"Asteroid City" is the latest film by creator Wes Anderson. Arriving in June, the director will bring his quirky style to the American Southwest. The film seems to play within the classic Anderson cinematic style of geometric composition and dramedy story structure like Kurt Vonnegut.
These features combine with Anderson's extreme attention to world-building. Films like "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" imagines an apathetic contemporary to Jacques Cousteau. "The Grand Budapest Hotel" features an imagined dessert shop that is reflective of the film's European inspirations and pastel style.
This level of detail and homage appears again in his 2021 film "The French Dispatch." The film consists of five stories in the final issue of the fictional Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun newspaper, a parody of The New Yorker. Each story takes place in the fictional Ennui-sur-Blasé, France, and ranges from student revolutions to bicycle tours to outsider art.
The true stand out comes with the penultimate story, "The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner." It follows Roebuck Wright (played by Jeffery Wright), who is interested in doing an expose on foremost police Chef Nescaffier. But before dinner begins, the Commissioner's son is taken hostage, food playing a key role in the negotiation.
Food has always appeared in Anderson's filmography, though he has never forefronted it as he does in this short. The film takes time to reflect on food and asks the question that some audience members wonder, "Why food?"
The question becomes a pointed remark at the film itself. Wright retorts in a James Baldwin-esque monologue that food has always been there – it's a companion.
Food permeates life, narratives and inspiration. The film uses food as an allegory in the vignette. Each course of a meal is served, like chapters in an anthology, to complement what came prior.
Nescaffier's meal becomes a narrative on its own, as elements of the hostage rescue are cooked into the meal that they serve. This idea is reinforced by the fact that each new course in the meal is presented on a split screen in the planning scene.
The Chef is pulled into the main action as he prepares a poisoned meal for the kidnappers, preparing the exact vegetable the kidnappee refuses to eat. The scene again highlights food's importance as the story climaxes.
The denouement of the story is presented like a desert. Chef Nescaffier is reflecting on the meal he'd served to the kidnappers and has an epiphany: poison has a flavor. Not only does it have a flavor of its own, but a flavor he had never known before.
The final moment teases the possibility of missing something – of not getting the full taste or knowing the flavor – until the situation allows it. Food, like any work of art, has unknown dimensions.
The art of food goes beyond inducing a physical response. There is a mental, emotional and even spiritual feast in food hidden within a meal that can challenge us to grow as beings. To take in art that feeds us in a way that no song or painting can.
"The French Dispatch" is a film interested in art. Be it the art in prison, the architecture of a city, the composition of a story or the technique behind a meal. From this artistic vantage, the film asks us to try something different. Take in a new story and discover a new flavor in life.
Benjamin Ervin is a senior studying English literature and writing at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Want to talk more about it? Let Benjamin know by emailing him at be425014@ohio.edu.
