ASTEROID CITY -- The Most Wes Anderson Film To Date

Review by Tatiana Miranda

Wes Anderson's Asteroid City is one of the most anticipated films of this summer. The successor to his divisive film The French Dispatch, Anderson returns with a movie that is even more star-studded and surreal than the last, almost as a rebuttal to his critics. 

Starring Wes Anderson staples like Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, and Edward Norton, Asteroid City also features Scarlett Johansson, Maya Hawke, and Tom Hanks. Alongside Anderson's usual crew, newcomers like Hanks and Hawke fit perfectly into this film's fantastical world. 

Meanwhile, characters like Johansson's and Steve Carell's seem a bit out of place. This is likely due to just how many well-known actors and actresses there are in this film, that even more major roles feel underdeveloped. With so many recognizable faces, some characters feel more like cameos rather than developed parts of the story.

While deliberate colorways and stylized aesthetics have become a staple for his films, Asteroid City takes it one step further, with a majority of the scenes color graded to emphasize how otherwordly the story is. Without knowing the context of the plot, this intense colorway might come across as ridiculous and unneeded, but it plays a crucial part in separating storylines. 

Similar to the different filters in Greta Gerwig's Little Women that specified different timelines, Asteroid City's filters help clue the audience in on which storyline the movie is focusing on. While some of Anderson's other films, like The Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dispatch, tell a story within a story, neither quite compare to how elaborate Asteroid City's storylines are. ​

The film opens in black-and-white as a television program begins, detailing the history of a play and its cast. Then the movie jumps into the play itself, which is not portrayed as a play, but rather plays out like a regular Wes Anderson movie, full of intense colors and aesthetics. 

The play takes up a bulk of the film's runtime, but the film still makes time to jump between stories. Within the play is a story about grief and questioning the unknown as characters reside in Asteroid City, which is known for a meteorite that made impact some hundred years ago. Fantastical and dreamlike, Anderson makes use of this storyline's background as a play to feature the impossible.

On the other hand, the documentary detailing the history of the play recounts the untimely demise of the play's writer and the process of performing a show that no longer has the creator to come to with questions about characters. Jason Schwartzman's actor character is especially compelling as he keeps questioning why his character does certain things. 

Asteroid City is perhaps the most philosophical of all of Wes Anderson's films, as it routinely begs the question, "What does it all mean?" both literally and in the creative sense. For critics of Anderson's style and recent filmography, Asteroid City feels like a defense for why he does what he does.

Although neither Anderson nor his characters seem to come to a definitive answer to the film's central question, Asteroid City is the most personal of his films as he speculates on his own creative process. 

Asteroid City is now playing in theaters.

Rating: 4/5