Wes Anderson Gazes at Stars of Many Stripes in Asteroid City: Review
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The post Wes Anderson Gazes at Stars of Many Stripes in Asteroid City: Review appeared first on Consequence.
The Pitch: Few American filmmakers today inspire such simultaneous adulation and revulsion as Wes Anderson. Detractors accuse him of making quirky little dollhouses filled with nothing important, of leaning on his overly-mannered style to a suffocating degree; his fans, on the other hand, see the value in the constant sharpening of his strengths, of the ways his interests and stylistic touchpoints evolve from film to film. At this point, you really do either love him or hate him, or you want to have AI crib his style to turn your favorite franchise into whatever funhouse-mirror stereotype of Anderson you like.
With Asteroid City, his eleventh feature, we get maybe one of his most labyrinthinely-structured confections yet. Much like The Grand Budapest Hotel, Asteroid City is a story-within-a-story-within-a-story, introduced Rod Serling-like by a narrator (Bryan Cranston) who talks us through a “You Are There”-esque reenactment of the creation of a play called “Asteroid City.”
Nested inside that narrative, though, we see a televised version of the play itself, dressed up with the bright pastels and bold lettering of a 1950s postcard. A cadre of disparate folks — scientists, kid geniuses, cowboys, military personnel, all played by a murderer’s row of Anderson regulars — gathers in a small desert town for a kids’ science conference, only to be interrupted by a startling event that shakes the foundation of these explorers’ hearts in more ways than one.
Bottle Rocket: It’s strange to call a Wes Anderson film “a mess,” especially considering all of “Asteroid City”‘s quirky diversions and formal experimentation feels part and parcel with what the guy has been up to lately. And yet, Asteroid City feels just that, a bunch of interesting ideas in search of cohesion.
It’s a film about many things: On the surface, it’s a twee play on “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” by way of Robert Wise — Dutch angled spotlights and all. There’s also a dash of Willy Wonka in its cast of oddball kids (including standouts like newcomer Jake Ryan and IT’s Sophia Lillis) accompanied by harried parents (including Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Hope Davis, Steve Park, and Liev Schreiber).
It’s a rumination on the hopeful idealism of 1950s postwar Americana, and the house of cards on which all that possibility rested. It’s a winsome smile back at a notion of a (let’s face it, mostly white) America still beaming from its victory in WWII and not yet humbled by Vietnam. It’s also a story of familial grief, a singing-cowboy Western, and a sci-fi tale with ray guns.
Wes Anderson on the set of Asteroid City (courtesy of Focus Features)
You Can’t Wake Up If You Don’t Fall Asleep: Asteroid City’s most important and impactful layer happens one step removed from the pastels of its marketing materials (and, indeed, most of its runtime), as Bryan Cranston ushers us, Rod Serling-like, through the making of the “play” we’re watching. Anderson signposts acts and scenes with playbook interstitials; we see black-and-white reenactments of the making of the (fictional) play Asteroid City is based on, etc. Robert Yeoman’s camera is as precise and playful as ever; composer Alexandre Desplat plucks strings and chimes xylophones with the best of them.
We see actor Augie Steenbeck (Schwartzman) playing a character (a clenched-jaw widower, another hopeless schmuck suddenly thrust into fatherdom), then see the fabled tale of how he got the role in the first place. We see the playwright (Edward Norton) discuss events that haven’t happened (or may never happen) in the film proper, still transformed through the collaborative power of creativity.
Asteroid City is a movie about aliens (kinda), but it’s really about theater, about acting — the switch from a more mannered Old Hollywood patter to the emotionally-taxing Method (which Johansson’s wearied movie star demonstrates for Schwartzman’s character through bungalow windows as if they were two childhood crushes). It’s about how actors, playwrights, and directors pour their selves and their frustrations/passions into their work and find purpose. It’s about how artists relate to each other through their art, and — like the mishmash of competing interests at the heart of the town-within-a-play Asteroid City — hope to build a better world out of the wreckage of that collaboration.
The denizens of that sleepy desert town gaze up in awe at the possibilities of the universe, and behind their eyes, the actors who play them wonder just where they fit into the grand scheme of things as well. They may strut and fret their hour upon the stage, but they may also break character at a crucial moment to ask their director (Adrien Brody, broody) what it all means.
Asteroid City (Focus Features)
The Verdict: I still don’t know whether all (or even most) of Asteroid City’s ideas coalesce, so scattershot is the film’s pacing and plotting. But from moment to moment, it charms and moves in ways only Anderson can deliver. It’s the wistful way Tilda’s spinster scientist mutters, “I never had children. Sometimes I wonder if I…. wish I should’ve.” It’s Augie’s self-assured audition/flirtation with Norton’s Conrad Earp in a remote cabin with an antlered chandelier. It’s the real estate vending machine, the stop-motion UFOs, the facade-like nature of the buildings and rock faces of the city itself.
Anderson’s trying all kinds of new things here, but they still fit within the signature mode film fans and AI-freaks have been trying (and failing) to understand and emulate for decades. And it’s that same inscrutability that ol’ Wes explores here, in his latest, and one of his most fascinating, experiments to date.
Where’s It Playing? Asteroid City blasts off into limited release on June 16th, before expanding nationwide June 23rd.
Trailer:
Wes Anderson Gazes at Stars of Many Stripes in Asteroid City: Review
Clint Worthington
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