It is an incredible feature that perhaps only Wes Anderson possesses that twenty-seven years into his filmmaking career, each of his motion pictures remain astutely original and unlike anything the filmmaker has done before. As the curtains open and the lights dim, as the talking hushes and the popcorn rustles, the first frames in his typical 4:3 aspect ratio style beckons yet more absurd originality that one can’t help beam at.
Anderson has somewhat become the centre case study in the debate of Artificial Intelligence’s role in the future of filmmaking. The AI lunatics on the Twittersphere are churning out replicant spoofs of ‘Harry Potter’, ‘Succession’, and ‘The Lord Of The Rings’ in his signature meticulous style. It is therefore refreshing and even a little enthralling that ‘Asteroid City’ is one of Wes Anderson’s most original and convoluted films of his filmography to date.
The eleventh feature of Anderson is set in the desert town of Asteroid City in the American Southwest, named after the crater from a meteor strike in 3007 BC, of which it is the centrepiece of the small town. However in true Wes Anderson style, the film is structured in a not-so-simple style. It is also a play written by Conrad Earp, played by a delightfully fruitful Edward Norton.
Perhaps this is the reason for which ‘Asteroid City’ is by no means Anderson’s best feature. Whilst the intercutting storyline of tales from different times worked beautifully for ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’, it is a hallmark feature that has stunted the brilliance of his last two features, creating an inability to invest into the characters storylines as they are abruptly truncated every time the film cuts back to ‘reality’. The lack of comittment to the reality of the absurdity leads to a lack of empathy to the typically melancholic storylines of Anderson’s ensemble cast.
The film centres around Augie Steenbeck, a war photographer and recent widower father of four played by a brilliantly hollow Jason Schwartzman. Families are assembling in ‘Asteroid City’ for the Junior Stargazers’ prize-giving ceremony, which is cut short by an impromptu visit from an Extra-Terrestrial.
It’s an incredibly ambitious storyline that is confounded to this beautifully created fictional middle-of-nowhere town that has a distant whiff of Radiator Springs. We zig-zag from storyline to storyline, principally focusing on the relationship between Steenback and film star Midge Campbell played by a Marilyn Monroe-esque Scarlett Johansson. A highlight of the unlikely haphazard grouping of characters is teacher June Douglas (Maya Hawke) and a down-to-earth cowboy by the name of Montana (Rupert Friend), whose fusion through romance is reminiscent of the earliest days of Anderson’s features where opposites attract in the most unlikely and most kinetic possible fashion. Once more, this is perhaps the reason in which ‘Asteroid City’ fails to shoot to the heights of his previous films, as any character development is either curtailed by another storyline or timeline.
With that being said, it is almost a certainty nowadays with a Wes Anderson feature that the backdrop is drop-dead gorgeous, however it must be said that the production design is a new high for Anderson and Co. Gone are the saturated yellows and purples of ‘The French Dispatch’ and ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’, and in are the pastel turquoise blues and whites of Asteroid City. There are some simply stunning shots in the picture, most memorably a scene where stranded parent passer-byers including J.J. Kellogg (Liev Schreiber), Roger Cho (Stephen Park) and a bumblingly-reversed no-name motel owner played by Steve Carell sit in the outside garden of the motel. Through the haze of a polka-dotted marquee does the sun strike the characters, that is so visually luscious that one cannot help but smile just at that simple feat.
Fundamentally ‘Asteroid City’ is a collection of vignettes from inter-cutting storylines and timelines, that evoke the different reactions from different generations to being quarantined due to a visit from a UFO. It is it’s biggest flaw that makes one pine for a more simple storyline, however one cannot but sit back and revere the beauty and innovative originality that Anderson creates. Emotionally it is disappointingly hollow and empty, and one the frustration at the film is perhaps not at its down floors, but rather the potential of ‘Asteroid City’ being one of Wes Anderson’s most charming and down-to-earth films in decades.
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