I had a harder time with "Asteroid City" than I was expecting, and I'm still working out why. Wes Anderson has used nesting narrative structures in his films many times before, but this is the first time that so much of the action has taken place in one of the framing stories. Bryan Cranston presents a vintage black and white television program dramatizing the creation of the play "Asteroid City," and the relationships of some of principle talent behind it - the playwright (Edward Norton), the director (Adrien Brody), the leading lady (Scarlett Johanssen), and the leading man (Jason Schwartzman). We also see the play itself in dazzling widescreen and full color, about a photographer named Augie (Schwartzman), who has brought his children to the remote Southwestern desert town of Asteroid City for its yearly Stargazer convention. His son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) is set to be one of the honorees for scientific invention.
The two parallel stories share some themes, mostly about grief, soldiering on in the face of uncertainty, and fleeting connections. The film is generally very light and playful, spending most of its time with a large cast of Anderson regulars in the gorgeously designed Asteroid City, which is taking its cues from retrofuturism, '50s B-movies, and Wile E. Coyote cartoons. All the visual trademarks of an Anderson film are here in force - extreme artifice, meticulous shot composition, bright colors, whip pans, animation, and a ton of visual gags. Newcomers to the Anderson universe include Tom Hanks, who shows up as Augie's father-in-law, and Maya Hawke, who plays a teacher in charge of a busload of youngsters on an overnight trip. I especially love the kids who play the Stargazer honorees - Ryan, Sophia Lillis, Ethan Josh Lee, Grace Edwards, and Aristou Meehan. I wish the entire film had been about the five of them, connecting through their nerdiness, playing memory games, and eventually banding together to take down the system.
Instead, the film is mostly about Augie, whose wife has just died, leaving him in an existential crisis. He's drawn to Midge (Johanssen), an actress who has rented the bungalow across from his own, and the two have odd but thoughtful conversations from their windows. And we keep cutting away from the play "Asteroid City" to the drearier black and white world of the television show, where the actors are sadder, darker versions of the characters they play. There are plenty of hijinks and humor - including some priceless deadpan line readings and meta jokes - but Anderson never seemed keen on letting me enjoy "Asteroid City" as entertainment. In fact, he deliberately cuts away from the play's exciting climax to tie things up in the television special. I respect why he did this, but it makes "Asteroid City" a little frustrating at times, and I can't count it among my favorite Anderson films, no matter how much I like some of the things in it.
Boy, do I like some of the things in this movie. I've always admired how Wes Anderson is able to create these fantastic little character portraits through only a scene or two. There are so many colorful folks here I'd love to spend more time with - Tilda Swinton as a devoted scientist, Jeffrey Wright as the loquacious general hosting the convention, with Tony Revolori as his aide-de-camp, Steve Carrell as a soft-spoken motel manager, Matt Dillon as a puzzled mechanic, Liev Schrieber, Hope Davis, and Stephen Park as assorted parents of the honorees, and Jeff Goldblum as a spoiler that got the biggest laugh out of me when it was revealed. Anderson's writing is as good as ever - so quick that it takes at least two watches to catch some of the wordplay. However, he's not above a good pratfull, a surprise song number, and there is literally a stop-motion roadrunner who flits around in the background of some scenes, saying "meep-meep."
In short, this is well worth a watch if you're a Wes Anderson fan, but I found it too deliberately obtuse to recommend without reservations. I continue to prefer Anderson's more recent films to his older output - I'd put "Asteroid City" above "The Life Aquatic" and "Darjeeling Limited," for example, for the filmmaking alone. It's just not quite at the heights of "Grand Budapest Hotel" or "The French Dispatch," though made very much in the same spirit.
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