Asteroid City, population 87. You can stand in the middle of the highway that runs through it, turn 360 degrees, and absorb the town in its entirety. There’s the cozy roadside diner and neighboring auto shop. The motor court, with its orderly rows of neatly-appointed white cabins (except for Cabin #7, temporarily replaced by a tent thanks to the explosive results of some recent renovations). The on-ramp to a freeway that was never completed, the end of the road hanging suspended in mid-air, leading absolutely nowhere. The observatory, where scientists look to the skies for answers to our earthy problems. And Asteroid City’s main point of interest, a massive crater created by the impact of an asteroid (or is it technically a meteorite?) that hit the earth thousands of years ago. This normally sleepy hamlet is about to receive an influx of visitors flocking to the desert for the Junior Stargazer convention of 1955, during which a handful of brainy teenagers will receive honors and government-sponsored scholarships for their scientific inventions, the festivities presided over by General Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright). What they don’t know is that they are all about to experience a very close encounter of the third kind, one that will dredge up all their fears and insecurities that have been just barely masked by their disaffected personas.
The first of these guests to Asteroid City that we meet is Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), who has just pulled into town with his teenage son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and precocious triplet daughters (played by Ella, Gracie, and Willan Faris) in tow. There’s a purpose to his visit—Woodrow is one of the Junior Stargazer honorees—but they’re also stranded there (their car so thoroughly broke down even the local mechanic, played by Matt Dillon, can’t quite make sense of it). As he waits for his ritzy father-in-law Stanley (Tom Hanks) to come retrieve them, a monumental task looms over Augie’s head: his wife passed away three weeks ago after a long illness, but he has yet to break the news to their children. In the meantime, another visitor who swings into town with her daughter Dinah (Grace Edwards) is movie star Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson), while a class of young children learning about the solar system disembark with their teacher June (Maya Hawke). The rest of the characters are inhabited by a massive, starry cast of Anderson regulars and newcomers, including Steve Carell, Liev Schreiber, Stephen Park, Willem Dafoe, and Jeff Goldblum.
If Asteroid City, which has the appearance of a place that materialized from a vibrant vintage postcard, and its quirks ranging from the row of vending machines that at the drop of a few quarters dispense everything from freshly-stirred martinis to deeds to the barren pockets of land that sit just beyond the motor court, to the jauntily-animated road-runner that flits in and out of scenes like he just raced straight off of Chuck Jones’ drawing board, seems like it exists in an even more heightened version of reality than the typical Wes Anderson film, that’s probably because the town is fictional even within the film it shares its name with. Asteroid City is not only the name of a place, but the name of a play, one penned by famous American playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton). Anderson has utilized the stage within his films time and again, harkening back to his second feature, Rushmore, in which the protagonist uses an elaborate high school play about the Vietnam War as a means of reconciliation with the film’s other characters. He’s played with structure too; consider the nesting stories within The Grand Budapest Hotel, or the anthology The French Dispatch, which also contained a flashback within a television talk show within the larger story. But he’s never taken quite such bold strides as he has with his latest film, Asteroid City. As of this writing, I’ve only seen the film once, but I think I’ve got it somewhat straight: the film opens with the host of a 50s-era dramatic television program (played by Bryan Cranston), introducing the special, a dramatization of the creation of the play Asteroid City. And then within that, we see the events of the play itself unfold. It’s complex in a way that borders on confounding at times, especially as Anderson leaps back-and-forth between these narrative levels throughout the film. Every actor in Asteroid City is playing at least two characters (their character in the play, and the actor playing the character in the play), and occasionally, they cross over from one level to another.
Yet, as much as Asteroid City revolves around theater, Anderson wields every cinematic tool in his arsenal to the most effective ends. Where we are at in the narrative is distinguished by color and aspect ratio (the play itself, for example, is rendered in brilliant color and widescreen, while the television program is black-and-white and in standard aspect ratio). He employs animation (for comedy), split screen (for a low-key devastating phone conversation), and music (Alexandre Desplat collaborates with Anderson for the sixth time, creating a twinkling original score that properly provokes awe, while Anderson and music supervisor Randall Poster gathered a long list of country and western tracks authentic to the time period to round out the soundtrack). He liberally pulls from American iconography; the backdrop of Asteroid City is peppered with rock formations not unlike those in Monument Valley, the stretch of land whose frequent appearance in John Ford westerns made it emblematic of the American West, while the charmingly cheesy, DIY effects (even the simple design of the technology in the observatory, which seemingly randomly lights up in what Tilda Swinton’s Dr. Hickenlooper describes as “blips and bloops”) recall the numerous 50s-era sci-fi films whose fictional panic over alien invaders served as thinly-veiled metaphors for the real world panic surrounding the Red Scare, from It Came From Outer Space to The Day the Earth Stood Still. Much has been made, especially lately, of Wes Anderson’s distinct aesthetic, from his visuals (meticulously-designed and symmetrically-framed shots) to the deadpan tone of the performances he pulls from his actors. But to write his style off as just a vibe, whether it’s something you enjoy or not, is to completely overlook the significance of what he’s doing with it. It’s in the dissonance between the almost clinical tone and the honesty of Anderson’s writing, and the convergence of the strange with the familiar, that he wrings out the most profound emotions. There’s never been a Wes Anderson movie yet where I haven’t just been having a grand old time only to find myself suddenly sobbing, or feeling like I’ve been punched in the gut. Asteroid City is no exception.
Don’t get me wrong—Asteroid City is hilarious, from the whip-smart dialogue to the absurd, at times borderline cartoonish situations the characters get involved in. At the same time, a sense of dread drapes over it like a blanket, even before the big event occurs. It’s in the atom bomb tests that regularly occur just outside of Asteroid City, the billowing mushroom clouds a dark stain on the otherwise sunny horizon. It’s in the high speed chase that occurs on the main road running through town like clockwork, the gunshots as cops and robbers exchange fire for reasons we never learn and don’t really care about anyway shattering the normally quiet atmosphere. The residents of Asteroid City barely bat an eye at these events, and after just a week, the town’s visitors don’t either. And it’s steeped in the quarantine that occurs in the film’s second half, but even though the characters express how stifled they feel at their inability to leave Asteroid City, nothing really changes for them; they don’t really have anywhere to go anyway. A lot of the film’s humor and pathos is derived from the dichotomy between the children and adult characters; Anderson has always been exceptionally astute at authentically writing and directing the former, using the innocence and naivety of his kid and teen characters to unpack the messiness of the lives of the adults surrounding them. His most accomplished example of this is Moonrise Kingdom, but Asteroid City comes pretty darn close. Augie’s daughters—who adorably believe they are witches and vampires—react to the news of their mother’s death with almost unrealistic calm, finding a random stretch of dirt by the lodge’s communal showers to bury the Tupperware filled with her ashes and casting a spell over it. This endeavor sounds silly, but it is clearly deadly serious to the girls, and ultimately provides some closure—or at least, the ability to take the next step down the path of grief—for Augie and Stanley, who, even through their slight animosity toward each other, are obviously shattered (Tom Hanks was out here wildin’ in 2022, but he’s subtly doing some of the best work of his career here, and fits the style and tone of Anderson’s universe like a glove). The school kids, meanwhile, are frequently seen bombarding their teacher with questions about the universe that June, trying her darnedest to stick to her prepared lesson plan, doesn’t have answers for. And the teen Junior Stargazers interact with each other with the sort of enthusiasm that comes with finding like-minded people, relishing in their inventions and in the never-ending memory game they play with each other.
If the kids are turning to creative means of employing science to envision a hopeful future (even if at the moment the extent of said creativity is death rays and jetpacks and projecting holographic images on the moon), the adults turn to creativity as coping mechanisms in the face of the overwhelming insignificance of our existence. Augie is a war photographer. Midge is an actor. The pair strike up a relationship with each other, but we almost always see them maintaining a physical distance and conversing from the windows of their neighboring cabins, Augie developing photos in a makeshift dark room, Midge relentlessly practicing her lines to nail her role as authentically as possible (Johansson is sublime when it comes to Anderson’s specific style of deadpan comedy). They bond over the fact that their devotion to their respective crafts caused them to place their family and children second, something they don’t necessarily regret, but perhaps still feel some despair over, speaking in the sort of plain way that being stuck in one place with one group of people while facing down the smallness of your existence will make you do. One of the film’s funniest and most striking lines is actually an off-the-cuff remark from Dr. Hickenlooper, who we can assume has devoted her entire life and career to sitting in the observatory searching for something, anything: watching Dinah and Woodrow, in the early stages of developing a crush on each other, fuss over some controls, she says, “I never had children. Sometimes I wonder if I should have wished that I did.”
I don’t know if Anderson is trying to tell us that in the focus on searching for something meaningful out of life we are ignoring the meaningful connections with other people that are sitting right in front of us. I do know that these characters accomplish the most when they collaborate with each other. I do know that this quest for some sort of definite answer and his meta commentary on creating bleeds through the narrative layers in increasingly impressive and moving ways; there’s a sly allusion to using a body double during a nude scene, and also a profound moment with a big-name actress whose part was cut in the play within the movie, but whose single scene is revelatory. Struggling to finish his play, Earp seeks inspiration for Asteroid City first in the actor who will play Augie (Jones Hall, also played by Schwartzman), and later in a cadre of performers situated in an Actor’s Studio-like setting. The play’s director, Schubert Green (Adrien Brody), is also muddling through the production, his wife (Hong Chau) having left him in the middle of things. At one point, frustrated by what he perceives as a lack of meaning in the play, a piece of character motivation that he just doesn’t understand, Augie Steenbeck becomes Jones Hall, running to Schubert to demand some answers. Schubert’s response? To let go. “Just keeping telling the story,” he says.
It’s such a perfect cap on a film that sees Anderson being more self-aware than ever, a film that many critics and viewers have already responded to by calling it “directionless.” It’s not an entirely off-base accusation for a story that concludes with the characters going on their separate ways, having changed barely perceptibly over the course of the film, if they changed at all. The film’s closing needle drop, the folk song “Freight Train,” contains lyrics that emphasize the movie’s quiet devastation as the characters ride off into the sunset: “Got no future, got no hope, just nothing but the road.” And yet, Asteroid City is not a hopeless movie. There’s the promise that Augie and Midge might see each other again. The kids are alright. Jones Hall finds some solace in that aforementioned unexpected interaction with the actress cut from the play. There’s the return of a stolen artifact. And there’s a speck of hope in even the smallest interactions: a dance and a glance exchanged between June and Montana (Rupert Friend), the singing cowboy whose band frequently interrupts the order she’s trying to establish in her class. Like so many scenes in Asteroid City, it could mean nothing. But it could also mean everything.
Asteroid City is now playing in theaters. Runtime: 104 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Katie at the Movies 