Visiting the strange and eccentrically pleasurable cinematic dimension that is Asteroid City, we get a strong feeling of dizzy homecoming, but with the furniture all rearranged and our sense of order upended. Welcome back to Wes’s world, or at least the latest of Wes’s circus of cinematic worlds.
By now, American auteur Wes Anderson can be counted on to deliver films both consistent to his fantastical personal style, but with distinctive elements defining each new film/realm. Fans and casual visitors to Wes’s worlds can conjure up memories of his specific concoctions just by mention of significant titles in his filmography, from the family big top of The Royal Tenenbaums to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, The Grand Budapest Hotel, the “kids’ movie” Moonrise Kingdom, and the “dog movie” Isle of Dogs.
In the case of Asteroid City, co-written by Roman Coppola, Anderson turns his attention to a mythical Podunk outpost in the no-man’s-land of Nevada, circa the nuclear testing era. Not unlike Anderson’s last left-field screen adventure The French Dispatch, Asteroid City is a delightfully tangled mess of a narrative, a mix of storytelling modes including theater, retro-Americana kitsch, and extra-terrestrial detours, and tied to a notion of meta-minded “multiverse” created before the m-word was on everyone’s lips and mind.