The play within a play storytelling device is one that Wes Anderson seems happy to remind audiences of during Asteroid City, whether it’s through the carefully designed title cards designating act breaks, an (optional) intermission, or even the cast occasionally breaking out of their characters. So have no doubts at any point throughout the 105-minute runtime: the city is purely fictional, the people within it even more so. And ultimately, it’s the perfect window into this beautifully strange, genre-bending story about our fixation with the meaning of everything around us.

Set in 1955, Anderson’s 11th film follows an ensemble cast of characters who find themselves in Asteroid City for a Junior Stargazer convention. Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), along with his son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and three daughters, are just a few of the many grief-stricken people we meet along the way in this small, western town on the brink of astronomical exploration. Everything changes when the town discovers an extraterrestrial force that forces a quarantine in place. Cue the existential crisis!

After being impressed (as always) by Anderson’s craft on display in The French Dispatch (2021) but finding myself never more emotionally detached from his form, I was admittedly a bit hesitant to see what Anderson would do next. But I couldn’t have been happier walking out of Asteroid City — an earnest film I would happily place next to personal favorites The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).

The film’s visual look is simply astonishing, with the amount of detail and precision making every frame burst with infinite energy and creativity. Asteroid City is an undeniably beautiful place, yet the sets are so picturesque that it all looks strangely and fantastically artificial: the perfect contrast for a story about lonely people looking for meaning wherever they can find it. Or where they can’t.

I often found myself debating whether I was enamored more by the black-and-white cinematography (with a 1.33:1 aspect ratio) that we switch to in behind-the-scenes moments of the play coming to life or the vintage desert that Asteroid City finds itself in the middle of. All of Anderson’s trademark visual cues are here, but the real trick is how he manages to make every camera movement feel fresh and new despite knowing that we’ve seen some variation of it before.

With such a large and ever-expanding cast, it can be easy for even the most talented actors to get cast aside in underdeveloped roles. Thankfully, even the smallest appearances all bring meaning, emotion, and purpose — everything from the central generational relationship tinted by a mother’s loss between Woodrow, Augie, and Stanley (Tom Hanks) to the brief screen time that Margot Robbie illuminates as an actor who gets cut from the Asteroid City play. The chemistry that develops between Woodrow and film star Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) is arguably the highlight of the entire film as they find themselves interacting across their respective windows, questioning whether they can really be something in this lifetime.

It is this relationship between the two artists that help launch us toward the main themes Anderson is exploring. This is a story as much about human exploration of life beyond Earth as it is about the process of art and storytelling. The two ideas are forever intertwined here as much as Anderson’s fine handling of the line between absurdity and sadness.

The sequences showcasing the play we’re watching come to life feature Bryan Cranston as the pitch-perfect narrator, Edward Norton as the inspiring writer, and Adrien Brody as the director reeling from a break-up — along with glimpses of the “real-life” actors portraying all of the characters we get to know in Asteroid City. It’s in these meta moments that Anderson truly digs deep into the self-humiliation, doubt, and loneliness that can come at any point during the creative process: even right at the end. What does it mean to create art, and be a part of it, if you can’t truly understand what story you’re telling? Anderson’s unique framing device, which could’ve easily just been a quirky gimmick, becomes the most honest outlet for his own personal frustrations as an artist. It’s a true celebration of artists allowing their ideas to flow out of them onto the page… no matter how strange they may appear.

So while Asteroid City may not directly be meant as a director’s autobiography like The Fabelmans (2022), it nevertheless feels like one of Anderson’s most personal and reflective works. There’s also a clear exploration of loss in how many of the characters find themselves searching for answers, leading them to look up at the stars and dream up stories of their own. It’s the throughline that ties all of these scattered plotlines together by the end. And by the time the credits started rolling, all I could think about was how much I wanted to revisit Asteroid City.

Our current age of A.I. is blurring the individuality of unique artists: not to mention TikTokers trying to mechanically replicate Anderson’s style to no end. There aren’t many modern filmmakers out there with such distinctive, aesthetic, and easily recognizable styles, so it makes sense in a way. But Wes Anderson proves (once again) with Asteroid City that try as people may, nobody quite gets his own style as he does. Not that he had anything to prove anyway. He is Wes Anderson, after all.

Review Courtesy of Matt Minton

Feature Image Credit to Indian Paintbrush, Focus Features, American Empirical Pictures, & Universal Films via Star Tribune