The Truth is Out There

Focus Features

3.5/5 stars

Wes Anderson's style, which he has been doing for nearly 30 years now, is superficially one of the easiest to replicate. The perfectly centered blocking and pastel color schemes can be found on parody videos all over the internet. However, the people spoofing those surface details never seem to get to the heart of Anderson's style. His storybook worlds reveal a deep melancholy and desire to connect on a truly human level, and no one (human or A.I.) can seem to match it. His newest, Asteroid City is strange even by Anderson's own standards but that desire for human connection amidst a chaotic, often unreal world is still laid bare.

Set in 1955 in a very small village built near the impact crater of a meteor strike, an eclectic group of people have come for the annual Junior Stargazers/Space Cadet Convention. But their lives are turned upside down when the government quarantines the town after an encounter with an extraterrestrial visitor.

Except the film's strange framing device reveals to us that this is all just a performance by a group of actors for a television broadcast. Anderson takes the inherent unreality of the situation and adds an extra layer of artificiality. The result could polarize viewers but he does an admirable job of breaking that barrier between performer and audience. The film itself is full of wonderfully deadpan performances and some of the funniest visual gags in Anderson's whole career. Audiences could find Asteroid City either woefully self-indulgent or starkly emotionally honest, and I think they'd both be right. 

Written and directed by Wes Anderson // Starring Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jake Ryan, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Stephen Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, and Jeff Goldblum // Focus Features // 105 minutes // Rated 'PG-13'