Given his rabid fanbase and the relatively gentle nature of his films, it’s no surprise that Wes Anderson (“Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel”) has become the household name for film auteurs. Ask your mother, grandfather, cousin, or sister and they’re all likely to have heard of him in some respect, whether they know him by name or simply know one of his movies. This well-known status keeps excitement for each of his subsequent films high, and coupled with the reveal that his latest will feature his first touches of science-fiction, “Asteroid City” is set up to be a new direction for the director.
The film, set in the 1950s, follows a group of people forced to remain in Asteroid City, a small desert town in America, after a junior stargazer conference was interrupted by an alien sighting. This group includes war photographer Augie Steenbeck, played by Jason Schwartzman (“Scott Pilgrim vs. The World,” “Rushmore”), his son Woodrow, a junior stargazer played by Jake Ryan (“Eighth Grade,” “Chad”), famous actress Midge Campbell, played by Scarlett Johansson (“Black Widow,” “Ghost World”), her daughter Dinah, a junior stargazer played by Grace Edwards (“Call Jane”), the father of Augie deceased wife Stanley Zak, played by Tom Hanks (“Forrest Gump,” “Saving Mr. Banks”), General Grif Gibson, the general in charge of keeping the town on lockdown, played by Jeffery Wright (“Angels in America,” “The Batman”), a scientist monitoring the Asteroid City crater, Dr. Hickenlooper, played by Tilda Swinton (“Okja,” “Three Thousand Years of Longing”), and many many more.
The rest of the ensemble cast consists of the likes of Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad,” “Malcolm in the Middle”), Edward Norton (“Fight Club,” “Birdman”), Adrien Brody (“The Thin Red Line,” “The Pianist”), Live Schreiber (“Scream (1996),” “Ray Donovan”), Hope Davis (“About Schmidt,” “Synecdoche, New York”), Stephen Park (“In Living Color,” “Fargo (1996)”), Maya Hawke (“Stranger Things,” “Do Revenge”), Steve Carell (“The Office,” “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”), Matt Dillon (“Drugstore Cowboy,” “Wild Things”), Hong Chau (“The Whale,” “The Menu”), Willem Dafoe (“The Lighthouse,” “Antichrist”), Margot Robbie (“Birds of Prey,” “I, Tonya”), Tony Revolori (“Spider-Man: Homecoming,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel”), Sophia Lillis (“It (2017),” “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves”), and Jeff Goldblum (“Jurassic Park,” “The Fly (1986)”). But not all of them are in Asteroid City, and not just geographically.
You see, “Asteroid City” the film is about Asteroid City, the play. The film is actually a broadcast of the making of the fictional play set in the 1950s, interspliced with scenes from the play performed as if they’re reality. No, this doesn’t mean there are any cardboard sets or fake backdrops, but it adds an additional layer to the work. Before, when Anderson’s films have chosen to jump back and forth between their frame narrative and their main narrative, it was for brief moments and only a handful of times. “Asteroid City” hops back and forth at multiple moments, to focus on multiple different emotional ideas.
“City” is easily the melancholiest film Anderson has made in years, and it lends an interesting air to everything. Given the fact that numerous “indie” films tend to have the criticism of “what does it all mean” thrown at them, it’s fascinating that Anderson seems to have crafted a film entirely around that exact question and the idea of asking it. No, this isn’t some commentary about audiences not appreciating films. Rather, it feels like a director reaching out and trying to find out why he’s still doing this.
The entire cast is fantastic and manages to balance everything quite well, as every person is used in both narratives. Schwartzman in particular is outstanding, and quite possibly the best he has ever been. Norton, while used minimally, is also absolutely fantastic, giving one of the best performances in the film. Cranston is also a delight as the narrator keeping everything moving along, and Johansson seems to be using her movie-star status as a punching bag here. Hanks is also great, clearly game to come and play in the sandbox of such a specific auteur, and the rest of Anderson’s staples are all quite fantastic. There’s nary a weak performance amongst the cast, and yet the size of the cast, even by Anderson’s standards, is one of the film’s biggest flaws.
This isn’t a long film by any means, but given how much of it focuses on Steenbeck, Campbell, and their families, it makes the moments when things do break away to focus on other characters feel superfluous. Yes, Hawke, Davis, Park, and Schrieber, for example, are all great, but the film’s narrative is trying to give them miniature arcs that don’t add anything to the more interesting and central ideas of the movie. At best, they’re fine moments that distract from the center of the movie, and at worst they’re comedic fluff that feels focus tested and pointless, like Carell’s hotel owner and his plan to sell land stakes to the tourists of Asteroid City.
The most interesting elements are outside of the play, in the frame narrative that showcases a playwright and a director both trying to make something new and surrounded by a cast all looking to them for meaning. At one pivotal point, a person seeks comfort in another as he seems to have lost his way, not being able to understand the point of what he's doing anymore. And instead of an answer, he's told to just keep going and that he'll find that meaning along the way.
To have a director as obsessed with strict uniformness as Anderson craft a film where that uniformness seems to be created by someone using it to hide from their emotions is a bold choice to be certain. It rides the line of being both pleasing to look at in the moment and also being a stark reminder of the film’s central emotional ideas, with fantastic work overall from cinematographer Robert Yeoman (“The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Drugstore Cowboy”). Here is, like “The French Dispatch”, a film where Anderson is using all of the techniques he’s learned over the years to craft a film that’s technically impressive as well as visually pleasing.
It's interesting to have Anderson’s message for “Asteroid City” be that you’ll find the meaning eventually. So much of this film revolves around pain, crisis, and melancholy, but only after the fact. It isn’t about living through those traumatic moments, but instead about dealing with them later. It’s hard to dig into exactly what makes everything work without spoiling it all but suffice to say this is easily Anderson’s most interesting work in years, with plenty of layers to chew on over subsequent viewings. It helps that Schwartzman is the lynchpin of it all and is giving a career best performance here, but if only it had a bit of the fat trimmed away from this trip to “Asteroid City.” 4/5
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