“Asteroid City”: Wes Anderson at his Wessiest

There’s been a brand of cinematic work that’s taken off in recent years, and the style is proving divisive for many viewers. They’re the films that don’t intend to tell cohesive narratives. They’re the films that seem as though they’re more intent on confusing audiences— or at least causing them to think a little too deeply for their comfort — than they are on entertaining them.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of those movies. It’s a project that relies on confusing imagery and strange events in order to tell its story. For many, it’s a strategy that worked perfectly there. But for those who get too bogged down by the film’s utter bizarreness to fully enjoy the grander picture it paints, I can’t help but sympathize. Everything is nothing if not over-stimulating, and it’s certainly a film that’s above the sensibilities of many viewers.

Movies like “Persona,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “Memento” each provide excellent examples of the sorts of departure from standard formula that are beginning to grow more popular today than ever before. As the film industry has struggled to keep up with the world of TV and streaming, it’s found itself in a crisis of identity. From Ridley Scott and Stephen Spielberg to Martin Scorcese and James Cameron, many of the biggest names in Hollywood have lamented the way that Marvel movies and the like have supplanted the need for real creativity in film.

But on the other side of the spectrum, there are films that seem intent on breaking convention as almost their main mission. They’re the movies that look at the narrowing tastes of modern audiences and scoff. They’re the “Birdmans,” “Parasites,” “Revenants,” and “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” in the world of film. They’re the “Get Outs,” “Inceptions” and “Midsommars.” There are enough of these meta, genre-bending spectacles now that they’ve effectively hollowed out their own category in the world of cinema.

Perhaps no director is more well-versed in the escape from convention than Wes Anderson; his latest film, “Asteroid City,” stands as a prime example.

From its opening seconds, “Asteroid City” cultivates an air of inconsequence that’s equal parts eerie and comical. It’s set in the 1950’s in a mid-western United States desert, and it’s shot with Wes Anderson’s signature flair for the weird and vibrant. The movie is presented as a play split into scenes and acts, and they’re punctuated in ways that are perplexing and hilarious and unapologetically fourth wall-breaking.

It’s a hard film to watch without an eyebrow dented in at least partial confusion, but such is the nature of Wes Anderson films. The characters depicted are blunt and unrestrained by the conventions of normal people. The children are wise beyond their years but have none of the social skills to show for it.

From Bryan Cranston to Jason Schwartzman to Scarlett Johannson, the all-star cast does a wonderful job of inhabiting Anderson’s characters. But to say they inhabit the characters isn’t to say that they personify them; the characters they animate are almost universally unrelatable and un-personly in nature.

The film’s soundtrack goes to great lengths in complementing the story’s eccentric and spacious atmosphere. The songs span generations, and speak to the unique sound design that so often goes hand and hand with Anderson’s creations.

One of the film’s oddest aspects is its depiction of first contact with an advanced alien race. In a manner consistent with the rest of the story, and with Anderson’s career at large, the event is portrayed with a zany sort of levity and detachment. The scene propels the plot forward, but in ways that are hardly logical or expected.

The final sequence of the movie is so raucous, haphazard and disorienting that it renders interpretation almost futile. In fact, if the movie has a point, it might be its total lack of point. Its meaning is as open-ended as they come.

I’m not sure how to summarize the film, and I’m not sure what takeaways it intended to leave me with, but I know that I enjoyed it all the same. For me, it’s easier to appreciate the project as an avant-garde, abstraction of cinema than to attempt to ascribe meaning to the broader mosaic on display. Like so many of his movies before it, “Asteroid City” is a film that challenges the conventions of film as a whole.

Wes Anderson is a director who flourishes in ambiguity. He’s spent decades perfecting his style, and that style is often a challenge to put into words. What’s difficult to deny, though, is that Wes Anderson’s indelible signature is on full display in “Asteroid City. From its unfastened characters and plot, to the dramatic color palette and purposeful inclusion of play elements, to the breezy portrayals of government, quarantine, childhood, grief, and first contact, in many regards, “Asteroid City” stands as a quintessential Wes Anderson movie.