Wes Anderson’s latest Asteroid City is still, clearly, a Wes Anderson movie, but it also feels like his biggest break from his form that he has honed for almost thirty years now. Often hilarious, wonderfully acted, delightfully weird, Anderson’s hallmarks remain, but he also is dissecting the artifice of film (his in particular?) and why maybe we all need to calm down when taking in art. We only live once, you know.

When things are in color, we are watching a filmed re-production of a successful play, Asteroid City. But we get into this movie version of this successful stage play by way of a television program about the author of the work, Conrad Earp, and the cast of actors who will be playing the characters we see in that movie version of Asteroid City. Why is it important to know this side of the story, well because it’s half the story of the film Asteroid City you’ve sat down and paid for. Plot details of the play we watch unfold are often delivered in the behind the scenes drama of the making of the film, which are presented in a theatrical play-like presentation that breaks the rules of any stage known to man. The walls between all layers even fold and melt between one another, Anderson winking at us, or fucking with us, as we try and keep everything together.

This isn’t a puzzle to be solved though. If anything, Wes is taking the piss out of the people that claim his films are too manicured and overly obtuse around certain devices (so, he’s fucking with some of us). For fans of his work, it will feel like a whirlwind, but as I laid out up front, he isn’t going to lead them to fair afield. In fact, as you look back at the film, you could argue he’s giving us a bit of a peek behind the scenes of his own process and filmmaking style. Earp is an even more heightened version of his own writing tendencies, played with delight by Edward Norton, while Adrian Brody comes and plays the outsized version of the director side of Wes’ persona with equal joy to his counterpart. I have to imagine Wes and his creative stalwarts (i.e. Jason Schwartzman, Roman Coppola) were giggling throughout the creation of all of this, knowingly in on the joke when the fictional stand-ins of some of themselves go as far as to kiss one another.

And while all of this might feel like a bit much, and maybe it will be for you, it worked for me because you get to see many of the actors in the film showing off their chops through the dual roles they are taking on (both in the play we are seeing as a film and the behind the scenes drama unfolding around them) and we get to see Wes cook in an interesting post-modern take on his own material. My only complaint I have around all of this, is that it maybe takes a tad too long to reveal itself as to what exactly is going on here. The opening device feels familiar for Wes, Grand Budapest Hotel opens by taking us four layers deep before it starts its story, but never has he jumped so freely in, out and around a device from the main story you think you are here to watch. You could argue that all of the shenanigans that happen inside the quarantined locale of Asteroid City are just there as window dressing for the behind the scenes drama, but you’d be short sighted in that assessment.

Inside Earp/Anderson’s play is a story about grief, the unknown and not letting the world pass you by, while also being a tale about fighting back against oppressive idiot governments who want to tell you what you just saw isn’t true. Seen mostly through the eyes of a widower husband, an actress at an existential crossroads and a group of child geniuses, (stop if you’ve heard any of these before), the world changing event they witness doesn’t change them as much as you might expect, but it certainly moves the needle. Anderson finds plenty of fun bits in this latest playground he’s created, filled with visual flair and flourishes you’ve come to expect, while even letting characters, once, walk at an angled plane that felt revolutionary for a moment. There isn’t a weak beat in what plays out in the town of Asteroid City, but it does feel like Anderson is always itching to get back behind the curtain as soon as he can; until it seems like he doesn’t, only to do it again.

Asteroid City is not what I expected, which is what you want from a director eleven features in, and the more and more I think about it the more I love it. A film that will certainly only grow on subsequent viewings, I also want to tear into everything Anderson has to say about this film. Having said that, if his directorial avatar taught us anything in this film, it’s that it doesn’t really matter what’s going on, just that it hits the right way. Asteroid City does.