Asteroid City

Q+A with Production Designer Adam Stockhausen Sometimes you gotta revisit your favorite film of the year to reaffirm its status. This does not disappoint! Each viewing offers so much more to chew on. This time, partially because of the guest, I was thinking a lot about how Wes’s technique and style is so much about control and precision, but his films—especially this one—are about characters who become unmoored and lose all sense of control and direction. Each layer of this far-too-layered story finds characters searching for meaning and explanation and logic, but all authority figures have nothing to offer. And the ultimate authority figure—Wes himself—tries to offer a sense of stability with these highly complex, tightly choreographed tracking shots scrolling through an immaculately constructed set. But for what? It’s all illusion. It’s frills and gimmick, it offers no clarity to the characters. It almost seems like it’s mocking them! Which is why the moments where the technique falls apart and the pacing gets wrong and mistakes pop up feel so incredible. It’s like God making mistakes to reassure his creations that he understands them. What am I talking about? I don’t know. This fucking movie is so good though