The first 20 minutes of Wes Anderson’s 11th film, Asteroid City, are dizzying — especially if you’re the kind of viewer who constantly pauses movies and TV shows to ask a loved one, “What’s she from?” or “Who’s that guy?” Accept that every actor you’ve ever seen is in this movie, and wipe the stars from your eyes.
Bryan Cranston — playing the host of a television show, á la Rod Sterling — is imparting important, metatextual information to you, laying out the exposition urgently, as if the story is already bubbling out of the lab and down the hall. Asteroid City is a play within an anthology television show within a film. And both the play and the film have the same name, which is also the name of the town in the play, where a few dozen characters congregate for the Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention.
Conrad Earp (Edward Norton) is the soft-spoken playwright who pens Asteroid City, and Anderson does us the favor of shooting his scenes — and all those about the making of the play — in black-and-white. The main character of the play is war photographer Augie Steenbeck, a father of four who has recently lost his wife. Augie is played by the self-serious and very committed Jones Hall, who is played by Anderson staple Jason Schwartzman (in our universe). Jones wins his role after showing up at Earp’s writing room with a gallon of the playwright’s favorite ice cream. Hall switches up his faux facial hair and delivers a monologue that proves he is perfect for the role. Seeing Schwartzman embrace both characters is a delight. The cast — most of whom play actors playing characters — also includes Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Stephen Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori and Jeff Goldblum.
Now to the play: It’s 1955 — Asteroid Day! Augie arrives in Asteroid City with his children in tow, including teen son Woodward, an honoree at the Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention. Woodrow is played by Jake Ryan, who you might know as the earnest kid of many sauces in Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade. We are pleased to welcome America’s Dad Grandad Tom Hanks to the Andersonverse as Augie’s father-in-law, who commands Augie to stop stalling and inform his grandchildren that their mother is dead. We learn in the grandiose opening remarks from the event’s host, General Grif Gibson, played by a buttoned-up Jeffrey Wright, that the convention celebrates the day in 3007 B.C. that a meteor collided with Earth in the very crater from which he gives his speech.
Movie star Midge Campbell, played by Scarlett Johansson in what must be an homage to Isabella Rossellini, quickly strikes up a deadpan flirtation with the recently widowed Augie. They are both “catastrophically wounded,” Midge muses, and he is the only attendee who does not appear starstruck by her. He has not only watched his wife suffer and die, but has also seen what we assume to be countless soldiers blown apart in the trenches and from the sky — and then he has relived each frame as he developed his film. The effects of World War II linger, and Asteroid City perfectly strikes that note of Cold War intensity — trauma frosted with fondant.
The characters look like they’ve walked out of a short story by John Cheever, thanks to legendary costumer Milena Canonero, who also designed the wardrobes for The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (those skull caps!), The Darjeeling Limited and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Starched pastel skirts and plaid button-downs dress the other attendees, who file into their seats in the crater for presentations and talks — Tilda Swinton as scientist Dr. Hickenlooper is especially droll, in a good way. The pacing is lightning-fast — something Adrien Brody (who plays the play’s director Schubert) and Wright describe rehearsing in an interview with Collider — and there’s no pause until the play’s apotheosis: when a UFO hovers above the crater and an alien emerges to steal the celebrated meteor.
Asteroid City
The wonder of the audience is palpable, and I was reminded of The Life Aquatic — when all of the characters pile into a submarine and at last behold the jaguar shark. Anderson’s films, at their best, show us the marvel of shared experience, when the mysteries of life, love and the world are revealed to characters in a manner that feels holy. Of course, this particular revelation brings more questions than answers. But the ol' U.S. government immediately quarantines the stargazing pilgrims in Asteroid City in a vain attempt to cover up the sighting.
All of this is foregrounded against a brilliant, maximalist set. Shot in the Spanish desert, the film features a background of artificial neon-orange rocks and bright-green cacti meeting an impossibly aqua-blue sky. The buildings — a diner, a science station, the identical tiny houses of the motel where proprietor (Steve Carell with a thin mustache and green visor) sells cocktails, snacks and real estate from vending machines — are as put-together as the costumes. An occasional roadrunner crosses the screen doing its best Warner Bros. “Beeb-beep, tang!” I did not see a Jello-O salad but left the theater wanting one for the first time in my life.
Anderson’s aesthetic of formal compositions and visual spectacle has at last met its destiny as a meme, with scores of TikToks imitating the writer-director’s signature moves. (He tells The Daily Beast that he has never seen these homages, nor has he seen any Tok ever. Classic.) With other post-Aquatic Anderson films, I have found the style overly theatrical and precious — and, worse, even pushing the story itself into the back seat. I think Anderson acknowledges this critique late in the film, when Jones (Schwartzman, playing the actor playing Augie Steenbeck) leaves the set to ask Schubert (the play’s director) if he’s doing it right. Schubert essentially says, “Well, the pipe, the lighter, the camera, the eyebrow are all a bit much. But yes, you’re doing it right.” Jones can’t do it any other way. And neither can Anderson.
Asteroid City is indeed a spectacle — each scene of the play is a visual manifestation of the era and its people. The children are optimistic dreamers — baby boomers through and through. Their parents are haunted by what they’ve seen and wary of what’s to come. But for a moment in history, they come face to face with cosmic knowledge that may change the world as they know it and reveal the mysteries of their own hearts.
