Just a few films for February, beginning with a few from Wes Anderson.

The French Dispatch (2021), directed by Wes Anderson. Here we have Wes Anderson in spades, in colour, in black and white, mostly in live action, and in animation. The screen is a cornucopia of delights, too much for one viewing. I was reminded of Anderson’s earlier work, Jacques Tati, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Renoir, Curtis Hanson, Esteban Sapir, and others. The film offers a triptych of short stories held together by a frame in the offices of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun newspaper/magazine (The New Yorker in disguise?). The stories purport to be features by three of the magazines top writers, art critic/historian J. K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton), reporter in the field Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand), and food writer Roebuck Wright (Jefferey Wright). The stories follow the weird career of artist and mental patient Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro), student activist Zeffirelli (Timothee Chalamet), and police chef Nescaffier (Stephen Park). The three stories all take place in a small French city, Ennui-sur-Blasé, and they begin with a talk-about-town with bicycle-riding Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson) who gives us something of a tour of the environs of this French city including pickpocket alley, the arcade, and Le Sans Blague Café (sans blague =  no kidding or this is no joke, meaning in this case, we have nothing but a joke). This is clever, sly, witty, convoluted, and much fun. As I say above, the film requires more than one viewing. Even the subtitles, when required, are unusually clever.

 

Asteroid City (2023), directed by Wes Anderson. I suspect many of you have seen this film, and I will keep my comments brief. Near the beginning and the end of this film we see a (I think this should be the definite article) Roadrunner moving about, and many of us may wonder when the Coyote will turn up. Like all Anderson’s films, this one is chock full of cultural references. Here the references are to 1950s with cowboy clothing, box-like buildings, starchy clothing, down home music, the a-bomb, ufos, guns, diners, aloof parents, etc. A running (or at least moving) gag throughout is a speeding getaway car chased by a police car and motorcycle, guns a-blazing. Of course, the military is on hand, especially after an alien ship arrives to take a look at the object that lends its name to the small desert community. Much in evidence is the modern world’s penchant for consuming things, from land to food to gadgets of various kinds. The story, such as it is, comes framed by a Playhouse 90-style television production that combines the theatre with television – both of which are delivered on film to us. The television narrator is played with suitable gravitas by Bryan Cranston, and the playwright is a Sam Shepard-like fellow named Conrad Earp (Edward Norton). The rest of the cast is chock full of familiar faces, and everyone delivers performances that are best dubbed drole. As we would expect in an Anderson film, the world we see is artificial, the artificiality accentuating the point about America that Anderson conveys. If all the world’s a stage, then what we have is a country following a script, a script that has resulted in a certain level of comfort, laced with violence and the threat of annihilation.

 

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023) and The Swan (2023), directed by Wes Anderson. These two short films based on stories by Roald Dahl are typical of Anderson; they exhibit artificial two-dimensional sets, self-conscious acting, and a control that results in symmetrical compositions and witty moments. And, of course, we have the usual Anderson palette. If anything, we have too much of this distinctive style. Okay the material is intriguing enough, the story of Henry Sugar the rich guy who loves to gamble and acquires X-ray vision (his ability is never called X-ray vision, but this is what it amounts to) by following the strict regime of an Indian yogi (Ben Kingsley) begins with Roald Dahl (Ralph Fiennes) reading to us in his writing room. Thereafter we have narrators – Dahl, Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch), Dr. Chatterjee (Dev Patel) – telling us the story from both inside the narrative and outside the narrative. As for the story, it has its amusing aspects and perhaps offers a lesson in tempering greed and helping others less fortunate. The Swan is a brief 17 minutes and tells the story of Peter (both Asa Jennings as the young Peter and Rupert Friend as the adult Peter) who is bullied mercilessly by other boys when he is young. These same boys kill a beautiful swan and remove its wings in order to attach them to Peter. Yes it is fantastical. This film too has Anderson’s signature touches, with the same layered diegesis as Henry Sugar. It also tosses in a bit of animation for good measure. I ought not say “tosses in” because nothing in an Anderson film is “tossed.” Everything is carefully arranged, even obsessively and meticulously arranged.

Big Bug (2022), directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Imagine Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel set in the future some 50 or 100 years from now. Or The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. That’s Big Bug, a futuristic look at a group of people who find themselves unable to leave the suburban house in which they either live or have come to visit. The film does gesture to a wider world in its snippets of the outside world in which advertisements are an ongoing thing in suburban streets, and computers seem to run things and humiliate human beings, and a borg-like entity dominates and controls human action. In other words, what might at first blush look like a utopia turns out to be a dystopia. I guess this ought to be obvious in the first scene in which we have two robots walking their humans who move along on all fours and act like dogs. The house in which the action takes place has a variety of technological devices and artificial intelligences seemingly controlled by one of these called “Einstein.” The set designs are colourful and jazzy in a sort of Jestons’s way or maybe Scooby-doo way. The camera work is fluid and inventive. The film tackles a number of themes including authoritarianism, artificial intelligence, the human desire for constant stimulation and pleasure, but it does so in a quirky and even goofy manner. We have one passing nod to the earlier Jeunet film, Delicatessen, and this should remind us just how deeply suspicious Jeunet is of human desire. The echoes of Bunuel let us know that Jeunet carries this suspicion with humour. All in all, this is a mixed pleasure.

Sand Storm (2016), directed by Elite Zexer. The film begins with 18-year-old Layla (Lamis Ammar) at the wheel of the family car and her father Suliman (Hitham Omari) in the passenger’s seat. Suliman is teaching his daughter how to drive, and they are on the way back from Layla’s school. Her cell phone rings and she checks it because her school grades have been posted. She has not done as well as her father expected she would do. In any case, before arriving at their desert Bedouin village, they change places because Layla cannot be seen driving. Driving is not something women do in this community. This opening scene contains most of what we will experience going forward: the clash of modernity with tradition, the psychological tension between family members, the gender inequality, and the enclosed feeling of enforced patriarchy. Layla and her father arrive home just before Suliman’s marriage to his second wife. His first wife, Jalila (Ruba Blal) is busy preparing a place for the new bride, including moving a new bed into her husband's place. She is not too happy about the situation. From here we have a film that examines the family dynamic. Jalila and Suliman have four children, Layla being the oldest. One of the other three serves as something of a focaliser, as she goes about spying on her elders. This character (I am not sure of her name) just may offer a hope that the younger generation might break free of the power dynamic that sees women as chattel rather than as independent persons. Layla finds herself caught between tradition and modernity, and her future is what drives the plot. This film is a slow burn. The sand storm of the title never materializes, although a storm rages inside most of the characters we meet.