For three decades Wes Anderson has been making films that are interesting, unusual, but in the end unsatisfying. Nearly always you come away thinking, 'Okay, but what did it actually amount to? What was it all about?'
I feel like this one has, for me, crystallised what he is all about - as far as that goes. Two things, 1: the search of the talented oddball for their place in the world, 2: the search for meaning in a world apparently without meaning. I think all of his films relate to those themes. This is perhaps his most definitive statement to date - and yet the thing is, it's so indefinite. 'It's about the Infinite, or something', Edward Norton says at one point. And that is as good an answer as we're likely to get from Anderson: 'about the Infinite, or something'. He's the movie-world avatar of the doubt-stricken state that most thoughtful, sensitive people are in these days.
The asteroid is like the mysterious black monolith in 2001, and the film hints that Anderson is a communicant of the Church of the Loony Aliens, which is disappointing - this common but ludicrous idea that Space and Aliens can be a substitute for religious belief. Except that even this idea is offered so diffidently and ironically, and we are further distanced from it by the film's meta-layer about its own production.
The plus side is that Anderson does at least understand the need for Meaning. Here he is ahead of almost all his peers in popular film-making, and also senior supposed greats like Tarantino, Ridley Scott and Scorsese. But can greatness ever come only from doubts and questions? It can not. The great have the insight and courage to attempt an answer. This is why his best film, my favourite film of the C21st, is Fantastic Mr Fox: it does have a positive message.
What Anderson needs to realise, as a director and as a person, is that actually you don't *find* meaning, lying about in a crater or whatever. You have to *create* it.
Still, nobody does doubt better, and nobody else can assemble a cast like this and have them content to play equal-shares ensemble roles. It looks beautiful, is brilliantly played, funny, quirky and endearing - all the usual Anderson stuff. My favourites are the three young daughters, actually. With their defiant energy, and their instinctive understanding that their Mum is still part of their lives, they cut fiercely against the general grain of lassitude.
I feel like this one has, for me, crystallised what he is all about - as far as that goes. Two things, 1: the search of the talented oddball for their place in the world, 2: the search for meaning in a world apparently without meaning. I think all of his films relate to those themes. This is perhaps his most definitive statement to date - and yet the thing is, it's so indefinite. 'It's about the Infinite, or something', Edward Norton says at one point. And that is as good an answer as we're likely to get from Anderson: 'about the Infinite, or something'. He's the movie-world avatar of the doubt-stricken state that most thoughtful, sensitive people are in these days.
The asteroid is like the mysterious black monolith in 2001, and the film hints that Anderson is a communicant of the Church of the Loony Aliens, which is disappointing - this common but ludicrous idea that Space and Aliens can be a substitute for religious belief. Except that even this idea is offered so diffidently and ironically, and we are further distanced from it by the film's meta-layer about its own production.
The plus side is that Anderson does at least understand the need for Meaning. Here he is ahead of almost all his peers in popular film-making, and also senior supposed greats like Tarantino, Ridley Scott and Scorsese. But can greatness ever come only from doubts and questions? It can not. The great have the insight and courage to attempt an answer. This is why his best film, my favourite film of the C21st, is Fantastic Mr Fox: it does have a positive message.
What Anderson needs to realise, as a director and as a person, is that actually you don't *find* meaning, lying about in a crater or whatever. You have to *create* it.
Still, nobody does doubt better, and nobody else can assemble a cast like this and have them content to play equal-shares ensemble roles. It looks beautiful, is brilliantly played, funny, quirky and endearing - all the usual Anderson stuff. My favourites are the three young daughters, actually. With their defiant energy, and their instinctive understanding that their Mum is still part of their lives, they cut fiercely against the general grain of lassitude.