On the internet these days, Wes Anderson is less director than trend. TikTokers make “Wes Anderson”-inspired videos of their own life. Thanks to A.I., I’ve been subjected to Harry Potter in the style of “Wes Anderson” and Star Wars in the style of “Wes Anderson.” But the actual, human Wes Anderson’s latest film Asteroid City proves that it’s really impossible to recreate Wes Anderson unless you are in fact Wes Anderson. Want Wes Anderson to make an alien movie? Don't turn to some computer program to do that. The man did it himself.
Asteroid City has all of the ticks that make Anderson Anderson: The slow pans, the deliberate framing, the erudite dialogue, and a narrator to boot. It’s also his best film since 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, a thoroughly hilarious piece that coalesces into something almost haunting. Asteroid City is thick with Americana, but the charming hootenanny of it all works in tandem with the deep questions the director is asking.
First: the framing device. We immediately learn that what we are watching is a television broadcast about a play called Asteroid City, hosted by a besuited man with the air of a Rod Serling-type played by Bryan Cranston. Filmed in black and white and Academy ratio, these segments offer a behind-the-scenes look at the process of putting up the production composed by Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), a celebrated playwright with a Southern twang. When Anderson cuts to the action of the play within the movie, the frame expands and the picture brightens into the gorgeously saturated light of the American West.
