Post by Dracula on Jun 18, 2023 12:04:21 GMT -5
Asteroid City(6/12/2023)
As Wes Anderson has become more recognized in the mainstream there’s been something of a cottage industry of people trying to reverse engineer his style, especially for the purposes of making fake trailers with titles like “If Wes Anderson Directed X” with “X” being filled with projects you wouldn’t expect Anderson to have anything to do with like a horror movie or an X-Men movie or something. In a way this is something of a testament to just how clearly honed Anderson’s style is and how much it’s penetrated the culture, but it’s also a testament to his strengths as a filmmaker that as hard as these people try almost none of them are able to really match his work. And it was that series of fake trailers that came to mind when I saw the real trailer for his most recent film, Asteroid City, and my first thought was that it looked like it could be called “If Wes Anderson Directed Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Not in a bad way mind you, but more in a “nice, let’s see the master show these wannabes how this is done” sort of way. Besides, Anderson’s been on a hot streak. Not everyone like The French Dispatch or Isle of Dogs but they probably should have because both of those movies were pretty rad and I might go so far as to suggest that Anderson hasn’t made anything truly questionable since The Darjeeling Limited… and that movie’s better than its reputation too. And I’m happy to report that his latest film does not break the winning streak.
Asteroid City is split between a main story and a framing story in a tricky little way. The main story focuses on the goings on at the titular “city” which is actually a tiny town in the American Southwest that’s primarily known for having been the sight of an asteroid strike and which also houses an observatory and science center. As the film is going on there’s a of convention of junior inventors going on which is sponsored by the military and draws in a number of families, perhaps most notably the one headed by Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), which consists of three girls and one son (Jake Ryan) who has invented an interstellar projector. There are a bunch of other families there, too many to list here, many of them played by notable actors from Anderson’s troupe. Eventually all these people do experience a close encounter of sorts that results in some chaos that brings them together. Meanwhile, there’s also this framing narrative that’s told through various mostly black and white Academy ratio interstitial scenes in which we see the backstage antics that go on in the creation of a play called “Asteroid City” which is apparently the story we’re seeing dramatized in the “main” narrative, with the various cast members here playing the actors who are portraying these characters in that play as well as additional behind the scenes figures in that play’s creation.
Let’s start by focusing on that main story, which is pretty much classic Wes Anderson material. The film’s focus on both adult and child/teenage characters is a little bit reminiscent of Moonrise Kingdom but I do think this one is ultimately a bit more tilted towards the adult characters than that was. The movie (at least outside of the interstitials) also somewhat resembles that movie for being set primarily in a single isolated town rather than a major world city or a wealthy hotel or something like a lot of his recent movies. The town itself is this creatively constructed set of buildings, and the whole story’s status as a play within a film seems to have emboldened Anderson to make everything feel fanciful and constructed. He’s also assembled a very charming cast from this section (including the young cast) and given most of them neat characters who don’t outlast their welcome. The movie also mostly holds its own as a comedy. Like most Wes Anderson movies the humor here is kind of dry and you’re not necessarily meant to be laughing every second but the wit is definitely there and there’s a moment involving stop motion animation which might be the hardest I’ve seen people laugh at one of his movies.
So that main narrative will leave most people pleased, but the framing story is going to be a bit more of a wildcard. I was personally thrown for a bit of a loop by it early in the film as it’s not entirely intuitive as a device. “Asteroid City” as a story does not feel like a play at all either in terms of style or writing and we only get these disconnected glimpses of the various actors and creative involved in its creation in the interstitials and they don’t immediately seem to add up. Eventually though they start to make more sense and the film starts doing some creative things with them, especially a moment towards the end which kind of ties up certain story elements from the main story using information from the interstitials in a way that’s extremely meta in a way that Wes Anderson’s movies historically haven’t been. There’s something kind of existential about the whole exercise and I can’t say I’ve entirely wrapped my head around it, especially when it concerns an especially cryptic phrase that’s chanted almost like a mantra in a key scene. I don’t necessarily think this is one of Wes Anderson’s best movies, in part just because of how highly I regard some of his other recent efforts, but it is a major work and it may have left me excited to rewatch it more than any of his other films have in a while. It’s only grown on me since watching it and I suspect it could well wind up even higher in my rankings in the future.
**** out of Five
As Wes Anderson has become more recognized in the mainstream there’s been something of a cottage industry of people trying to reverse engineer his style, especially for the purposes of making fake trailers with titles like “If Wes Anderson Directed X” with “X” being filled with projects you wouldn’t expect Anderson to have anything to do with like a horror movie or an X-Men movie or something. In a way this is something of a testament to just how clearly honed Anderson’s style is and how much it’s penetrated the culture, but it’s also a testament to his strengths as a filmmaker that as hard as these people try almost none of them are able to really match his work. And it was that series of fake trailers that came to mind when I saw the real trailer for his most recent film, Asteroid City, and my first thought was that it looked like it could be called “If Wes Anderson Directed Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Not in a bad way mind you, but more in a “nice, let’s see the master show these wannabes how this is done” sort of way. Besides, Anderson’s been on a hot streak. Not everyone like The French Dispatch or Isle of Dogs but they probably should have because both of those movies were pretty rad and I might go so far as to suggest that Anderson hasn’t made anything truly questionable since The Darjeeling Limited… and that movie’s better than its reputation too. And I’m happy to report that his latest film does not break the winning streak.
Asteroid City is split between a main story and a framing story in a tricky little way. The main story focuses on the goings on at the titular “city” which is actually a tiny town in the American Southwest that’s primarily known for having been the sight of an asteroid strike and which also houses an observatory and science center. As the film is going on there’s a of convention of junior inventors going on which is sponsored by the military and draws in a number of families, perhaps most notably the one headed by Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), which consists of three girls and one son (Jake Ryan) who has invented an interstellar projector. There are a bunch of other families there, too many to list here, many of them played by notable actors from Anderson’s troupe. Eventually all these people do experience a close encounter of sorts that results in some chaos that brings them together. Meanwhile, there’s also this framing narrative that’s told through various mostly black and white Academy ratio interstitial scenes in which we see the backstage antics that go on in the creation of a play called “Asteroid City” which is apparently the story we’re seeing dramatized in the “main” narrative, with the various cast members here playing the actors who are portraying these characters in that play as well as additional behind the scenes figures in that play’s creation.
Let’s start by focusing on that main story, which is pretty much classic Wes Anderson material. The film’s focus on both adult and child/teenage characters is a little bit reminiscent of Moonrise Kingdom but I do think this one is ultimately a bit more tilted towards the adult characters than that was. The movie (at least outside of the interstitials) also somewhat resembles that movie for being set primarily in a single isolated town rather than a major world city or a wealthy hotel or something like a lot of his recent movies. The town itself is this creatively constructed set of buildings, and the whole story’s status as a play within a film seems to have emboldened Anderson to make everything feel fanciful and constructed. He’s also assembled a very charming cast from this section (including the young cast) and given most of them neat characters who don’t outlast their welcome. The movie also mostly holds its own as a comedy. Like most Wes Anderson movies the humor here is kind of dry and you’re not necessarily meant to be laughing every second but the wit is definitely there and there’s a moment involving stop motion animation which might be the hardest I’ve seen people laugh at one of his movies.
So that main narrative will leave most people pleased, but the framing story is going to be a bit more of a wildcard. I was personally thrown for a bit of a loop by it early in the film as it’s not entirely intuitive as a device. “Asteroid City” as a story does not feel like a play at all either in terms of style or writing and we only get these disconnected glimpses of the various actors and creative involved in its creation in the interstitials and they don’t immediately seem to add up. Eventually though they start to make more sense and the film starts doing some creative things with them, especially a moment towards the end which kind of ties up certain story elements from the main story using information from the interstitials in a way that’s extremely meta in a way that Wes Anderson’s movies historically haven’t been. There’s something kind of existential about the whole exercise and I can’t say I’ve entirely wrapped my head around it, especially when it concerns an especially cryptic phrase that’s chanted almost like a mantra in a key scene. I don’t necessarily think this is one of Wes Anderson’s best movies, in part just because of how highly I regard some of his other recent efforts, but it is a major work and it may have left me excited to rewatch it more than any of his other films have in a while. It’s only grown on me since watching it and I suspect it could well wind up even higher in my rankings in the future.
**** out of Five
