This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
I walked out of Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch a little confused. I’d been a fan of Wes Anderson’s world building since his first feature, I even consider Moonrise Kingdom and the Grand Budapest Hotel both flawless entries into his body of work, but what was going on in his new film? Why did everything feel like a play during tech rehearsal?
Then just before heading to theaters to watch his new yarn, Asteroid City, I stumbled on a youtube video by Taylor J. Williams, and he explained a great deal that opened my eyes. There is a bit of Post-Modernism vs Meta-Modernism at play here. But also an artist trying to figure out where he’s going while looking at where he came from. Going INTO Asteroid City with this on my mind, the play within a play story resonated with me. I felt this film was much more focused than the French Dispatch and thus I enjoyed it much more. Taylor’s Youtube essay allowed me to go into the darkened movie theater knowing to expect vignettes that are inward and outward analyses of the mechanics of storytelling.
Although COVID put a stop to Bill Murray being in the final film (a regular Anderson collaborator), that didn’t stop them from shooting a fun little short film just before the sets were torn down. For more meta humor, I highly suggest watching it after you are able to catch the feature film.
