a review of 小行星城

— act i — it would be easy to reduce ASTEROID CITY to “if BARBENHEIMMER was an actual film” or “Wes Anderson’s NOPE by way of Christopher Nolan-flavored narrative collapse” obviously, a Wes Anderson joint is smaller than any of that— while reaching at something higher and deeper. maybe even spiritual. — act ii — endlessly fascinated by wes anderson enclosing his narratives and characters more and more with each film. each time, the diorama gets smaller. the tableaus more and more still. the characters say less and less with less and less affect.  at the same time, his stories become more fragmented. compartmentalized. a story about a vignette about an annotation about a footnote.  icarus ascending if the sun was a “wes anderson starter pack”. yet through it all, his spiritual journey has maybe never been as overt and clear.

(as clear as the meaning of everything and your place in the infinite indifference of it can be, that is.)

it might be the most narrow his focus has been, and its trained on the biggest philosophical target possible.  we’re grasping at the meaning of life. the meaning of art. or the meaning of art in a life of ever-escalating uncertainty. — act iii — that the most perfectly crafted and choreographed wes anderson production is disrupted by the stop-motioned embodiment of uncertainty, a freaky little walking crisis of faith, hits harder than all that sounds. or maybe he’s just sharpening his tools for his inevitable masterpiece in a post-Barbie future:

WES ANDERSON’STHE SIMS