Asteroid City
A desolate, desert town with pristine aesthetics serves as the backdrop to Wes Anderson’s grief-centered science fiction film. With a familiar color palette and star-studded ensemble, Asteroid City is a melancholic entry that suffers from being too Wes Anderson.
Returning to a leading man in the Wes Anderson world, Jason Schwartzman plays a war photographer father tasked with telling his young children about the death of their mother. Scarlett Johansson stars opposite as a method actor mother. Based on the trailer, the story centers around smart kids who gather with their eccentric parents in the desert for science awards. The celebration is soon intruded on by Aliens leading to a quarantine. Anderson creates an emotional cue with an abrupt love affair between Schwartzman and Johansson through tight dialogue spoken between cabin windows. The juxtaposition between the small town and vast outer space works perfectly in Anderson’s exploration of the meaning of life as it questions the very idea of existence and mortality.
There is more than meets the eye in this peach-drenched story as it is revealed to be a play conjured up in the mind of a playwright played by Edward Norton. It is a story within a story told in an anthology diorama structure hosted by Bryan Cranston. This approach works for Wes given his history as a child putting on his own plays that have found their way into many of his films but this is his most ambitious use of that storytelling structure. To distinguish where reality ends and fantasy starts, a black-and-white lens is used to navigate through Norton’s process of bringing together Asteroid City. The rustic coloring soon becomes numbing after the charm wears off and some plot points drag on until a conclusion is reached in the real world.
The characters that only exist in the reality portion of the story provide the most clarity about this prison Anderson has trapped him in. The stargazers possess a quirkiness that masks their internal loneliness and longing to be understood. Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody, and Margot Robbie bring life back into the drab story by perfectly articulating what is meant in the desert sequences as well as Steve Carrell is a perfect addition to the world of Wes. Anderson brings together an ensemble of characters who are in various stages of life as they try to use the cosmos to make sense of the world. The long runtime explores the process of grief and the idea of existing within it. This new ensemble feels disjointed at times with some characters being more interesting than others or some simply being a waste.
Because the film takes on a meta approach, some of the tools classically used in every Wes Anderson feature feel to be self-aware or a reflection of his filmography. The constant panning of the camera to create comedic relief is overused making his style feel outdated and cringe. It feels like a recycling of his favorite devices like the dead parent, a young couple in love, or his favorite the arrested development man. Even though it is revealed all the characters are actors, they feel so distant from the situations they are playing out which makes the film’s emotional beat in the peach-colored timeline feel fake or at times dystopian. Anderson is way too focused on the details of creating one of his most visually beautiful films that the overall story loses direction at multiple points.
Wes Anderson as a human and director never lets his audiences get close making some of his expertly designed sets feel cold and barren. Under all the style, he attempts to tell a story of what it means to live as his characters in and out of the play constantly question purpose. They all arrive at the same destination seeming fine but the truth is revealed about how unhappy they all are and the quarantine allows them the chance to grow close and find understanding in their world. Following his typical formula, there is an emotional story of self-discovery wrapped up in a pastel fantasy land, but sadly in Asteroid City, it feels like Anderson took on too much.
This is perhaps his most shallow work, but will certainly be a style inspiration for aspiring filmmakers.