The Pitch: Few American filmmakers today inspire such simultaneous adulation and revulsion as Wes Anderson. Detractors accuse him of making quirky little dollhouses filled with nothing important, of leaning on his overly-mannered style to a suffocating degree; his fans, on the other hand, see the value in the constant sharpening of his strengths, of the ways his interests and stylistic touchpoints evolve from film to film. At this point, you really do either love him or hate him, or you want to have AI crib his style to turn your favorite franchise into whatever funhouse-mirror stereotype of Anderson you like.
With Asteroid City, his eleventh feature, we get maybe one of his most labyrinthinely-structured confections yet. Much like The Grand Budapest Hotel, Asteroid City is a story-within-a-story-within-a-story, introduced Rod Serling-like by a narrator (Bryan Cranston) who talks us through a “You Are There”-esque reenactment of the creation of a play called “Asteroid City.”
Nested inside that narrative, though, we see a televised version of the play itself, dressed up with the bright pastels and bold lettering of a 1950s postcard. A cadre of disparate folks — scientists, kid geniuses, cowboys, military personnel, all played by a murderer’s row of Anderson regulars — gathers in a small desert town for a kids’ science conference, only to be interrupted by a startling event that shakes the foundation of these explorers’ hearts in more ways than one.
Bottle Rocket: It’s strange to call a Wes Anderson film “a mess,” especially considering all of “Asteroid City”‘s quirky diversions and formal experimentation feels part and parcel with what the guy has been up to lately. And yet, Asteroid City feels just that, a bunch of interesting ideas in search of cohesion.
It’s a film about many things: On the surface, it’s a twee play on “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” by way of Robert Wise — Dutch angled spotlights and all. There’s also a dash of Willy Wonka in its cast of oddball kids (including standouts like newcomer Jake Ryan and IT’s Sophia Lillis) accompanied by harried parents (including Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Hope Davis, Steve Park, and Liev Schreiber).
It’s a rumination on the hopeful idealism of 1950s postwar Americana, and the house of cards on which all that possibility rested. It’s a winsome smile back at a notion of a (let’s face it, mostly white) America still beaming from its victory in WWII and not yet humbled by Vietnam. It’s also a story of familial grief, a singing-cowboy Western, and a sci-fi tale with ray guns.
Wes Anderson on the set of Asteroid City (courtesy of Focus Features)
