We are all living in a Wes Anderson movie that never ends.

I saw Wes Anderson's Asteroid City this weekend. Just like in his other films, his characters are taciturn, and the absurdities are abundant. I couldn't help but compare it to another absurd thing that happened this weekend in real life: the brief revolution in Russia. If you weren't watching, the head of the Wagner Mercenary Group (these guys are some really bad people) named Prigozhin marched on Moscow, and then...he just decided to stop. I kept thinking...did Wes Anderson write this? I mean, Prigozhin was at one time (by the accounts I've read), Putin's chef and caterer. How does a person go from catering food to becoming the head of a brutal mercenary group that commits war crimes? Maybe the trend of sous vide made him mad. Or maybe it was seeing Bobby Flay's white white sneakers. That could infuriate anyone.

I have so many questions. Does he not realize that the guy he stabbed in the back is notorious for assassinating people with poison? Maybe he does and thinks that it just won't happen to him. In a Wes Anderson movie, if someone were assassinated, it would happen in deadpan. That would look interesting. Also, I wouldn't drink any tea not prepared by myself, touch any doorknobs, and stay away from windows if I were Prigozhin. But that (honestly) probably only buys him a few days. You have to admit though, that Prigozhin seems like a character that could easily be in a Wes Anderson film. The key to realizing this is to realize that Prigozhin is absurd in every way possible.

But maybe where real life departs from something Wes Anderson cooks up is in the art. Anderson's stories are so consciously crafted for a specific mood. He constructs these stories that he tells (and the characters who inhabit them) in spaces that are very controlled. Anderson's style appears to be a restraint bordering on psychological and physical incapacitation. And when the absurdities happen, particularly in Asteroid City the kind of comedy relief you are supposed to get from it is often a blunt tool against the hard edges of the powerful control present in every frame of the film. But at least you get quirky characters, deadpan quips, and twee mise en scènes (when applied to cinema this refers to everything that appears before the camera and its arrangement). I can't help but think of how controlled a military group might be...when they weren't committing war crimes that is. It all just seems so weird.

Asteroid City's greatest feat, I think, is the setting. There are a ton of A-List actors all jostling for screen time in this production. But the thing I remember the most are the brightly lit and orange-colored horizons that are supposed to remind one of a Nevada or Utah desert, featureless under the blazing sun, yet still full of life like the occasional roadrunner that is viewed crossing a road with a nuclear explosion going off in the background (miles away) at a test site. That bomb is set off with such frequency that when the diner shakes and the people drinking coffee asks what it is, the waitress says, "bomb test." Again...I can't but help and be reminded of how ridiculous it all is and that (in real life) Russia has so many nuclear bombs. Seriously...was what happened this weekend penned by Wes Anderson?

I think Wes Anderson makes children's movies for adults. Which is to say, that adults are just children with large bodies. If this isn't the truth, then explain literally everything that has happened since 2016 in a way that makes me believe that adults are actually running the show on the stage of real life. I feel like Wes Anderson's true brilliance (and the reason I continue to watch his films) is that he realizes real life is completely absurd. It was absurd for people to pay $250,000 to get in a metal container with no seats and a video game controller and become tourists in the deep sea. Putin and the leaders of his military and people like Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Green are absurd caricatures of real people. People making a.i. art and calling themselves "Prompt Engineer" is absurd. Elon Musk is an absurd human being. These are all things that Wes Anderson must already know, and he just chooses to make art that shows all of that. I think I get it now. We are living in a Wes Anderson movie that never ends.