The Artist Is Present in 'Asteroid City'

The notion of a perfect movie is absurd, but some movies attain an ideal synthesis of the director’s body of work. Wes Anderson’s latest, “Asteroid City,” is one such film. Although it reflects the same impulsive outpouring of creative energy as his other great movies, this one involves a singular balance of his prime themes, styles, ideas, and obsessions—a sense that he’s taking a few steps back from his cinematic canvas and recalibrating the relationship of his art, and of himself, to the world at large. “Asteroid City” provides a sense of a self-summing-up; without an alter ego in the cast of characters, he’s reflecting on his methods, his artistic desires, his standpoint on cinema. It’s not necessarily Anderson’s greatest work (whatever that means), nor even his most personal film. But it’s the one in which, by stepping back, he makes himself intellectually and emotionally most present.