Review: Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City”

BY GREG CARLSON

A vibrant troupe including several precocious brainiacs, their parents, military personnel, astrophysicists, singing cowboys, a grieving widower, a movie star, and a trio of tiny witches and/or vampires-in-training converges on Asteroid City (population 87) for the 1955 Junior Stargazer Convention in Wes Anderson’s gorgeous new feature. As quintessentially Andersonian as any of his previous movies, “Asteroid City” gracefully combines the considerable talents of its sprawling ensemble and the technical prowess of the filmmaker’s production team to realize a cosmic fantasia of romance and hope, sadness and bereavement, and the astral realms of the real and the imagined.

Expectedly, the setting is as much a character as any of the familiar players, and Anderson conjures a miraculous theatrical framing conceit that makes the head spin and race to keep up. The filmmaker has always expressed an interest in the boundaries between presentational artifice and the authentic emotions experienced by the inhabitants of the diegetic space. Max’s “hit play” adaptation of “Serpico” and the chapter introductions from a book called “The Royal Tenenbaums” are two examples, but “Asteroid City” extends well beyond similar devices in “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “The French Dispatch.”

We have witnessed Anderson’s successful execution of this approach to nested story-within-story before, but the effect on the viewer here may be its apotheosis – at least until Anderson devises another level. The narrative events of “Asteroid City,” as best as we can make sense of them, suggest a nonfiction “Playhouse 90”-esque television show depicting the behind-the-scenes creation of a stage production then realized as a 360-degree panorama unencumbered by the limitations of interior space. And once we get outside to marvel at the startling azure skies and the ochre buttes – complemented by the teals and oranges of the human-made objects – we are exactly as dazzled and beguiled as Anderson intends.

The mixed reactions following the film’s world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival come as little surprise to the devoted fans who can only sigh. Who else makes movies like Wes Anderson? In 2014, scholar Peter C. Kunze listed several of the particularities that “make Anderson’s films so charming and infuriating, distinctive and derivative, pleasing and exasperating,” concisely summarizing the poles of adoration and denunciation expressed by audiences and critics. Now, almost a decade later, Kunze’s thoughts on the Anderson binary that pits irony against sincerity are just as apt. I for one remain at home in my firmly-staked Khaki Scouts tent, my private berth aboard the Darjeeling Limited, and my deck chair on the Belafonte.

An initial viewing of “Asteroid City” can be overwhelming, especially given the question of how the expanding roster of regulars (Schwartzman, Swinton, Goldblum, Dafoe, Norton, Brody, Revolori, etc.) and newcomers (Hanks, Robbie, Carell, Hawke, Dillon, Davis, etc.) will be balanced in an enterprise with so many speaking roles. But Anderson’s history and this movie’s conceptual scheme of actors playing actors – and in some cases, actors playing actors playing actors – affirm that there are no small parts. Jason Schwartzman’s combat photographer Augie Steenbeck is paired with Scarlett Johansson’s Marilyn Monroe-like Midge Campbell, but the relationship between their kids – Augie’s son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and Midge’s daughter Dinah (Grace Edwards) – is treated with equal interest and respect by Anderson, who shares story credit with longtime collaborator Roman Coppola.

Wes Anderson has come to represent a kind of genre unto himself, so the choice to frame his thematic concerns within the otherworldly realm of science fiction is just another one of the special attractions of “Asteroid City.” Admirers will come to the movie already prepared for the artful manipulations communicated through the auteur’s fascination with intertext and metanarrative. At one point, someone asks “Am I not in this scene?” In another moment, a director encourages an actor to “Just keep telling the story,” while we catch a glimpse of the dream within the dream.

And did I mention the UFO?

For more of Greg Carlson’s reviews, see Southpaw Filmworks.