Journalism Gets A Touching Love Letter In "The French Dispatch"

Paul Thomas Anderson is mostly style, but he finds substance in this ode to the printed page.

June 9, 2022

In the mid-15th century, German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable printing press, sparking the Printing Revolution. In Europe, books could get mass-produced at fast rates, saturating society with cultural ideals it had never experienced on a continental scale. We still feel the effect of this development today. Despite the gradual shift to the Internet, and the ever-dying art of print journalism, the world as we know it got built, in part, by print and the people who cared more for great stories than great click counts. The French Dispatch wants us to remember that.

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In a small French town, the editor of a local newspaper dies. Per his will, the paper will cease publication following one last issue, featuring three stories and an obituary.

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It is a movie with a message that is not challenging or imposing, and in that way, it feels inviting. We do not have to immerse ourselves in various perspectives or expand our philosophical parameters. We only have to reflect on a bygone era that valued the soul of a story more than its monetary potential. It is a worthy cause but suffers due to its creator’s insistence on his signature.

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Eventually, style suffers from diminishing returns. All the quick-fire dialogue, distant framing, and continuous shots of progressive movement can satisfy once, but as you tackle different stories, the very nature of stories exposes the corrosive nature of style. It exists as a reflection of the mind, but unless you find a perfect marriage of style to thematics or narrative, it will always strip a movie of the things it needs most.

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We often feel protective of the things we value, whether it's people, music, books, or movies. Film criticism is a bland enterprise partly because people cannot take a balanced approach. If a film gets enjoyed overall, every aspect must get praised. When a legitimate counter gets leveled, we must excuse its existence by maintaining whatever veneer of artistry rationalizes it best. We claim it was intentional, some stroke of subtextual genius that detractors do not understand. We say it somehow reflects a theme that otherwise would be absent from the film, despite the movie getting so heavily based upon that theme that any thread would do it justice. We look at a movie, decide what it means, and then force everything about it to be a product of that meaning.

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It is okay to admit that despite liking it regardless of its manner of employment, it can occasionally sap a film of its energy. The French Dispatch has many opportunities to be electric as it thrusts itself into art, revolution, and crime but sacrifices every chance to have a pulse by mistaking idiosyncrasy for energy.

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In the most general sense, The French Dispatch is effective as an ode to journalism. As with any profession, it is not monolithic; not all writing is the same, or the journey to its perfection created equal. In profiling, there is a narrative structure necessary to capture a subject. It is a life in words. It challenges you to pick apart what matters most in telling a broader story. Every word counts, but it must count only in the spirit of whom you are profiling. You must admire them while maintaining partiality. You must fall into adoration while seeking truth. The line between subjectivity and objectivity can never blur, but occasionally they must blend if the subject is to get illuminated.

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It is not the same as film criticism, which relies on employing as many descriptors as possible to distract from having nothing to say. The best critics paint specific colors with a broad brush, dissecting every scene to capture what a movie wants to say and how effectively it relays its ideas.

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News writing is a matter of fact and thus must be matter-of-fact. It is a refined skill, one every good writer should equip to their arsenal: restraint. It is a tough task to keep words from the page, but when supplying information, text must get shaken through a sieve. Only the necessary words can creep through. Sentences must be subjects and actions, all concise. Informing people without manipulating them is not the nature of modern news media, but the spirit of intent remains.

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The French Dispatch captures that love for language without compromising the arrogance of writers. Every writer thinks they know best but rarely do: that is why editors exist. The things that make a piece matter, the true soul of any story, are often not for the writer to know. They get so distracted by their love affair with their voice that they forget writing that matters to you should be more an exercise in commonality than a measure of your aptitude. Pretty words and edgy takes may satisfy the ego, but they do little to give purpose to pieces.

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No matter how much they resented his intrusions during his life, in his death, they recognize how important he was to their success. None will contort the truth to imagine his memory in a favorable light, but they will honor him nonetheless.

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It is a charming movie when it dives into that frustrating respect between writers and editors, appreciates the craft in telling a compelling story, and cares just as much for one type of journalism as another. It truly is “The French Dispatch:” a newspaper, one that cares for its writers, aspires to great stories, and features a collection of personalities unique from one another save the most critical quality in a staffroom: unity, not in spirit, but in the ambition to create great work.

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In this light, it is unfortunate that despite every story funneling itself into that unity, the final entry is more intriguing than the prior two. It isn’t just the animation or the concept of a hostage situation and fleeing criminals; it simply is the most bonkers of the lot. It feels like you would need a great writer to capture the insanity of the night, so every bit of narration feels like a real story coming together. It respects most that relationship between writer and editor: one gets enamored with events and runs wild with all their experiences; the other detaches themselves from sentiment and seeks the story within the lunacy.

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In its accidental way, this makes the movie play just like a real newspaper, though not necessarily for the better. We flip through the pages in search of the stories most interesting to us and find some of passing fascination before discovering the last entry is the most thrilling, despite it getting buried on the back page and without the half-page photo and attention-grabbing headline. The French Dispatch would have been a far better movie if it had been only about this story: how a passionate journalist navigates its insanity and his editor spars with him over what makes it worth telling. The spirit of investigation, writing, revision, and publication is all there. Unfortunately, although its structure works as a reflection of a paper, it does not convince us each piece is as worthy as the last. As such, we get gripped by something so desperate to make an impression it forgets what creates them: no one, and thus nothing, sticks out.

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We cannot appreciate Anderson’s idiosyncrasies and visual style. It has all been done by him before and will never impress again. It may tickle his fanatics or first-time observers but never satiate an audience who is more interested in his fascinating approach to telling stories than his means of showing them. Despite his tired style, he still thrives in creating worlds entirely his own, but not because of visual quirks. It is in approaching every story with passion. We can feel it simmering in The French Dispatch, but it’d have worked much better as a boil.