Asteroid City — Anderson Does It Again, But Is His Style Wearing Thin?
To some, Wes Anderson may be more an aesthetic than a filmmaker. Social media trends and AI recreations attempt to capture the 54-year-old director’s style, often to little avail. So how does Anderson forge ahead and avoid becoming a parody of himself? In Asteroid City, the answer seems to play the hits, but make it bigger.
I was lucky enough to snag some tickets for an early screening of Anderson’s newest at my local Alamo Drafthouse. The sold-out screening was buzzing before the lights dimmed, laughed at all the right moments, and even stuck around for the live-streamed Q&A following the film. These were Anderson die-hards, Andersonians even. So when the film opened with a black-and-white Bryan Cranston doing his best Walter Cronkite impression, Anderson was playing to a captive audience of his own design.
After delving a couple of narrative framing devices deep (the main events of Asteroid City are set up as the events of a play, the creation of which is recounted through a Cranston-hosted television program) we are finally exposed to the titular desert community. The colors are akin to that of a 1960s postcard, and the camera pans slowly over the town, allowing us to soak in the impressively quaint production design. The town, and the audience, are poised for the twee misadventures that are sure to befall our massive cast of players
Schwartzman, the Steenbecks, and Scarlett
Veteran Anderson collaborator Jason Schwartzman takes on the lead role of Asteroid City, the haunted yet understated war photographer Augie Steenbeck. Schwartzman’s performance steers clear of the neurotic and snooty Max Fischer of Rushmore fame, as he toys with the role of an emotionally reserved father. As he puffs on his wood pipe and mutters some longing statement for his late wife, his charm is still intact. Anderson has always asked his actors to deliver lines in a signature deadpan style, and Schwartzman is able to infuse them with melancholy and despair.
Augie is a lost soul, adrift in the desert town of Asteroid City. He is barely anchored by his three young daughters, who continually entertain as agents of chaos, and his teenage son Woodrow (Jake Ryan). Ryan is a spitting image of Schwartzman, with a distinct nerdiness about him that sells his shy brainiac persona. The incident that brings the Steenbecks and the rest of our intrepid cast together is a Junior Stargazers convention, where the younger cast members get a scene to show off their inventions, each with a fun Andersonian sparkle of grounded special effects.
Among the parents of the other child geniuses is Midge Campbell, as portrayed by Scarlett Johansson. Johansson and Schwartzman are the stars of Asteroid City, and Midge and Augie are kindred spirits. Broken, tortured, and full of ennui, but kindred. Midge is an actress who seems listless with the state of her career, perhaps not far off from Johansson. She and Augie practice scenes from her upcoming film from the windows of their neighboring cabins, nothing but a few feet of desert between them.
This sort of depressive romance is common in Anderson’s work, though while it never reaches the pitch-perfect tenor of Luke Wilson and Gwyneth Paltrow in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), it’s deeply compelling. Speaking of relationships that echo Anderson’s other work, the relationship between Woodrow Steenbeck and Midge’s daughter Dinah (Grace Edwards) is quite reminiscent of Moonrise Kingdom (2013). Woodrow and Dinah are perplexed by the behavior of adults, their single parents included, and are far more concerned with the events at hand, while also making room for a blossoming teen romance.
What are those events at hand? While all of this personal drama is well and good, a young redheaded schoolboy in the trailer will tell you: “There’s an alien”
Aliens and Atom Bombs
Anderson makes the most of the 1950s setting in a way many of his period films never have. Of course, the production and costume design is superb, reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting. But Rockwell meets Roswell in the film, as Cold War tensions and mid-century sci-fi bubble together when The Alien enters the picture.
The appearance of the extra-terrestrial itself is one of the highlights of the film. The usual Anderson chit-chat and slapstick is brought to a screeching halt when a flying saucer descends over the assembled citizenry of Asteroid City. The beats of hesitance from the intergalactic traveler, cut between the mouth-agape astonishment of various characters, make for one of the most memorable moments in Anderson’s career. The final moment of the scene, a photo snapped by a befuddled Augie, ties the film’s turning point up in a perfect bow.
Asteroid City goes into full-on alien fever following the event. The military institutes a quarantine, trapping our cast and allowing for another week’s worth of antics. As parents bicker, children band together to speak truth to power (a theme also explored in the Chalamet-starring vignette from 2021’s The French Dispatch).
Cold War distrust is also present in discussions of the mysterious creature. The once-quiet town of Asteroid City is overtaken by the military (who until now were content with nuclear tests that sent quakes through the small community). The conclusion Anderson comes to here may be a bit “Kumbaya”, but is nonetheless charming as a country-western band headed up by Rupert Friend singing a peace-time diddy to Maya Hawke’s elementary class.
To analyze the deeper and darker themes, we must leave the brightly-colored fantasy world of Asteroid City and take a step closer to reality
A Story Within A Story
Set within black-and-white and a 4:3 aspect ratio is the framing device for Asteroid City, that being… Asteroid City. A play written by Conrad Earp and directed by Schubert Green (Adrien Brody). Various actors pull double duty, playing both a stage actor and their character within the events of the play. It allows talented performers like Schwartzman and Johansson to stretch their legs within the relatively rigid constraints of an Anderson picture and opens up space for Norton and Brody to play put-upon 1950s playwrights.
It is within this story that we get glimpses of the messy relationships that inform characters like Augie and Midge. Their reservation comes from the people portraying them. Midge’s counterpart is Mercedes Ford, who feuds with Norton’s eccentric writer but eventually comes to an understanding with him.
But again, it’s no surprise that Schwartzman takes the cake here as well. He plays Jones Hall, an actor experiencing self-doubt, questioning if he can access the complex depressiveness of Augie. He shares honest, and even beautiful, scenes with Brody and Margot Robbie. These scenes cut to the heart of imposter syndrome, an affliction that all artists reckon with.
Anderson seems especially concerned with meta-commentary on art as of late, and this is where those conversations come to bear. In the closing minutes of the film, the whole cast repeats a refrain: “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep.” As I observed Anderson’s reliance on fantasy realms in his more recent work, this seemed to be a conclusive answer. He crafts these dreamworlds, full of odd characters and ethereal designs so that when his films end we are refreshed, reawakened, and renewed. In this goal, Anderson seems to have not failed yet.
In Conclusion…
After his magnum opus The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), some accuse Anderson of entering a stasis. He operates under the assumption that bigger means better. Bigger casts, bigger stars, bigger productions, all wrapped up in more complex scripts. I understood this to be the case, until a recent announcement on the Asteroid City press tour. There he announced his forthcoming Roald Dahl adaptation, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, which would be a 37-minute short film. To me, this signals humility from Anderson. His direction is not more important than the text, and the final product should reflect that. So yes, I’ll take all the Anderson projects, big and small, long or short.
To keep this conclusion brief, here’s what I will say of the entire Asteroid City ensemble: Anderson meticulously picks actors and crafts them into what he needs them to be. Whether you agree with this directorial approach is up to you, but it seems obvious that Wes is becoming a favorite among Hollywood A-listers. In short, they’re great. And why wouldn’t they be? He displays a masterful, if admittedly rigid, hold over his creative vision. From sets to camera to actors, no one makes films like Wes Anderson. It seems trite to say, but I’ll say it anyway: If you like Wes Anderson, you’ll like Asteroid City.
The Verdict
8/10, among Anderson’s best
