Why 'Asteroid City' is one of the best films of the year, but one of Wes Anderson's worst films
Miscellaneous / / June 26, 2023
The picture turned out strange, but beautiful.
On June 23, Asteroid City, the new film by Wes Anderson, was released in wide release. The next work of the director pleases with a brilliant visual range, but almost does not evoke emotions.
Wes Anderson's creative dead end is talked about all the time. The director with probably the most recognizable style is simply doomed to such a reaction. But the talk of self-repetitions was really loud after The French Herald. It seems that Anderson himself, while working on the Herald, realized that something was going wrong, and therefore, in the new film, he tried to play with familiar elements and settings. That's why the "City of Asteroids" turned out to be so special - not the fact that in a good way.
Wes Anderson - by tradition - at the same time the director, screenwriter and producer of the picture. The cinematographer is Robert Yeoman, who directed all of Anderson's films. The composer is Alexandre Desplat, who wrote the music for the director's last five films.
"City of Asteroids" is replete with a huge number of stars, many of which appear in only one or two scenes. The film stars Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie, Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, Matt Dillon, Edward Norton, Steve Carell, Willem Dafoe, Lev Schreiber and, paradoxically, other.
The film is divided into several levels, but everything is built around the play: 1955, young astronomers come to Asteroid City for a scientific conference. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the authorities declare a quarantine, so the congress is delayed. Adults and children are trying to figure out what's going on.
The most complex mechanism with old parts
"City of Asteroids" is a film with an intricate structure. From the very beginning, the viewer sees that what is happening on the screen is part of a play that is shown in New York and filmed for television. The main plot takes up a little more than half of the screen time, all the remaining minutes are spent on metanarratives - for example, the actors discuss their roles, and the playwright complements the characters. Explaining the structure of Asteroid City is harder than following it, simply because it's so beautifully built.
If you take the film apart and seriously evaluate each of them, then everything is brilliant. Although this is understandable even before viewing, because we are talking about the work of Wes Anderson. Dozens of great actors, brilliant costumes, a bunch of funny jokes, symmetries, fonts, panoramas - everything, what Anderson wears from storyboard to storyboard is here, and to the highest standards of quality.
Less life
As in "French Herald”, Anderson again crushes the story into pieces, working on each of them separately. This approach greatly influences perception.
"City of Asteroids" does not expose feelings, all emotions are maximally simulated and even pretentious. Obviously, this is due to the format of the picture itself. However, it seems that the almost complete absence of real (or masquerading as) emotions ruins the picture.
In one of the first scenes, the children bury their mother's ashes and perform magic in the hope that she will be resurrected. All this looks tragic, naive and at the same time causes a smile. Subsequently, it turns out that this is one of two or three scenes that you get used to seeing in Anderson's films.
The warm, dark childhood fears and hopes that emotionally fill Anderson's best films become a mere tool in Asteroid City. Relatively speaking, the suffering of the character is only needed to move the plot, and in themselves they are not particularly valuable. Such a dry, even cynical approach turns "Asteroid City" into an intellectual entertainment, during which the viewer guesses references, laughs after good jokes and understands the structure of the film.
Reflection and the fight against self-repetitions
After the release of The French Herald, it seemed that Anderson, for the first time, had reached the dead end he had always been heading towards. "City of Asteroids" is an attempt to change something, remaining devoted to itself. The task is difficult, so it is not surprising that the director did not cope with it.
Complex structure, meta-levels and an obscenely large number of characters and storylines are designed to revive familiar elements. However, the disconnection of the individual stories makes the film less alive. Rather, it turned out to be a masking of a creative crisis, and not the most successful one. Perhaps it would have been even better if Anderson had not reinvented the wheel and simply made a film about the conference of young astronomers.
If you add "City of Asteroids" and "French Messenger", you get instructions from a magician. What used to seem like magic now looks like craftsmanship and mathematics. Anderson seems to have lost the lightness that has always set him apart from other living classics. "City of Asteroids" is a brilliant visual work, but it is unlikely that you will want to revisit it.
True, Wes Anderson is a genius because his is not the best film - an unattainable ideal for the vast majority of other directors. Asteroid City could easily make it into the top 10 best films of the year, but it won't fit into Anderson's top 8 best films either.
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