Is Wes Anderson a good filmmaker? Does he make good films? The thing is, those are two separate and different questions. He’s got such a distinctive visual style and way of storytelling that even if you’ve never seen one of his movies, you probably have a pretty good idea of what they’re like.

Or…hell, maybe you don’t! Let’s go over a few details to help you identify Anderson’s work, should you encounter it in the wild.

  1. Anderson likes to work with the same people as much as possible. He’s helped to recontextualize and launch the careers of actors like Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and Jason Schwartzman.
  2. Anderson loves shot symmetry the way I love chocolate cake. His subjects are meticulously placed right in the middle of the frame. Very often.
  3. Just about all of his films have production design that’s reminiscent of a diorama. Everything is placed just so. The color palettes of the props, furniture, costumes, and lighting all blend together immaculately.
  4. He loves stories about loss and family, particularly stories about parents who do a piss-poor job of parenting and the children reckoning with the emotional fallout..

Wes Anderson will never make a movie for Marvel Studios. He’ll never make a movie about an obsessed detective chasing a fiendishly brilliant serial killer. Wes Anderson can only make Wes Anderson movies, which means you’re either into his aesthetic or you’re not. When I tell you that his newest film Asteroid City is extremely Wes Anderson-y, don’t say you haven’t been warned.

The first thing to know is that Asteroid City is not, strictly speaking, a movie. A Host (Bryan Cranston) helpfully informs us that we’re actually watching rehearsals for a play called “Asteroid City.” It’s the brainchild of visionary playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), and his play will be directed by the equally visionary Schubert Green (Adrien Brody). Not to be outdone, the cast are all students of Saltzburg Keitel (Willem Dafoe), an acting teacher of considerable renown.

But what kind of artistic masterpiece hath this triumvirate wrought? It’s a story about the flyspeck desert town Asteroid City, a place just large enough for a diner, a motor inn, a service station, and a phone booth. You’d think that’s a strange place to host The Stargazer Awards, an astronomy convention, no? No, because the other startling features are a meteor impact crater, and the meteor itself, a rock about the size of a soccer ball.

All manner of people are descending upon Asteroid City. A few of them are:

  • Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), a widowed photographer. He’s accompanied by his son Woodrow (Jake Ryan), and his daughters (Gracie Faris, Ella Faris, Willan Faris).
  • Stanley Zak (Tom Hanks), Augie’s wealthy father-in-law.
  • Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson), a wildly popular movie star and her daughter Dinah (Grace Edwards).
  • General Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright), the host of The Stargazer Awards and the head of the (extremely small) military presence. 
  • A Motel Manager (Steve Carell), who’s had the foresight to stock some extremely specific vending machines.
  • An alien (Jeff Goldblum)

I’ve come to realize something about myself, and I feel compelled to live my truth. SImultaneously, I have an enormous amount of respect for Wes Anderson as an artist, and I can only tolerate his art in limited amounts. 

On the one hand, Asteroid City is made with an extraordinary amount of precision. That’s not surprising considering Anderson’s been a filmmaker since the 1990’s.* Additionally unsurprising is that every conceivable detail, from the set design to the framing to the costuming, has been attended to. That attention firmly grounds Asteroid City in a particular time and place, a mid-1950s that may or may not have existed. I would have thought Anderson’s quasi-obsessive attention would do damage to the momentum of the film, but at a relatively brisk hour and forty-four minutes, not so much. Anderson skips through the film, taking just enough time to allow us to hang out with a particular group of characters before moving on to the next.

As a screenwriter, Anderson tends to alternate between more comedic fare and more melancholy work. Asteroid City is definitely the former, and along with his co-writer Roman Coppola, he delivers a steady stream of low-key jokes and eccentric gags. It’s consistently funny, providing you’re on the script’s particular wavelength. Having said that, Anderson does like to return to certain themes in his work. They’re here as well, and you’ll find people grappling with melancholy, parents trying and failing to do a good job, and children entering the adult world wearing the armor of individuality.

Is Anderson an actor’s director? I…think so? The vast majority of the cast do good work, though on a specific and downbeat key. I particularly liked Scarlett Johansson’s Midge. Johansson has a real talent for comedy, particularly deadpan, and here she gets laughs by doing little more than cocking an eyebrow or dropping a bone-dry aside. My larger issue with Anderson’s actors is that he usually seems to direct them to act only in that specific/downbeat key. Once in a while you’ll see something different, like Gene Hackman’s boisterous performance in The Royal Tenenbaums. None of the performances here threaten to explode out of Anderson’s vice-like grip, yet they all compliment his aesthetic.

And maybe that’s the larger issue I have with Anderson’s work. If you watch his early films Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, you’ll see the beginnings of the filmmaker he’d become. You’d also see a filmmaker telling stories in a somewhat recognizable world, a world that feels lifelike. Those stories haven’t existed for a very long time. It’s been said that Anderson’s work often feels like a diorama, and that feels accurate. It can seem so controlled that he doesn’t allow spontaneity to seep in. That’s a pity, since some of the greatest moments in cinema happen through lucky accidents.

If Wes Anderson were food, he would be escargot. That’s a dish I’ve never eaten, and if you haven’t, it’s a French delicacy consisting of snails cooked in butter or wine, replaced in the shells, and garnished with herbs or sauces. I’m told it’s quite delicious, and I’m also told escargot has a highly distinctive taste, one that can’t be mistaken for anything else. That feels like an apt comparison to Anderson. He’s a filmmaker that can only ever be himself, and only ever make his kind of art. I appreciate him and I applaud him, but I only enjoy him in infrequent doses.

 

*Say what you will about Anderson, but his work has been consistently profitable and critically acclaimed. He’s been nominated for both the Academy Award and the Palme d’Or. He so clearly knows what he’s doing that nobody can plausibly call him a “bad” filmmaker.



Tim Brennan
Tim has been alarmingly enthusiastic about movies ever since childhood. He grew up in Boulder and, foolishly, left Colorado to study Communications in Washington State. Making matters worse, he moved to Connecticut after meeting his too-good-for-him wife. Drawn by the Rockies and a mild climate, he triumphantly returned and settled down back in Boulder County. He's written numerous screenplays, loves hiking, and embarrassed himself in front of Samuel L. Jackson. True story.  
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