The entertainingly familiar

Many directors have a style that accompanies most, if not all, of their work but no modern voice in cinema has as distinct or consistent a style as Wes Anderson. From The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou forward, Anderson's films have inhabited a slightly off-kilter fantasy world that is alternately charming, bemusing, and fascinating but never boring. His latest, Asteroid City, is no different in this respect. Set in the 1950s, the ideally kitschy age for an Anderson story, the film takes us through a science fair, some midlife crises, teenage discovery, postmortem grief, and first contact with at least semi-intelligent extraterrestrial life. Any one of those themes could have been central to an Anderson film and would doubtlessly have turned into an interesting story full of sly witticisms and quirky moments that you'd rarely see in most other directors' work. The fact that all of them were crammed into one story might be what makes this one feel slightly lacking when one lists the better films of his oeuvre.

It's at least mildly reassuring to know that it's not just Anderson fans who respect his work, as the list of actors that are piling into the tiniest of parts in his last two films (the previous being The French Dispatch) is beginning to become a story in and of itself. While City had a collection of those who are now Anderson regulars, like Scarlett Johansson, Adrien Brody, and Ed Norton, it also includes Tom Hanks, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, and Willem Defoe, among many others. Some of those marquee names had screen time in the range of two minutes or less. But this was apparently the chance to be "in an Anderson" and they took it, no matter how ephemeral the role. It's a fair question to ask at this point whether their popping up for a few seconds and being noticed by the audience is the entertainment of the moment or whether what they're saying and doing onscreen is supposed to be the focus in the traditional manner. When I think back to what I still regard as the pinnacle of his career, Moonrise Kingdom, I remember a film where virtually every character had an important role to play in the story and wasn't just a moving part of the scenery or a lever to move a scene from one spot to the next with a famous face attached. That latter state leaves many of them as not very memorable parts of the overall story. Indeed, among the most memorable characters are the trio of girls who are Augie's (Jason Schwartzman) daughters, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, and Pandora (the Faris triplets: Ella, Willan, and Gracie, respectively) none of whom received star credit but all of whom had more comedic and dramatic impact than many much more hallowed names.

All of that said, the star of the piece was definitely Johansson, who delivered what was probably her best performance since Lost in Translation. In the lighthearted world of Anderson, Midge was the character who was dryly poking holes in everything and getting everyone to admit that they knew there was more to the story and the world than what was being told to them. The fact that her daughter, Dinah (Grace Edwards) develops a relationship with Woodrow (Jake Ryan) at the same time that Midge and Augie are hooking up is just part of the symmetry that Anderson tends to embed in the worlds where it seems like random events are the order of the day. In a way, that's part of the point, in that all of those events, while symmetrical, are still random. That's, again, part of what gives his films their charm, because nothing seems planned, even though all of it is, meticulously. It's also worth noting Jeffrey Wright as General Grif Gibson and Bryan Cranston as the TV Host for lending the artificial gravitas that the rest of the cast spends their time orbiting around and often inadvertently defying. That, too, is part of the whimsy of Anderson's worlds and it's still an appreciable thing.

But in a way it's also the weakness of the film in that it's kinda the same thing that's been happening for 25 years now. It's still a treat for those of us that are fans, but it's the same treat that we've been getting for a long time and not nearly as delightful as it was at its height in films like Moonrise and The Grand Budapest Hotel. I don't think the formula has gotten tired, per se, but it also no longer carries the weight that it once did. Moonrise, while in that same vein of whimsy, was also a deeply emotional story of emotional discovery between two inhibited teenagers and the rediscovery of same by many inhibited adults. That kind of discovery story had a small part in City, but it was a very minor note in an otherwise patchwork quilt of themes. The impression that I walked out with wasn't the fascinating story of a place and population just slightly askew, but a director recycling his old material in an attempt to do something new which really wasn't. I don't want to say that it was tired because I didn't become bored or impatient or disinterested. I was chuckling basically the whole way through. But it felt almost too familiar; as if I'd seen it all before. That's not to say that it's a bad film or not worth seeing. It absolutely is. But in the same way as with Dispatch, I didn't walk out of the theater thinking that I'd seen something magical. It was just more Wes Anderson.

And that might be because of my overall perspective at the moment and not from any marked failing on the part of the film. I've been writing about this stuff for a long time, in the same way that I've been writing here and here for a long time. Lately, none of them are giving me the kind of return that I've always been hoping for. Well, honestly, none of them have turned into what I'd vaguely hoped for, which is landing a regular gig writing somewhere. But even doing it in the hopes that something might happen has begun to be less than what I'd usually expect. In other words, I'm not really enjoying it anymore and am giving serious thought to giving up on the idea of writing on a regular basis. I don't think I'm running out of things to say. I just feel like not enough people are particularly interested anymore, if they ever were. In a way, I'm kind of doing the same thing and it feels like only the usual suspects are paying attention; kinda like Wes Anderson's fans. So, I've been giving some serious thought to simply shutting down and moving on to something else. What that might be, I have no idea, but it certainly seems that writing for a living is not in my future after almost 40 years of trying. We'll see what happens next, I guess.

Mixed messaging

I tend to enjoy David O. Russell's films. Three Kings, The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle; all good stuff. So when I saw the trailers for what looked like a rather quirky story loaded with talented actors and then later learned it was based on the Business Plot, I was instantly intrigued. And then I noticed the average rating on Rotten Tomatoes... I generally don't care about fan ratings, as we can see how those can be manipulated by man-sized toddlers not wanting their fantasy universes to be even more fantastic than they're comfortable with. But when an accumulator like RT is showing something in the range of 31% approval from critics, it's a concern. Accumulators tend to progress toward the mean, so a rating that's well above 50% is usually an indication of genuine quality, while one that far below is usually an indication of something pretty poor. But then our friend, Leigh, appeared in one of my brief excursions on Facebook urging people to see the film. Leigh and her husband, David, are regular filmgoers and volunteers at the theaters and film festivals in Traverse City, so that's an opinion that will carry some weight with me. So when Tuesday night rolled around, we headed to the State Theater, hoping to not be disappointed. We walked out with a relatively positive shrug of the shoulders. It was decent.

I tend to like my message films with a bit more subtlety than what seems to be the modern trend. I felt like Don't Look Up was constantly beating you over the head about the threat of global warming and the concerted efforts to either ignore it or cover it up. Of course, if there's one thing you might really take the time out to be concerned about, it's that environmental crisis, as Hurricane Ian aptly reminded everyone of once again (as the regular flooding of Miami Beach should do the same.) Similarly, Amsterdam is warning about the the same threat of money-fueled fascism today that drove the Business Plot in the 1930s. That, too, is something to be regularly concerned about, not just in the US but in many places around the world, as the ownership class continues to accumulate more wealth and, thus, more power. It's good to have cultural warnings like this because the more people talk about this threat, the more exposed it remains and the more people will be ready to confront it as the actual problem that it is. But the contrast with Don't Look Up in this film was that, instead of constantly yelling at you, it submerged its message in an elaborate whodunnit until the final act when it switched tacks to Christian Bale narrating the meaning of the whole story while Robert DeNiro kept providing public service messages to the audience. They even ran his speech alongside the speech by Smedley Butler at the Congressional hearings on the Business Plot in 1933 during the credits just in case you somehow didn't get the point and/or had fallen asleep for the last third of the movie.

The cast overall did really well. The three leads (Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and John David Washington) all were on their game, with Bale at his quirky best, Washington the absurdly implacable stone wall for him to bounce off of, and Robbie carrying the emotional discourse for the three of them. I thought the biggest treat was Anya Taylor-Joy, as she totally filled the part of the mildly outraged bystander cum conspirator who acts well-meaning when its really about covering their tracks. Likewise, Michael Shannon and Mike Myers were excellent as the birdwatching spies. I also really liked Zaldaña as the winsome medical examiner who's among the most Wes Anderson elements of the story. And that's what was kind of odd. In contrast to most of his other films, where it was clear what the style intent was from the beginning, it really felt like Russell was, in addition to hammering the message home, trying to surround it with a story akin to Anderson's usual approach and kind of missing the charm that makes the latter's films really work. The pace was a bit too hectic and the characters spent too much time explaining themselves, either to each other or to the audience, instead of just carrying on with the behaviors that should've been perfectly natural to them as part of their identities within this semi-absurdist world. I appreciate Russell trying something different and I think he was aiming for something along the lines of the The Great Dictator and he kind of got there, but not without me thinking that he could've gone harder in one direction or the other and been more successful in delivering the message that he wanted to get across. Again, I think it's a worthwhile message and more people need to pay attention to it, but they might be better served by paying that attention to what's actually happening right now, rather than what happened almost 100 years ago, no matter how comparable the two eras are. Not a bad film, but not one I'd call required viewing, either.

Haute couture

It's very easy to spot a Wes Anderson film. The limited color palette, the offbeat characters, the feeling like every one of them is some kind of caper, even if the story is far more sedate and intricate than that; all of these little details make an Anderson film instantly recognizable as soon as a trailer for one of them begins. When Jaime and I were sitting through the previews before Bergman Island a couple weeks ago and the first moments of The French Dispatch appeared on the screen, we both thought two things: "That looks like a Wes Anderson film." and "That looks amazing." It's a telling reminder of his consistent style (noted by most film scholars as being a central figure in the "American Eccentric" mode), as well, since Jaime is more a fan of his earlier work (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) and I'm more attached to more recent offerings (Moonrise Kingdom, Grand Budapest Hotel) but we both were instantly moths to the flame at the brief glimpses into the concept of The French Dispatch. There's little doubt that he's a huge hit to those of us who are fond of films that go a bit beyond standard offerings and, likewise, little doubt that he's just as popular within the film industry itself, considering the legion of names he was able to entice into taking bit roles in this project (everyone from Christoph Waltz to Henry Winkler), but it's just as true that his style is unusual enough that it's easy to understand how it doesn't make a connection with a lot of regular movie fans. As far as Dispatch is concerned, it's fair to wonder how much of that possible disconnect was style and how much was substance when compared to previous efforts.

As I've mentioned here many times, I'm a story guy. If I'm going to appreciate what you're doing, you first have to tell me a decent story. That's been true of all of Anderson's films to date and one of the things that supports his style. He has quirky characters doing odd things, but they're all rooted in a solid, meaningful story that provides the foundation for the slightly off-kilter worlds that they're told in. Dispatch is no different except that this time, it seems like his motivation for doing this film was to present an homage to The New Yorker and the various long-time writers who worked for the magazine, instead of coming up with a new world all his own. That's not really a story and, indeed, Dispatch is made up of three separate tales connected by an overarching framework which is the fictional French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun. It's a way of connecting small town Kansas with equally small town France, in this case the fictional Ennui-sur-Blasé (literally "boredom on apathy".) That provides a basis for Anderson's odd scenarios and characters, but it also detracts from the driving central theme that usually inhabits his work. It's more of a survey than a novel, which seems appropriate because, again, he was writing it as something of an homage, rather than solely telling a story as he's done before. I certainly don't object to directors and writers trying something new. After all, everyone has to stay interested in their work if it's going to be what they want it to be, but I can't help but think that the departure from the story as the prime motivator may have left this film lacking a bit of the magic that usually inhabits his creations.

The three segments are almost as odd as ever: an artist imprisoned in Ennui's Prison/Asylum (as always, the wry allusions to modern circumstances are everywhere in Anderson's productions) who becomes famous in the art world because of a fraudster imprisoned with him (The Concrete Masterpiece); a reporter who has an affair with a leader of a student protest and helps him write his manifesto (shades of Jack Reed) (Revisions to a Manifesto); and another reporter who writes about a dinner with a police commissioner which is interrupted by the kidnapping of his son who can only be rescued by the police chef who prepared the dinner (The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner.) I say 'almost as odd' because, as noted, Revisions is quite similar to something that can be drawn straight from history. That can't be totally surprising as, again, Anderson was doing this as something of a love letter to The New Yorker, which was and is a prominent voice of journalism. But it also means that we're veering away from the usual Anderson fantasies (Isle of Dogs, etc.) and into something where "offbeat" is perhaps not the best descriptor. In that respect, Revisions is also the most forgettable of the three stories and "forgettable" is not a word one often uses about a Wes Anderson film.

But, also per usual, many of the performances are excellent and show the willingness of the actors to completely immerse themselves in an Anderson world. Particular standouts are Tilda Swinton, Benicio Del Toro, and Léa Seydoux from Concrete (the latter with less than half a dozen lines); Timothée Chalamet and Lyna Khoudri from Revisions; and Jeffrey Wright and Saoirse Ronan from Private. Wright, especially, hit the combination of world-weariness but still earnest inquiry that seems to fit the conception of a veteran New Yorker writer. (He was one of the many highlights for me from Boardwalk Empire and one of the few from Westworld, too.) It was a treat to see so many well-known faces show up in minor roles; among them Winkler and Waltz, as noted, but also Edward Norton, Lois Smith, Liev Schreiber, Willem Dafoe, and Owen Wilson as the travelogue writer who sets the stage for the whole piece, among many others.

So, overall, it works as both a film and a Wes Anderson film. I certainly want to watch it again to see some of the many details which I may have missed and to convince myself that I haven't simply missed out on the magic of this one. But it's certainly not among my favorites of his oeuvre and not something I would suggest that people rush out to see unless they already enjoy his work. At the very least, it was entertaining, which is the bottom line for any film.