Don’t Like - Calcified Auteurism

Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City was a movie I didn’t think I’d watch last year. I had not seen one of his movies in years. Wes Anderson had, mostly by repute, gotten too Wes Anderson-y for me. It got to the point where people were making TikToks about their lives in his signature quirky style. You could find both reverence and ridicule in these videos. Yes, he is a master of images. But the kind of images he’s come to master have come to be a liability. The strict symmetries turned into an aesthetic jail cell of sorts. This affliction, however, is not unique to Wes Anderson. In the auteur theory of film, directors are not simply making movies, but complete rigorous films that owe to a greater sense of style. To borrow a phrase, the films—though disparate— exist in the context of all in which they live & what came before them. As directors chase a highly singular style within their broader filmmaking, they can reach the breaking point of their own shtick. Now, I don’t feel qualified to say whether Asteroid City is that point for Wes Anderson. However, considering this ailment applies to many directors, my hope would be for him to keep finding newer ways to make movies. I think that would be more interesting for everyone.