Originally Posted by Qwikshot
Asteroid City
I enjoy Wes Anderson, so if you like his works then you'll already feel at home with his style and tropes.
That being said, I by far, loved this movie than some of his other works. I actually laughed at parts which I didn't really do in prior films and there were parts that perhaps were maudlin or meant to make the viewer emotional, but they worked for me. (I enjoyed Fantastic Mr. Fox which had some of the same beats/tone but is not an original Anderson work).
Just like Grand Budpest or Royal Tennenbaums or French Dispatch, there is the movie and then there is the media where the story comes from (i.e. Royal Tennabaums is a book, Grand Budapest has a documentary cut into it, French Dispatch is stories in a New Yorker style magazine). In Asteroid, it's a tv show documentary, on the creation of the play of the actual movie. So yeah, layers, but I never felt confused.
I didn't pick up on it until reading some other reviews, but this is Anderson COVID movie (there is a quarentine) and this is probably Anderson's biggest movie about life and death and the future of art ( plays, films, etc), which I think French Dispatch also wrestled with but moreso with printed media as opposed to theartical/tv/cinema.
The biggest mantra in the film is something along the likes of "you wake up if you don't fall asleep" which I suppose is like you have accept that you will die in order to learn how to live. Which may have been my deeper than it is opinion, but there is much about "we don't know what we don't know" which is brought up a few times in the film when questions on what is important, or why certain characters did certain actions in the film, they don't know, but perhaps that is it, we just don't know and we don't need to.
It's a brighter film than most of his other works. It's a Western backdrop to a science fiction theme, but it's about family and love and loss.
I never felt bored or lost with this work. Perhaps I'm immune to the tics that annoy other viewers of Anderson's work.
The best line that reverberated with me "If you wanted to live a nice quiet peaceful life, you picked the wrong time to get born". I think that can be said for all generations.
I think it's one of his best works.
9 out of 10.
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