Asteroid City

3/5

We all know what to expect from a Wes Anderson film. Pastel colours, fast, deadpan dialogue, immaculately crafted sets, and his signature cinematography style in which the background feels completely flat compared to the characters. 2014’s Grand Budapest Hotel was arguably the peak of this approach (and Anderson’s commercial breakthrough), combining gorgeous aesthetics with real emotional weight. But there has been a sense that in recent films, Anderson has regressed into self-parody. The dialogue is too fast paced, the aesthetics too twee, and too many A-listers popping up in minor roles. Is Wes phoning it in?

Despite my scepticism, I couldn’t help but be pulled in by the premise for Asteroid City. The setting of 1950s America seems perfect for Anderson’s style, with its innocent atmosphere and undercurrent of darkness, not least from the looming threat of nuclear annihilation. The story sees a motley cast of people converge on the titular town in south western America, for the annual Junior Star Gazers competition – sponsored by the United States military (more on the meta-setting of the televised play later). Many of the classic Andersonian themes are present: coming of age, represented by the precocious tweens displaying their scientific inventions; grief, personified by Jason Schartzmann’s recently windowed war photographer; and bungling authorities, in the form of the army, led by oddball General Gibson, played by Jeffrey White. Things go pear-shaped when the competition is interrupted by what appears to be an alien visitor, and the town is quickly placed under lockdown by the army.

The setting allows Anderson to have loads of fun, showing a quaint, slightly malfunctioning version of the American Dream. The town’s motel has a coin machine for everything, from cocktails to real estate (pop in a coin, buy a plot of land). There are some great bit-parts, such as Matt Dillon’s mechanic, completely bewildered by the fault in Augie Steenbeck’s (Schwartzmann) broken down car. The dialogue, sharp has ever, is some of the funniest I’ve heard in an Anderson film, particularly the lines involving one of the child geniuses, J.J., who is constantly asking the people around him to dare to do something stupid and dangerous, much to the exasperation of his father, played by Liv Schreiber. 

Everyone gets their moment, but there are too many moments, too many threads to follow, for us to really care about any of the characters the way we cared about Gustav and Zero in Grand Budapest Hotel. Jason Schwartzmann is the heart of the film, and he does convey a great deal of wistfulness in his gazes across the motel, and the way he tries to do his best for his children. The other main problem is the film’s ‘real’ setting – a television programme about the creation of a play, ‘Asteroid City,’ written by esteemed playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton). In this sense, the action that takes place in ‘Asteroid City’ is not real in the context of the film. I’m sure Anderson is making a thoughtful comment about artistic creation, but even in this setting we are overwhelmed by characters and subplots, like the theatre director whose wife has left him for a baseball star. We don’t see quite enough of the meta-setting to really get why it’s important, and at times seeing the cast playing other actors and their Asteroid City characters in the ‘play’ feels like a (much, much more) whimsical parallel to Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals. I feel the film would have been stronger if the play element was cut entirely, and we could spend some more time with the people of ‘Asteroid City.’

The film grasps at depth, but doesn’t quite reach it. The whimsy is certainly there, but it lacks the peril provided by the onset of war and genocide in Grand Budapest Hotel, or the threatening presence of the social workers in Moonrise Kingdom. There are hints of this, such as when things get dicey between Liv Schreiber, wielding his son’s homemade death ray, and a soldier trying to maintain order. Asteroid City lives in the shadow of the Cold War, with atom bombs exploding in the distance (take note Christopher Nolan) and General Gibson’s warning to the children that “if you wanted a nice quiet life, you chose the wrong time to be born” (in what feels like Trotsky reference). But ultimately the General isn’t much of a bad guy, just another character caught up in the chaos. Which isn’t entirely a bad thing – the film zips along at pace (1 hour 45 minutes feels like a breeze compared to most films these days) and is tremendously good fun. 

Looking for more films like this? Check out: Moonrise Kingdom, Back to the Future, Matinée, Nope