Wes Anderson gets back to the heart of things in “Asteroid City,” a film about grief, performance, storytelling, the cosmos and, well, everything. Or, as one character, a playwright played by Edward Norton, says when asked what his work is about: “It’s about infinity and I don’t know what else.”
Meticulously designed and choreographed, with a beautiful, starry cast reading his and Roman Coppola’s droll words, “ Asteroid City ” is very, very Wes Anderson. Aren’t they all? But “Asteroid City” also represents a return to form (or at least the form most people preferred) after his past two films, “Isle of Dogs” and “ The French Dispatch,” divided even his disciples. They worried, among other things, if style and form had finally usurped his storytelling. Regardless of whether you thought they were fun or painful or some dreadful in between, there was a palpable detachment to both films. Authentic emotion, when there at all, was strained.
