Wes Anderson, considered by many to be one of the biggest names in 21st century cinema, is back with ‘Asteroid City’, a new artifact full of his aesthetic obsessions that seems toCalled to put an end to an era of independent cinema, if it ever was, it carried a pastel aesthetic as its banner, a cast with actors unafraid of awkward silences and humor without jokes, postmodern challenges of a stage that refuses to evolve.
Anderson-branded cinema is already a meme, destined for challenges for artificial intelligences that transform any film into something he had directed, a social media phenomenon that makes it clear that his style and authorship are unquestionable, but also that they are almost a caricature in themselves, a method applicable to the subject that the author is trying to address. transform into your own universe of symmetry, primary colors in pastel tones and vintage clothing store wardrobe to attack, first of all, the eyes.
Return to the psychotronic United States
This gives us a pattern that is often repeated in his cinema. During a first act, everything is jokes and banquet of ideas, a display of design and a small learning curve of the chosen visual language. Some unusual credits accompanied by some song with a shrill voice, inherently funny, possibly old and specially chosen to pile sight gags that introduce us to the world of his new work.
In this case, it proposes a kind of science fiction romance located in a desert area of the United States, in an indeterminate stage, possibly New Mexico in the 40-50-60s. A piece of Americana culture that includes nuclear tests, black and white tv, secret experiments, hillbilly trails and aliens with craft shapes inherently akin to human culture. ‘Asteroid City’ play the combination by osmosis, like a scrapbook, under a meta alibi which he never manages to explain congruently.
But as in almost all his films, once the first half hour of exposure to that world passes, it becomes an endurance test. Some managed to maintain their interest in a fluid way and others, like this one, are a process of enduring tedium between jumps of unequal interest in which you have to try to find the common thread through a series of fragments that include their true “themes”. ”: adolescent romances between weirdos and idealized disenchantment in maturity.
comedy without humor
There are a few successes in his filmography in which he manages to maintain a prodigious organic balance, in others, he has scattered notes but he does not quite connect his nuclei of interest. That’s when we find ourselves lost in the movie theater, trying to pretend we haven’t heard between the seats. a feigned laugh at moments when the feature film indulges in a desperately puffing joke. Or when we try to show interest when others point to the screen in the appearance of the actor’s cameo that we did not expect, or in the absence of it Tilda Swinton.
Here Tom Hanks stands in for Bill Murray, to crown a cast of familiar faces that may be the biggest waste of talent put into the service of a publicity stunt seen in decades. Most of the roles do not reach cameos, and although there are some important ones, like that Bryan Cranston in Rod Serling mode, the effect is that of a celebrity parade to throw a party where nobody seems to be having fun. It’s partly a Saturday Night Live guest skit syndrome, partly an alarm that we’ve entered the ‘Torrent’ era of American indie cinema.
Because the question that arises when seeing so many cronies is whether the movie could work without those appearances. The truth is that it doesn’t work even joining Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Jeffrey Wright, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, or Jeff Goldblumbecause its choral spirit lives disjointed and out of place, and it seems that the idea of recognizing a familiar face wants to replace a comic gag.
A style without the ability to surprise
And this has a lot to do with the fact that it is difficult to consider ‘Asteroid City’ as a comedy, and not because it has more drama than necessary, nor because its romance is cloying, but because his timid attempts at gag are miserably incapable of raising a smile. Of course, his emphatic staging can create an illusion of authority over the clueless viewer, who will laugh at Chuck Jones’ roadrunner-like ninth wink, but in general it’s limited to making up how none of his grace lands on anyone. time.
The visual references are still exquisite, both Warner cartoons and Chris Ware comics, but his satirical proposal of a United States obsessed with space does not reach the level of absurdity of the endearing ‘Space force’ and shows symptoms of the decline of a movement of young filmmakers like Anderson, Jonze or Gondry, who no longer surprises with their syncopated eccentricity and camaraderie with an audience that doesn’t go crazy for thrift store clothes from the gentrified center like they once did.
That ‘Asteroid City’ is rising as the director’s best since ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’, says a lot about the state of the fuse of a whole style that was relevant 20 years ago, whose last throes await us in the form of prestigious television from some Apple TV+ series in which the little that remains to be offered will be diluted for many more minutes. An ode to nothing that shows how lost the surprising inertia of the supposed indie of the 2000s is.overcooked in its own juice and completely lacking in contact with the reality of today’s young audience.
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