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Abstract

Wes Anderson’s 2023 feature film Asteroid City was met with a more polarized critical and audience response than any of his prior films. Evident in this response is an increasingly apparent distinction between the formal conventions of his films – encompassing elements such as visual aesthetic, filmmaking techniques, and storytelling structure – and the emotional and thematic content. In this paper, I examine the critical response to Asteroid City as well as the perceived dissonance between these two major aspects of his filmmaking in order to explore the relationship between the two, specifically as it pertains to the themes of grief and loss that are a consistent subject across Anderson’s filmography. In order to do so, I first look at the specific critical response to Asteroid City in the context of his filmography, establishing trends and patterns among the ways critics engage with and respond to his films. I then use this as a framework for a close reading of two of his earlier films, The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and The Darjeeling Limited (2007), specifically looking at his recurring exploration of grief and loss as well as the development of his visual aesthetic and narrative conventions. Examining Asteroid City in this context, I found that, rather than being at odds with one another, the visual hallmarks and consistent aesthetic of Anderson’s films serve as vessels through which he is able to explore his recurrent themes, with Asteroid City acting as the culmination of his effort to understand the emotions of grief and loss through storytelling.

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