Paul Schrader might not have seen the memes, but the Oscar winner is calling “Asteroid City” the most Wes Anderson film ever.
The “Master Gardener” director took to Facebook to praise Anderson’s “Asteroid City,” comparing it to Alain Resnais’ surreal 1961 French New Wave classic “Last Year at Marienbad.”
“The most Wes Anderson film Wes Anderson has made. And for that reason, the best,” Schrader wrote of “Asteroid City,” now in theaters. “He has distilled his design-driven anti-empathy film style to its essence. It’s hard to find a comparable film. The one that comes to mind is ‘Last Year at Marienbad.’”
Schrader added, “I’m heartened that it opened so well, though not quite sure why.”
Fellow auteur Guillermo del Toro similarly took to Twitter to express his admiration for Anderson’s vision.
“Unique signature – What started as an Ashby-esque rhythm and a Demy-esque image design mix, has evolved,” del Toro tweeted. “Now we have a beautiful, painful, and paradoxical exercise in controlled image and neurotic passion. A voice essential to modern cinema.”
The buzzy star-studded “Asteroid City” has already become a critical hit due to its ensemble cast comprised in part of Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell, Maya Hawke, Jeff Goldblum, Ed Norton, Margot Robbie, and Tom Hanks.
Anderson spoke to IndieWire’s Eric Kohn about the cinematic inspirations behind “Asteroid City,” including Wim Wenders, Martin Scorsese, and even Schrader himself.
“Now we see Paul Schrader with a whole set of later movies that are sort of Bressonian, where he’s taken a sort of focus and taken back something for himself,” Anderson said. “Spielberg’s collaborations with Tony Kushner have produced such interesting work and it’s all later period stuff. Even Francis Coppola, who hasn’t made a movie in some time, is now making something gigantic. He’s taking on a tremendously personal project he’s been wanting to do all these years. It’s a twist on the whole that’s been interesting and surprising. But I’d say each one has a different kind of virtuosity that’s totally unique to them.”
He added, “I have tried to do bits like a [Brian] De Palma scene, setting up a sequence like De Palma would, but it’s almost impossible for me to do. [Quentin] Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson have done scenes where they set things up like De Palma and do it well. Not me. I had to find other things in his work. There are certain things he does that I certainly steal but others that I can’t steal, because I’m not capable of it.”
