Watching ‘Asteroid City‘ I realize I’m starting to have a problem with Wes Anderson‘s movies. Each of them is an aesthetic delight and a demonstration of cinematic stylistic virtuosity. They are full of humor and almost every sequence includes reverences to artists of the past and references from the history of film and other arts. On the other hand, the detachment between style and emotion is so programmatic in Anderson‘s latest works that I don’t really know how to watch his films. If I take them as an aesthetic or cultural experience, I can’t help but leave the viewing happy. Trying to follow the plot or resonate with the characters, however, fails me. I don’t even know if the story in ‘Asteroid City‘ has any importance, or if the wrapping in which it is presented to the viewers is what matters. The latter is probably the most accurate, but here many of the references – to the theater or films of the ’50s in America – are lost on the foreign viewer and – I suspect – on a large part of the American audiences as well.
What would ‘Asteroid City‘ be about? Is it the story of a playwright writing a play in the 1950s of victorious post-war America but which were also the years of atomic experiments and of political hysteria and witch-hunts? Or of the actors who stage this show according to an acting method that seems to completely detach the text from the emotions? Or maybe it’s the story itself, of a newly widowed father meeting a starlet actress, science-loving kids, the government lurking to steal their inventions, and aliens coming to inventory a boulder that fell from the sky millennia ago after? In the end, however, all this seems to matter less, because what I remember 2-3 days after watching it is mostly a Wes Anderson visual experience, with sophisticated sets in idyllic advertising colors, with many details full of fantasy and humor, with an approach that seems so light and superficial that I can’t help but suspect that maybe I should take it seriously, but I don’t know how.
As usual in Anderson‘s films, the list of stars who appear on the screen could be impressive for ten different films, including both some of the actors who permanently accompany his films and some new but famous names. They all seem happy to be puppets in the American director’s vast fantasy theater. The favorite theme lately seems to be American history seen from an aesthetic and very personal perspective. As a spectator I was also happy but also a little confused. The danger of mannerism hangs in the air.