Let it be known: I liked this film. A 3 and a half hour story (featuring a welcome in-built 15 minute intermission) about a renowned Jewish architect from Central Europe coping with refugee life in a United States that seems to both embrace and reject him is a commitment, but one that for the most part is cushioned by great acting and writing, stylish direction, and a criminally underrated soundtrack.
During the intermission, I remarked to my friend that it…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
While the quintessentially charming and stylistic cinematised New Yorker magazine of The French Dispatch (2021) was enough for some critics to hail it as ‘Wes Anderson at his most “Anderson aesthetic,”’ one cannot help but feel the director’s experimentation in monochromatic shots and muted colours, cartoon animation, and tableaux vivants was enough to make such pronouncements premature. If it in fact had been true, then doubtlessly Anderson’s latest release, Asteroid City (2023), would have immediately eclipsed its predecessor in this…
