Comment by wk_end | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wk_end | Hacker News Reader

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For better or for worse, Anderson is very much an auteur [0], like Godard or Woody Allen. Almost certainly in a self-conscious way.

Complaining that Anderson movies feel like Anderson movies seems almost to miss the point: do we look at Picasso's works and complain about the consistent style he developed? The self-imposed constraints of his own style give him a framework to build his art from (it's often said that constraints foster creativity after all) and a particular craft to master.

Conversely, the form might always be an Anderson movie, but the function of each film can be quite different. By sticking with and mastering a particular aesthetic he frees himself to explore things besides aesthetic wildly. What does The Royal Tenenbaums have in common with, say, The Grand Budapest Hotel, besides Futura?

That said, I do feel like Asteroid City in particular was a stretch for him: there's nothing quite like "you can't wake up if you don't fall asleep" anywhere else in his filmography. It felt like along with the more extreme artifice came a more extreme intensity of feeling: to me it's a film that really came from a very anguished and grieving place. I haven't read the article or seen the new film yet, but based on the headline it sounds like this might be the overall direction his work is heading.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auteur

Both Picasso and Godard changed their style dramatically over their careers. I'm not familiar enough with Woody Allen's movies to comment on them.

These are good examples to show how being an auteur doesn't mean you need to stick to the same stereotypical aesthetic. Anderson is still pretty young, so maybe he is shifting in one direction or another. But as far as his work goes as of today, the range of stylistic choices is far, far less than what Picasso or Godard did in their careers.

I once walked into a room in a museum and felt proud for immediately spotting and identifying a Picasso. It was only a few minutes later that I realised that the entire room was Picassos, all in wildly varying styles, most of which I was completely unfamiliar with. Picasso had range.

The stylistic evolution of Picasso and Godard over time is undeniable, but I think it’s also worth considering that Anderson is working in a medium that isn’t just visual, but also narrative, thematic, sonic, and performative. His evolution as an artist is not truly represented by his shifts in color palettes, framing, or editing technique, but you can see it in the emotional territory he explores, the narrative structures he experiments with. While he stays within his own unique aesthetic framework, he is pushing against the boundaries within it.

Asteroid City, for example, is doing something genuinely different, not just in tone, but in structure, layering fiction and grief in a way that feels disorienting and profound. And while his style is often imitated or parodied, nobody else is actually making movies like his with that particular blend of rigor, melancholy, humor, formality, and precision. We should celebrate having a unique voice and perspective, he's a major part of the diversity of creation, he's way outside the boiled-down average the rest of the industry pushes towards.

It’s not that you’re completely wrong or anything here, but the simple counter example of other unique directors that also progressed / changed their style over time kind of disproves the idea that this is some inherent aspect of filmmaking.

And certainly I’m glad he’s making movies and I enjoy them (as I said in the initial comment.) That doesn’t mean I need to celebrate every single thing he does and refrain from film criticism.

I think your “simple counter” might be a bit reductive. Artistic evolution can take many forms, but it doesn’t have to take every form, not every distinctive filmmaker needs to reinvent every aspect of their art to demonstrate creative growth.

My point wasn’t that Anderson should be exempt from criticism, just that his growth may register differently because of the kind of storytelling he’s committed to. The evolution in his work often plays out less in surface-level aesthetics and more in structure, emotional depth, and thematic complexity. He clearly enjoys working within a consistent visual language, but that doesn’t mean he’s artistically “stuck”. Critique is always valid, and I think it’s also worth asking whether we’re tuned into the kinds of shifts that matter most in his particular creative vocabulary.

Perhaps the example of Woody Allen at the top is more apt.

The departure in style, theme, visual approach, and structural vision between early works like Sleeper or Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex and later films such as Match Point is dramatic. Then again, three decades separate those movies. Anderson still has time.

> Anderson still has time.

Yes, but time for what? I still resist the implication that Anderson is somehow “sitting still” artistically just because he maintains a consistent (and remarkable, and unique) aesthetic. When you engage with his work beyond the surface, there’s clear evolution in structure, tone, emotional depth, and thematic ambition. That doesn't mean everything he's done is a masterpiece, or that not liking it is somehow an invalid critique.

He may still evolve in more outwardly dramatic ways, but I think he has and continue to evolve already, just on his own terms, without compromising the visual language he clearly loves.

Anderson is also not dead yet so still creating.

Picasso didn't have evolution so much as total overhauls at several points. It seems much harder to do this kind of evolution/revolution in film simply because of the money involved.

As a film director with such a distinct style, which makes money, it would be pretty hard to go to your investors and say 'I want to do something totally different.' and secure enough money to make a film in the modern era. There are some directors who can self fund due to windfalls in the past. I mean thinking back on noted auteurs I can only think of a film or two that are outside of their style and most are either very early in their career when maybe they were doing a work for hire or very late in their career where they had enough gravitas to get the money to try something different that they had been sitting on for many years (David Lynch's Straight Story is a bit of an odd man out though, I'm not sure of the history of that particular film)

But for someone like picasso, he can just decide on even a whim to attempt to refine or invent another style, the market probably has some kind of pull but it seems like, to me, several orders of magnitude lower stakes.

It would be interesting to find out after some film auteurs' death that they actually had done several other films in a wildly different style under whatever the director's equivalent of a pen name is. Though keeping such a thing secret would be highly improbable (too many people involved in a modern film production).

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