Where I Watched It: Peacock

English Audio Description?: Yes

Wes Anderson is one of the few directors where I’ve actually managed their entire filmography. He is one of those very influential directors whose style speaks to cinema lovers, but always really stands out as a director who makes the kinds of choices that make me wonder how do we appropriately convey his quirks to a blind audience through audio description?

He has released three films in the span of my vision loss, and none of them have pushed into my Top 5 of his filmography. To be fair, it seems as though people are pretty divided on those, whereas it’s much more accepted that films like The Grand Budapest Hotel and Rushmore are among his best.

So when he throws me Asteroid City, which is a turducken of a film, I’m pretty sure there’s an element that is lost. I can’t even truly describe Asteroid City to someone, and I’m not even sure I should. To do so might ruin the whole thing,even though it is largely addressed at the beginning of the film. It’s that fact that gives me the grace to say, this may not be what you expect.

Anderson opens the film with a fourth wall breaking Bryan Cranston, who serves as a host for the program we are about to see, much the same way Alfred Hitchcock did for his eponymous series. “What you are about to see…” gives us a triple layered film. There’s the one where Cranston lives almost entirely alone, the one where we watch the writer of the play Asteroid City (played by Edward Norton) and some interactions with other characters, and then we have Asteroid City, which is a work of fiction, inside a work of fiction. It’s fictception.

The majority of Anderson’s expansive cast lives in the asteroid City world, with Jason Schwartzman really being the standout as a recently widowed father who hasn’t told his kids yet about their mother’s death. They are headed out to this stargazer’s convention in Asteroid City, where he plans to tell them then. Also popping up along the way are Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Steve Carell, Jeffrey wright, Tilda Swinton, Margot Robbie, Hope Davis, Maya Hawk, and Anderson fixtures like bob Balaban, Willem Dafoe, and Tony Revolori.

Schwartzman gives the stand out performance, as it feels so grown up. The kid from Rushmore is now playing a much more serious war photographer with this recently gifted traumatic catalyst. It’s different than what we’ve seen from him before, and it was nice. As a film, it’s Anderson battling his desire to make a quirky comedy again with his desire to challenge himself. he does this by introducing dramatic undertones, which get kind of lost in his usual bag of tricks. Sometimes, it works for a second, but then we are back in this weird story within a story.

I’m less a fan of the finished product and more a fan of the fact that Anderson really felt like he was trying to push himself as a director, which I love. Sometimes, you take a big swing, and it works. his first foray into animation gave us The Fantastic Mr Fox, and had he avoided the medium, that film would not have come to pass. So, I appreciate that Anderson seems to be creating something new here, but I think it might just be a warm up, or a stepping stone to something greater down the pike.

The audio description here is as good as you’re gonna get sometimes, as this film is constantly flipping through narratives, and balancing a broad ensemble. There were some things i felt could have used more description, but that’s because I understand Anderson is very intentional with his entire design. If he is going to show you an alien, it likely is a very specific alien, and needs attention given to likely how he subverts the expectation of what you would see in that situation.

Take fir example, The life Aquatic, which seems like it might be a straightforward comedy, but when Anderson has the opportunity to show you the underwater realm, it’s not our underwater realm, but rather his own. it’s a very trippy, somewhat yellow Submarine experience or like a ride you might see at Disney, where nothing looks real.

So when i say his style should translate, I know he’s worked with a costume designer on very specific looks that feel like they are taken from another time period, or makeup and hairstyling done to make people look like variations on what a real person looks like. He does that for his regular films, so i would assume for Asteroid City, a film where he is openly admitting the work is fiction, and we are spectators, he would lean even more into that.

But to follow the plot? Sure, I could follow the plot. i just question if someone who has never seen Wes Anderson will ever truly understand all his tedious choices, and thereby why he has such a devoted following.

Not my favorite Anderson, but not his worst. He has just set the bar so high for himself already.

Final Grade: B-