the life non-aquatic
Is 'Asteroid City' The Best Wes Anderson Film In Years? Here's What The Reviews Say
Wes Anderson, the much beloved writer/director, has never ventured into science fiction before. Romance, comedy, drama, yes — but never anything close to aliens in the sky. "Asteroid City" is his 11th feature film, and has maybe the most stacked cast in movie history. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews and will release in theaters June 16, 2023.
The cast: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Stephen Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Jeff Goldblum, Sophia Lillis, Fisher Stevens, Rita Wilson and Bob Balaban.
Now, onto what the critics are saying.
The (unexpected) premise
"Asteroid City" tells the story of a three-day "Asteroid Day" event in the titular Asteroid City, a desert stopover in the Western U.S. known for the asteroid crater — actually, it's a meteorite crater, but why quibble? — just off the main drag (and the only drag, for that matter). But it's set in 1955 and begins with Bryan Cranston as a TV announcer explaining that we're about to see a behind-the-scenes program detailing the creation of a hit stage play about the events in Asteroid City.
Anderson's choice to frame "Asteroid City" as a play within a teleplay within a film — yeah, you read that right — is simply the first excellent element of this delightful film. As the events of the story open, the audience is greeted by Bryan Cranston's narrator character, who sets the scene concerning a prolific American playwright and his epic "Asteroid City." It's a really fun plot device that is both unexpected and totally welcomed, allowing the audience to effectively ponder the deeper questions of the film much like the characters eventually do, especially when they break the illusion of their presence in the "fictional" story. Edward Norton plays the legendary playwright, Conrad Earp, who only exists outside of the central story in small world-shaping cameos, and he also brings a sweet sense of creative magic to the overall tale. After all, writers are the ones who truly shape our worlds, real or imagined.
The titular Asteroid City is a great setting
So far, so typical, even if Asteroid City itself is as vibrant and elaborate a location as Anderson has ever conceived. Home to exactly 87 people, this one-pump town is split along either side of a long desert highway and criss-crossed by a set of train tracks the government uses to transport everything from pecans to nuclear warheads. There's a luncheonette with 12 stools, a motor-court with 10 cabins, and a vending machine where you can buy tiny plots of real estate as if they were candy bars. There’s an unfinished off-ramp that strands cars about 15 feet in the air, and — in the distance — a massive crater formed by a meteorite that's been waiting at the bottom of it for who knows how many years.
Set in a tiny red-rock Southwest Americana desert town in 1955, it may be the director's most intricately ornate and fetishistic piece of world-building. Watching the movie, one glories, for a while, in the retro kitsch nostalgia and sheer stylized play that went into the creation of Asteroid City (pop. 87), with its '40s-meets-'50s diner and motor court and one-pump gas station, its mesas that look like they're made out of balsa wood, its occasional scrubby cactus, its giant meteorite crater that serves as a tourist attraction, and its intermittent atomic-bomb-test mushroom cloud that goes off in the distance. There are some good jokes, like the row of vending machines that includes one that sells tiny plots of land, as well as archly obvious ones, like the police-vs.-crooks demon car chases that occasionally rip through town.
The Wes Anderson newcomers are delightful
If emotional focus splinters a little across Anderson's starry ensemble, his wit and way with actors remain joyous. Effectively playing Bill Murray, Tom Hanks wears his Anderson-ian predecessor's trousers well. Maya Hawke impresses as a teacher doggedly clinging to facts amid chaos, while Scarlett Johansson graduates from Isle of Dogs voicework in doubled-up roles as dark-haired/blonde actors struggling with toxic directors.
New additions to the director's informal repertory company in this cosmic comedy about love, family and precocious geniuses also include Tom Hanks, Steve Carell, Hong Chau and Margot Robbie.
Wes Anderson has never been more Wes Anderson before
"Asteroid City's" eccentricity, its elegance, its gaiety, and its sheer profusion of detail within the tableau frame make it such a pleasure. So, too, does its dapper styling of classic American pop culture. With every new shot, your eyes dart around the screen, grabbing at all the painterly little jokes and embellishments, each getting a micro-laugh.
The screenplay is one of Anderson's funniest, and yet a darker thread courses through it. That's in part thanks to the exploration of death that comes with the Augie-Woodrow plotline, but there's also something more existential at play. Though it's hard to say whether the pandemic and lockdowns were Anderson’s direct inspirations, if you pierce all of the perfect retro production design there's a thoroughly timely fascination with paranoia and confinement and the notion of making art under those circumstances.
Wes Anderson finally achieves peak weirdness with "Asteroid City," premiering in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, in which a visiting space alien seems right at home with the even stranger humans making this close encounter. This is not a bad thing. In fact, it's a very good thing for fans of the filmmaker, who adore Anderson’s idiosyncratic storytelling, quirky casting and obsessive production design.
There has always been a method to Wes Anderson's madness, but Asteroid City reminds you that there is also a madness to his method. And that, ultimately, is what makes him a great artist.
TL;DR
Wes Anderson returns with one of his most dazzling, rich and playfully self-reflexive films to date, brought to eye-popping life by an all-timer ensemble.
Truly delightful. Wes Anderson leans into his trademark eccentricities for a trip to the desert that won’t win any converts but will keep the Anderson faithful content.
The director's layered latest is his best film in years.
