Tag: Wes Anderson

Too many bleeding hearts: in defence of Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City

Posted on by victorfraga

The year is 2001 and cinephiles across the globe gather hand-in-hand in order to celebrate their new auteur, Wes Anderson, upon the release of The Royal Tenenbaums. It was still acceptable to support Anderson’s magnum opus without being labeled “uninspired” by a Twitch streamer. When an original voice gets taken for granted by the masses, it inevitably becomes cool to hate, belittle and mock a specific art direction. The descent into loathing Wes Anderson’s singular style could be one of cinema lovers’ most tragic and misdirected attempts at higher thinking. With every film Wes comes out with, there is a fresh crop of gripes.

The most recent surge of critique against Wes Anderson started with a (seemingly) harmless AI calibration of Wes Anderson’s signature style set to other films. After the first attempt, the trend became unbearable rather quickly. Even worse, it sparked debates about how Anderson’s stylistic choices hinder emotional depth in his films. Film Twitter became insufferable when discussing if Wes Anderson has ever hit an emotional beat. Deemed “easy” and pointlessly deadpan, hate for Wes Anderson has become, officially, trendy. Conversely, it’s also cool to like Wes Anderson again.

The concoction of naturalistic detail and broken characters create a highly effective undertone of tragedy in Wes Anderon’s work. With everything in perfect order except the personas portrayed on screen, the characters’ complexity begins to seep through in a subdued, but impactful way. It’s with this model that Wes gives us characters like Margot and Ritchie Tenenbaum, Gustave and Sam Shakusky. Anderson’s subtle stroke of genius is the transition from quirky and eclectic moments to genuine gut-punching pathos. The symmetry, colour palettes, and delivery do not hinder Anderson’s emotional capabilities, but instead enhance them.

In every Wes Anderson story, there is a bleeding heart. For his most recent release, Asteroid City, this sentiment was driven home in arguably his most ambitious vision yet.

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The universe inside the universe

With Asteroid City revolving around a play set within the film, Anderson takes a risk foreign to most of his other work structurally. The immediate toying in breaking the fourth wall lends itself to the audience in much more direct fashion than his previous works. This method of metalanguage and sneaky world blending offers something extremely heartfelt as the film approaches its final act. This is due to a particularly outstanding performance from Jason Schwartzman, who plays Augie Steenbeck. Augie, a war photographer and widower, must tell his four children that their mother has died. Struggling with the timing on this matter, Augie recruits the help of his father-in-law, Stanley Zak, who Tom Hanks plays.

Immediately we are introduced to one of Wes Anderson’s most wounded characters. Yes, the delivery of these characters is still very much in Westopian fashion. Anti-fans of Anderson will dish the usual takes of the subjects being automated and mechanical. However, if there was ever a film of Wes’s filmography that benefited from this delivery the most; it’s this one. What makes Asteroid City different is the layered recognition of inevitable solitude. Almost every single character in the film deals with a quarry about their place in the universe.

Woodrow Steenbeck, played by Jake Ryan, is a kid genius who often separates himself from the pack because that’s most comfortable for him. He is not intimidated, but he is shy. June Douglas, played by Maya Hawke, has her world turned upside down after a cataclysmic event rocks the town. In real-time, we see her grip loosening on what purpose she serves as an educator. Midge Campbell, played brilliantly by Scarlett Johanson, is a two-time divorcee who is also a movie star. Her longing for a standard romance and acceptable fate masks her celebrity. The point is this; Wes Anderson uses his signature dialogue notes in Asteroid City to de-alienate his subjects. He’s always done this. The calculated beats, pauses and idiosyncratic rhythm of the film’s dialogue create a through line for otherwise wildly lonely characters.

Everything is brought to a halt when the alien arrives. In all its animated glory, the alien provides the film’s thesis. It represents unanswered grief, curiosity, and fate. It forces the occupants of Asteroid City to face their own versions of existential dread, coming together in the only companionship they may ever experience.

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The story without a story

Wes’s ultra-brief usage of this goofy alien sequence is one of the year’s most thought-provoking talking points. Like Jeff Goldblum said, it’s a metaphor. As Woodrow wonders about the alien’s motive, his father works through complicated grief, using the alien’s visit as a medium. At the end of this, Wes is telling us that sometimes there is closure in knowing there is no closure. What is the play about? We don’t know. We are never supposed to reach that rejoinder.

The film takes an absurdist turn once chaos ensues after the news that the quarantine lift is canceled. We see Jones Hall, the actor playing Augie Steenbeck in the film’s play, exit the set frantically, searching for an answer to why Augie burns his hand on the grill. This question comes up earlier in the film when Jones Hall visits the play’s writer, Conrad Earp, played by Edward Norton. Here, Anderson really drives home with the film’s heart.

Jones Hall is now experiencing his internal dilemma on why anyone does anything in the first place. Augie has moulded his way through the bleeding heart of his real-life embodiment. “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall sleep.” Cryptic as it may be, it offers an intense moment for audience members after Anderson’s allegorical tale’s world-bending tactics come to a close.

The film also benefits from outstanding practical sets and golden nuggets of character work from, Bryan Cranston, Tilda Swinton, Jeffrey Wright and Steve Carell. If it’s a Wes Anderson film, you know that the film is visually stunning. Through all his on-par whimsy, quirkiness, and monotonous splendour, Wes Anderson delivers a proper dystopian look at what it means to be delivered with how random and unforgiving life can be. Not knowing what the play is about becomes the ticket to self-government. Let the rush of melancholic sadness take you over as the credits roll; it will undoubtedly enhance the post-film contemplation.

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DMovies editor Victor Fraga has a very different view on Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City: he writes that the movie as “banally idiosyncratic”, before describing himself a “die-hard non-fan” of the American director.

The French Dispatch

Posted on by victorfraga

Wes Anderson’s 10th feature film was originally going to premiere at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival.. It indeed premiered at Cannes, but a year later. It’s Wes Anderson’s first live action film in eight years, the last being The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). It’s the first time Anderson has used an anthology format for one of his films, which given the increasingly sprawling cast lists for each Anderson film, seems like a logical cinematic format.

The film’s various stories make up the final issue of The French Dispatch magazine, which is based on The New Yorker. Most of the stories have some basis in real-life people. The editor, Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray), dies and as a part of his will, the magazine must close after one final issue. There are three stories, with the Howitzer story being the wrap-around and a short, amusing travelogue story with Owen Wilson’s Herbsaint Sazera at the start. The stories are what made the magazine and put a spotlight on the man Howitzer was.

Each story is pleasurable, although at times you wish Anderson had just made three separate movies (or done a mini-series) and given viewers a little more time to breathe. The French Dispatch is 100 minutes long.

The first story is called The Concrete Masterpiece, and it’s a very funny send-up of the art world and modernism, with Benicio Del Toro as the incarcerated Moses Rosenthale, who gets discovered by a crooked art dealer Julien Cadazio (Adrian Brody). Léa Seydoux plays Rosenthaler’s muse and prison guard. The film or more or less evenly split between black and white and colour. The compositions are impressive as you would expect from Anderson, with a symmetry looser than usual. It comes in at a madcap pace, and has some of the good old ultraviolence but in absurd fashion = one of Anderson’s secret narrative weapons. Tilda Swinton plays journalist J.K.L. Berensen, who writes and appears in the story.

The next segment will no doubt annoy and delight viewers in equal measure. Revisions to a Manifesto is a spot-on pastiche of May ’68 and Godard’s films before and after. Timothée Chalamet plays the pencil-moustached Zeffirelli, an anarchist student who starts a uprising through… chess moves. Relative newcomer Lyna Khoudri makes quite an impression as Zeffirelli’s girlfriend, Juliette, who mocks his manifesto. Frances McDormand plays older journalist Lucinda Krementz, who is profiling the student activists for The French Dispatch, and starts a fling with Zeffirelli. It’s sympathetic to the student revolutionaries, but also mocks their pretentiousness. It’s the most out-and-out silly of the three segments.

In the third segment, The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner, Jeffrey Wright plays Roebuck Wright, a character modelled on James Baldwin with a bit of A.J. Liebling thrown in. This story has its own wraparound, with Roebuck recounting the story on a ‘70s’ talk show (perhaps The Dick Cavett Show) with Liev Schreiber as the host. Willem Dafoe and Edward Norton play small and exciting roles. It’s a strange segment, because while the performances are all great, especially Wright’s, the story is just a silly crime caper. The plot mechanics grow a little tiresome, and the animation sequence, while beautiful, feels unnecessary. Ultimately, the story fails to deliver some kind of poignancy.

This is undeniably the work of Wes Anderson, so it may take a few viewings to unpack all of the jokes and references – the casting. Despite the shortcomings, it’s one of the best films of the year, and a delightful ode to journalists and their editors. The landscape of cinema today needs dreamers and fantasists more than ever.

The French Dispatch has just premiered at the BFI London Film Festival. It’s out in cinemas on Friday, October 22nd. On most VoD platforms on Monday, February 14th.

Isle of Dogs

Posted on by Alasdair Bayman

The worlds of Wes Anderson are heartfelt places that have their own delightful little charms. Steadily building these environments, alongside unique aesthetics, characters, mise-en-scene and poignant writing, an Anderson film is a vivid trip into colourful tweeds or vistas- whilst expressing genuine human emotion. Following in the animated footsteps of Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson, 2009), Isle of Dogs progresses his distinctive tone with further emotive filmmaking – a form only achievable by a select few creatives. Working in this mould, it cements the auteur’s capacity to speak to profound human truths through beautifully realised moods. This Eastern futuristic land yields tenderness that swiftly transcends the stationary nature of its canine characters.

Taking place 20 years into the future in the Japanese megacity of Megasaki City, all dogs have been banished from society by the executive decision of Major Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura). Infecting their immune systems with flu to cause mass hysteria, it is a political move that symmetrically reflects Putin’s Russia. Predating the action with a quaint flashback to the centuries of fighting between the cat-loving Kobayashi family and free dog loving people of Japan, it is an approach that foregrounds the cyclical presence of fairy-tales in global storytelling. Executed with nuance, it’s an example of how to approach short retrospective narrative, recently evident in Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018), though exempt from praise of a similar approach in Detroit (Kathryn Bigelow, 2017).

Part of an Alpha pack of dogs, Chief (Byran Cranston), Rex (Edward Norton), Boss (Bill Murray), King (Bob Balaban) and Duke (Jeff Goldblum) are all stranded on Trash Island due to Major Kobayashi’s punishment. Living off scraps and fighting other packs to win the garbage, their domesticated lives are sorely missed. Unlike his fellow dogs, Chief is a stray who was raised in the streets, away from the luxuries of dog food and pedicures. Crashing on the island in the attempt to find his lost dog Spots (Liev Schreiber), Atari (Koyu Rankin) finds solace in the pack and their unanimous decision to help the 12-year-old boy. Journeying to the ends of Trash Island, the narrative maintains a classical edge.

Spawned by the power of the internet, the social media posts of ‘Accidentally Wes Anderson’ corroborate the captivating designs that the director and his creative team conjure. Created by Mackinnon and Saunders, a Manchester-based Puppeteer company, the dogs are bespoke intricate creations. Infused with fur that sways in the wind, accompanied by little ticks, the stop-motion moves as though it was digitalised, not handmade. This slight of hand leads to the creatures being anthropomorphic in movement and feeling. Fusing together with the talent of the voice cast, featuring the likes of Greta Gerwig’s Tracy Walker to Frances McDormand’s Interpreter Nelson, the ensemble cast intertwine with their puppets to an idiosyncratic affect.

Transitioning through the world with clean whips and pans, Tristan Oliver’s camera merges with the editing of trio Edward Bursch, Ralph Foster and Andrew Weisblum to extend the sharp script’s humorous and tender moments. Flowing, these two factors help the film’s visual language be a kaleidoscopic affair. Behind the images, the script of Anderson, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman and Kunichi Nomura absorbs itself in an abundance of dog related puns. Blending the comedic with some tragic, the screenplay is finely poised being which leaves a glowing presence of elation.

In his recent review for the Los Angeles Times, the critic Justin Chang suggested that ‘Anderson, a stickler for verisimilitude even in the weirdest situations, has the human residents of Megasaki City speak their native Japanese, a choice that would seem respectful enough except for the conspicuous absence of English subtitles.’’ To this end, the critic constructs a point well worth noting. Still, one cannot outright claim this is total ‘cultural appropriate’ as all of the tones of the film come from a place of love, not ridicule. Anderson does allow his film to be entered into the age-old debate of appropriation vs appreciation, however. Flourished with odes to Japanese culture, specifically Seven Samurai’s (Akira Kurosawa, 1954) Fumio Hayasaka’s score, there is an omnipresent ubiquitous devotion towards Eastern culture. Heightened in a comical dog-related take on Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, the appreciation outweighs the appropriation in my book. In his later work, Kurosawa explored the very nature of grand tales in Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985) and Dreams (Akira Kurosawa, 1990), resonating to the core of Anderson’s newest feature.

Aside from any supposed acts of cultural misappropriation that Isle of Dogs may uncover, Anderson writes a love letter to man and his best friend that unexpectedly hits a deeply profound level. Enwrapped in the form of endearing puppeteer characters, one could be mistaken to think its sweet nature is only for aesthetic purposes. Great things truly do come in small boxes.

Isle of Dogs is out on Friday, 30th March. It’s available on VoD from Monday, August 6th.