Asteroid City - Directed by Wes Anderson
At age 54 and with 11 feature films under his belt, Wes Anderson is not a director we should be taking for granted. You would think that deep into a successful career the man would have calmed down, petered out, what have you, but the opposite is true. Anderson approaches his most recent works with the same energy and attention to detail as he always has. Maybe more so. Following his two latest live action films that take place in Europe, The Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dispatch, his new comedy Asteroid City brings him back to his home turf of Texas. Specifically, the comically small and sparsely populated town that’s about to host the annual Junior Stargazers convention for teen prodigies. But like any of Anderson’s films no matter where they take place on the map we are undoubtedly in his world.
Even though the population of Asteroid City is advertised at “87” we really only see the proprietor of the town’s single motel (Steve Carell), his staff, and the single waitress at the town’s diner. Enter young inventor Woodrow (Jake Ryan) who’s being chaperoned by his father Augie (Jason Schwartzman), a recent widower ferrying his wife’s ashes cross country in a Tupperware. “Let’s say she’s in heaven” Augie tells his brood as they arrive in town. “Which doesn’t exist for me of course but you’re Episcopalian”. Soon after the other stargazers and their families arrive, meet their mentors, flirt with one another and on the night of the award ceremony bare witness as an extraterrestrial drops down and takes the asteroid the town is named after from its landing spot. This of course leads to a government lockdown forcing everyone to stay in town.
Asteroid City takes place in 1955 and every frame of the town is designed to nod to the art that most influenced its creation. You’ll immediately draw a line of here to the sun-baked westerns of John Ford, the paintings of Alex Colville, MAD magazine inspired sight gags and the slapstick comedy of the Roadrunner cartoons. The square to camera framing and tracking shots may look simple but anyone who studies Anderson’s work with more than a passing glance will see how impressive this (and all of his) films are on a technical level. There’s been a recent wave of AI generated parodies of Anderson’s films or if the director took on a popular franchise like Lord of the Rings and seeing a Wes Anderson film play out in front of you shows how ridiculous those ideas really are. They prove unequivocally that you can’t fake the truly inspired artificiality of Anderson’s worlds.
Everything in Asteroid City, from the façade-like storefronts to the immaculately cleaned and creased costumes, to the desert sand itself has been so thoroughly stylized you would think it would require a concentrated suspension of disbelief from the audience. The actor’s performances (there are many and they’re all terrific) work in tandem with the sets and costumes. Everything adds up to what we’ve come to expect from Anderson. An artist at the top of his form, creating an entire world for audiences to play in for two hours and never fumbling a single detail.
Asteroid City quickly reacquaints us with many of Anderson’s oft visited themes – family, loneliness, theatricality, gadgetry, grief and because of how beautifully human each of these things are presented and experienced it becomes even simpler to forget the artificial visual style and allow Wes’ world to swallow you whole. Each of the teenaged Junior Stargazers are perfect Wes Anderson characters. All of them geniuses who are still naïve enough to not be able to navigate their own hormones. The scenes between Schwartzman and his grumbly father-in-law (Tom Hanks) who in the wake of his daughter’s death has been forced to assist a young man he’s never really liked, touch many of the same raw nerves felt in Anderson’s 2001 masterpiece The Royal Tenenbaums. Even when the alien appears, rendered is lovely stop-motion, evokes the beauty of the Jaguar Shark from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou – a gorgeous symbol of the mystery and indifference of nature and the cosmos.
Wes Anderson’s detractors say that he essentially takes the same approach to all of his films and apart from subject matter the style and acting choices could be swapped between his works without making much impact. What those same voices fail to grasp about his work however is that as Anderson has developed as an artist so too has his ability to tell the stories he chooses to tell. The Grand Budapest Hotel uses flashbacks within flashbacks. The French Dispatch is structured as a series of reports and essays within an issue of a New Yorker-style magazine. Anderson is trending toward being interested in storytelling as a subject and his last three live action films are certainly proving he’s having success in that arena. In Asteroid City, this fascination with storytelling takes the form of a complexly conceived framing device where the narrative of the families trapped in Asteroid City is revealed to be a Playhouse 90 style teleplay. These sections of the overall film are shot in black and white and in a narrower aspect ratio as if to suggest that art doesn’t just imitate life but expands and illuminates it.
It’s tough to summarize the movie’s structure but I can assure you it works better on screen than I’m selling it. The key to the whole film may actually be in one of the black and white framing sequences in which Willem Dafoe, portraying a Meisner style acting teacher leads his class (the film’s entire cast playing actors in the Asteroid City play) in a chant. “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep.” Anderson often frames his actors as if they are directly addressing the audience, but it’s never felt this overt before. Having actors deliver the “can’t wake up” line tells us a lot about how Anderson understands performances. Truly great acting requires a balance of imagination and vulnerability. But I think Anderson is talking to us too. In a time where so many movies feel designed to kill some time and hold you over until the next thing, he’s asking all of us to actually allow ourselves to give over to what we’re watching. If you don’t bother engaging with a piece of art and instead take it in over the top of your phone, you’ll never fully benefit from its power.
