9/12/2023 0 Comments French dispatch![]() ![]() ![]() And to spin the web of Jewish figures from history even further, Duveen worked with an art historian named Bernard Berenson (does that surname sound familiar?), a Lithuanian-born Jew, to authenticate many of the works he sold. When Cadazio finishes his prison sentence, he successfully markets one of Rosenthaler’s works to the high art world, sparking international interest in the jailed painter - and, at least in his own view, helping to usher in what seems to be the Picasso-era genre of 20th-century abstract art.Īnderson based Cadazio on the influential art dealer Joseph Duveen, who grew up in England the son of a Dutch Jewish father, and who was the subject of a six-part series written by Behrman in 1951. Rosenthaler’s talents with a paintbrush are noticed by fellow prisoner Julien Cadazio, a scheming art dealer played by one of Anderson’s clear favorites, Adrien Brody. The plot of the Rosenthaler chapter focuses on the artist’s relationship with one of the prison guards, who becomes his model, inspiration and muse. Neither is Jewish - but Jewishness does not play a key role in Rosenthaler’s character or story. Those attuned to the politics of representation on screen and the “Jewface” debate might notice that young Rosenthaler is played by Tony Revolori, of “Grand Budapest Hotel” fame, who is Guatemalan. Of his background, Berensen knows that his family was wealthy, and that he was very psychologically unstable - on that point, she explains the gruesome murder that leads him to jail. Still, Rosenthaler could be Anderson’s first clearly stated Jewish character. While narrating a presentation on Rosenthaler’s life and work, Berensen tells an audience that the artist is the son of a Mexican Jewish horse rancher, but does not get much more in-depth than that. Berensen (Tilda Swinton), a character who Anderson told the real New Yorker last month channels the voice of real-life Jewish playwright and journalist S.N. His story is narrated by French Dispatch writer J.K.L. The first of the film’s three larger sections tells the story of Moses Rosenthaler, an incarcerated artistic genius played by Benicio del Toro. The son of a Jewish Mexican horse rancher Taken as a whole, Jewishness and Jewish intellectual history is woven intricately throughout the film, on the fringes no more. And some of Anderson’s imagined journalists throughout the film are based at least in part on real Jewish ones who wrote for The New Yorker. Another features a protagonist loosely based on a Jewish student who helped lead the widespread protests in France in May 1968. One of the chapters focuses on an explicitly Jewish character. The film is split into four sections, each following a different writer in pursuit of a different story for The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun. The movie, openly inspired by Anderson’s nearly lifelong love of The New Yorker magazine, concerns the European outpost of a fictional Kansas-based newspaper, whose American expat writers channel the New Yorker’s highbrow sensibility (often in very humorous fashion). ![]() Then there was “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” which was based on the writings of Stefan Zweig, a Jewish novelist who fled Europe during the Holocaust.Īnderson’s latest film, “The French Dispatch” - which hits theaters Friday, over a year after its originally planned release date thanks to the pandemic - is his most Jewish work to date. Though the Whitmans, another wealthy and disaffected New York clan who feature in “The Darjeeling Limited,” aren’t Jewish, two of the Whitman brothers are played by Jewish actors - Schwartzman and Adrien Brody. In “Rushmore,” one of the non-Jewish director’s breakout works, the lead role is played by Jewish actor Jason Schwartzman, while the Tenenbaums of “The Royal Tenenbaums” are heavily inspired by the (likely) Jewish Glass family members, who show up throughout Jewish author J.D. ![]() ( JTA) - Jewishness has been at the fringes of several of Wes Anderson’s movies, but the famed director has never had an explicitly Jewish main character - until now. ![]()
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