows you to switch off to all concerns other than the shadows and light playing out in front of you in a darkened cinema, that allows for such a fantastic marriage of small scale stories made epic.

I usually hate doing lists but the elements in and of themselves are easy to identify, of course:

1. The clean, sometimes sweeping and sometimes static, but always simplistic movements of the camera through an artifical environment which leaves you in no confusion as to where you are.

2. The matter of fact neatness of the sets which are always easy to understand, with the director often giving you an overview far more detailed than any mere establishing shot, which perhaps mirrors the agenda of Kurosawa to give the audience a very clear map of where the action is transpiring before fully spinning his narrative web.

3. The level of detail in those sets. They are always quite neat, which lends an air of art versus reality, and they are always filled to the brim with little insights into the characters that inhabit them.

4. Perfect casting, employing actors who are some of the best in their field and who are not just playing to type. They are being used in a movie which, you can tell, they want to be in rather than just pick up another pay cheque. This film includes cameos and extended cameos from a large number of Anderson’s back catalogue of actors and actresses and it’s a joy to watch each one pop up, one completely uncredited one (even on the IMDB) for literally about one or two seconds of footage. I’d do a list but it would go on forever.

5. A musical undercurrent which is usually quite diverse in its style and sourcing, although The Grand Budapest Hotel is slightly different in this respect and I’ll get to that a little later.

6. The quirky and fun writing which is always witty and more often than not takes what, to another writer/director, would be a fairly small scale story, and then imbuing it with a sense of grandeur which allows it to shine at its own pace... which is rarely slow or boring.

7. A constant and stable pacing, presumably arrived at through the editing, which allows the brisk intermissions of action... random fleeing, window jumping, cat throwing etc... to come alive as startling little highlights, enhanced by their throwaway treatment, rather than muffled by this artistic attitude.

I could go on, but those are the main ones.

And, of course, The Grand Budapest Hotel has all this in spades... apart from, to a certain extent, the musical element... but the treatment and use of that here shows a trust perhaps lacking in the director’s previous work and, like I said, I’ll get to that soon enough.

The Grand Budapest Hotel tells the story of the titular hotel’s concierge through the eyes of his lobby boy. We have a Russian nesting doll format for the story within a story within a story structure, but the main narrative is told through the eyes of the lobby boy from his old age as the rich owner of the hotel (I’m not giving anything away here... you’ll know this much within the first 10 minutes of the movie). Anderson uses shifting aspect ratios to differentiate between the “narrative stacks”, with most of the movie being screened in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, and it works pretty well, with the shifts from one ratio to another being mostly noticeable on purely a subconscious level once he’s done it a couple of times.

The performances, as you would expect, are astonishing. Ralph Fiennes has finally got my attention and possibly respect as an actor and he is an absolutely joy to watch in this as a slightly camp womaniser who appreciates the finer things in life. His lobby boy, played by relative newcomer Tony Revolori, is an absolute wonder and, as I said, this is all the norm in a film directed by Mr. Wes Anderson. And, honestly, Tilda Swinton's old age make-up is absolutely amazing. I rarely find “ageing” make up in any way convincing but this time it’s really impressive. I didn’t at first realise I wasn’t watching an 80-something actress unknown to me.

And Willem Dafoe’s caricature of an evil henchman is at once thoroughly sinister and over-the-top funny. It’s not got the depth of the role which Dafoe played for Anderson in The Life Aquatic, but it’s not supposed to. Conversely, Edward Norton’s character is really just an extension, albeit in a different profession, of the character he plays in the wonderful Anderson movie Moonrise Kingdom (reviewed here). And it’s just as poe-faced and funny.

But don’t get me started on Harvey Kietel. You may find yourself bursting out with laughter just at his appearance in this one. He's always so good in this stuff.

And then there’s the music.

Wes Anderson tends to employ a lot of “found” needle-drop style music in his films, although this is often supported at times with an actual composed score to give certain moments the kind of unity which music can easily create to glue different parts of a movie together with a leitmotif or atmospheric approach. Mark Mothersbaugh’s music for The Life Aquatic, for example, utilises a melody in different orchestrations... from something that deliberately sounds like it’s being played on a cheap, 1980s Cassio synthesiser through to a full-blooded action cue representation of the theme... to bring together the elements as a unified “Team Zissou” force within the film. Similarly, a more subtle but similarly progressive set of orchestrations is employed by the always brilliant Alexandre Desplat with his “Heroic Weather” theme in Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, to further enhance the sense of unity and harmony with the various characters.

In The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson pretty much throws the needle-drop element, cat-like (no don’t ask), out of the window and instead has hired Desplat to provide a full score and, while it does tonally go through a needledrop like quality in terms of the style in places, it finally feels like an Anderson film has a full and cohesive musical direction and, given that it’s composed by Desplat, of course, it’s an absolutely marvellous piece of scoring. The CD should hopefully be arriving through my door for a closer listen sometime this week, I hope.

And that’s about it. I could go on and on about how wonderful a movie this is but I think you’ve probably got the idea by now... at least if you’ve read this far. What I will add though, is this...

I’ve seen most of this director’s work now and I would rank this movie as fourth within his oeuvre. But it’s an absolutely brilliant and joyful experience and I plan on seeing this movie several times more in my life. I may rank it fourth in his movies but it’s fourth out of four absolute masterpieces he’s made. If that isn’t enough of a recommendation for you to rush out and see this truly splendid artefact of cinematic wonder then I don’t know what is. Run, don’t walk*, to your nearest cinema and see this fabulous creation for yourself.

*Please note, this writer takes no responsibility for any accidents, injury or death resulting in the investment of this advice.

The Monuments Men

The Art Of War

The Monuments Men
2014 USA/Germany
Directed by George Clooney
Playing at UK cinemas now.

Warning: Very slight spoilers which, in no way, 
give away the course of the story.

There’s a scene about three quarters of the way or more through The Monuments Men which best demonstrates one of the things I found a little disappointing with this film overall. One of the lead protagonists has stepped on a landmine and cannot move for fear of blowing up himself and his colleagues. We’ve all seen this scene before in countless war movies, of course, and it’s a cheap but effective trick used by directors for decades to build up suspense, tension and force the audience to empathise with their characters even more... but this time it doesn’t quite work in it’s intent. At least that’s how it felt for me.

Instead of being played fully for tension, the director, as is his right, seems to want to play it for yet another in a series of “war romp” scenes. It’s not a funny situation but it’s played quite lightly and, for me, this really highlights the movie’s one, main flaw. There’s no edge to it and almost no consequence. It’s also dealt with in an unrealistic manner too... I thought the central characters were smarter than this.

Now my reaction to this might just be one of conditioning, to be honest. I’m really not one for watching too many war movies but we have been under fire in recent years from films like Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and The Pianist, which show the horrors of war and pull, relatively few, punches in showing the raw misery that conflict will always bring into being. The Monuments Men, on the other hand, seems to be of direct lineage from films such as Kelly’s Heros and The Dirty Dozen in it’s genetic make-up (two films, I hasten to add, that I’ve not yet seen... so if I’m wrong in this judgement, please feel free to take me to task over it in the comments section below) and, naturally, films like The Inglorious Bastards and Tarantino’s own war movie in this vein, Inglourious Basterds (not actually a remake or homage to the former, in fact)... the latter being perhaps the best of this lineage to combine the War Is Hell but also, the bizarre War Is Fun element of a conflict which has been the subject of so many hundreds of movies since the 1940s.

It’s a decision and Clooney goes with his gut and delivers a war romp which is, in all honesty, quite entertaining... but finds itself at odds with itself, I believe, because some of the scenes he’s written in to deliver “the dark edge” are perhaps played a little too lightly for their own good. And I’m not putting that down to the acting because everybody in this movie... Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin, John Goodman, Hugh Bonneville, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban and even Clooney himself, are all absolutely brilliant in their performances and it doesn’t seem to be their tone which is the problem.

For instance, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say, when it comes to a movie set during the Second World War, that some of the main protagonists are going to wind up dead at various points in the movie. However, I found that, even though I liked all these characters, I didn’t really feel much when they died. Don’t get me wrong, the other characters on screen did... but I, as the audience, didn’t feel much. Similarly, when a couple of characters realise the gold they’ve been running their hands through is comprised of the gold fillings of dead victims of the German concentration camps, although we are given time to dwell on this horror, along with the characters, we don’t really feel it as such. At least I didn’t and, believe me, I’m not taking the actual events any less seriously for it.

I think the “lightening” effect I’m talking about here is something which came in the struggle to find the perfect edit and sound mix from the film. And also perhaps from the baggage that some of the actors have brought with them from other roles. Many of these are noted for giving some great comic performances and maybe that’s thrown into the mix too. Perhaps some shots needed to be a little longer or maybe have a less beautiful score than the “classic war anthem” style of composition, with direct lineage from the scores of Ron Goodwin, that master composer Alexandre Desplat has delivered... much to my puzzlement as this score doesn’t seem to me to fit his usual modus operandi, although it’s still a score and a half, to be sure.

So yeah. The film does seem a little, “war light” in places. Especially after such a brilliant opening montage of static shots of works of art juxtaposed with the sounds of hammer blows. This short sequence was almost stomach turning, when seen on a big screen, in the way the sound and image worked together in rhythm and sets you on edge for an intense and dynamic darkness which never quite delivers, at least on that front.

Okay, so that’s a pretty negative view of the film so far so let me just temper that a little and tell you about the good way of looking at this...

It’s actually quite fun and it’s well acted, holds your attention and doesn’t, not even once, get boring.

It was possibly scripted so that certain scenes would go to the various “stars” in the movie to play to their strengths but, honestly, it doesn’t look or feel like it’s been tailored for specific performers in that way and it flows beautifully, not feeling like a series of separate incidents highlighting characters... even though it kinda is in many ways, as the lead protagonists work in smaller, separate units for the majority of the film and only come together for key scenes every once in a while. It’s a solid little story and although it certainly doesn’t drum home the horrors of war I was talking about earlier, they’ve not been forgotten or pushed to the background either (maybe tonally but not in terms of sweeping them under a rug or something like that).

What we have in The Monuments Men, I think, is one of those films which is going to play on television during seasonal holidays like Christmas and Easter for decades to come and will, in future years, be rightly identified as a classic. I know, for instance, that when future generations sit down and watch this, they’ll see a snappy and solid little war movie with a great cast of actors who all died many years ago and wonder why this didn’t make a bigger splash when it landed at the box office on its release. The haze of nostalgic rediscovery is as valid a process of receiving the art form as any other, it’s my belief, so I think this film will be remembered well when it starts to be included in text books of the history of war films in years to come. But don’t take my word for it... go and see this possible classic in cinemas now while you still can. It’s nothing like a perfect movie for us now... but it may well be a perfect movie in the future.