After experimenting with multiple storylines in The French Dispatch, the inimitable Wes Anderson goes one step further with the mind-bendingly meta Asteroid City. Framed as a TV documentary about the making of a play, Asteroid City’s Russian doll setup reflects the neurosis of its period (the Cold War-struck ‘50s), art-making, and the intimidating vastness of outer space. The play takes place in a tiny desert town where atom bomb tests routinely rattle the doorframes and where a convention for young geniuses is being held, attended by a host of typically idiosyncratic characters (played by Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Tom Hanks, and many, many more). Still, it retains a central focus: the grief of new widower Augie (Jason Schwartzman) and his kids, and the connections he and his son (Jake Ryan) forge with a visiting actress (Scarlett Johansson) and her daughter (Dinah Campbell). Asteroid City draws much of its poignancy from this story (and its behind-the-scenes goings-on), as these people stare into the cosmic wilderness and a future without their loved one. Shot in gorgeous bleached postcard tones and full of the imaginative flourishes we’ve come to expect from Anderson, this is a profound rumination on existential angst that miraculously finds hope amidst all its characters’ nihilism.

The visuals (obviously) — but also the meeting of Asteroid City’s two storytelling strands. Late on in the film, Jones Hall, the actor playing Augie, breaks character and bursts through a hidden set door to vent his despair at not understanding the play to its director (Adrien Brody). During this excursion into the movie’s black-and-white behind-the-scenes world, Jones also unexpectedly meets a would-be castmate who was unceremoniously cut from the play (a cameo we won’t spoil). The two have a profound discussion about their characters, one which not only unlocks the character of Augie for Jones, but also delivers an abrupt gut-punch of emotion to us in the audience. Anderson’s movies are often accused of having style over substance, but scenes like these — which use their form to magnify their content, melding together the emotions within the art and the emotions of the art-makers in one expert flourish — ought to single-handedly put paid to those arguments.