The Wes Anderson archetype of the loquacious depressive has reached its definitive incarnation in his 11th feature, Asteroid City. Jason Schwartzman’s Augie Steenbeck is a photographer grieving the loss of his wife when he arrives in the titular desert town built around a natural phenomenon, but that doesn’t stop him or the people around him — such as a film actress in the form of Scarlett Johansson, a schoolteacher played by Maya Hawke and an astronomer embodied by Tilda Swinton — from talking. A lot. Perhaps more than any previous Anderson film, Asteroid City delivers reams upon reams of dialogue, of which one is certainly unable to fully grasp the entirety of on first viewing. It also packs in narration from Bryan Cranston, because the aforementioned story is actually a narrative-within-a-narrative, a supposed play mounted by a troupe of actors (making Johansson, for example, an actress playing an actress). Akin to The Grand Budapest Hotel, then—still Anderson’s premier masterpiece—this opts for a knotty, Russian nesting doll structure that delights and, sometimes, intentionally confounds.
That the film is able to be cryptic while still seemingly explaining itself so thoroughly is one of its great strengths. Scenes such as one where Schwartzman’s actor auditions for the part of Augie in front of the production’s playwright (Edward Norton) take pleasure in destabilizing our sense of reality and remind us that while Anderson’s style is seemingly so linear, symmetrical and legible, he’s more than capable of layering a sense of mystery underneath things.
Anderson has always been interested in exposing the human fragility that crouches just behind his elaborate Rube Goldbergian aesthetic design, but it comes to the fore prominently and affectingly in Asteroid City’s screenplay and line delivery. Lines get flubbed, words are spoken in the wrong order and the conversations are altogether looser and shiftier than we’re used to from his characters. More than ever, the bulging, robust cast here feels like they’re representing a group of disparate, lonely oddballs attempting to unite and find some togetherness while flailing mightily in the process.
A lot of real/fake interplay arises from watching a story that seems to be the main attraction for much of the runtime but is actually something more artificial. However, it still produces moments of genuine emotional revelation. At one point, Johansson’s Midge Campbell exclaims to Augie, “You really did it. That actually happened,” unlocking Asteroid City as a film about how people proceed through life in a largely superficial, disingenuous fashion until they accidentally happen upon something true and real. That, and a brief moment where (mild spoilers herein) Midge appears to be dead but is actually just practicing for a role — “I prefer to play abused alcoholics but I’m actually a very gifted comedienne,” she notes — both hit on a visceral level, cutting through what could be meta affectations. Or rather, amplified by them. Indeed, as the film wears on, it emerges as a rather earnest quest for existential meaning, especially within the subplot of Augie’s son, Woodrow (Jake Ryan).
The director’s last film, the strong but more uneven The French Dispatch, was nonetheless among Anderson’s most visually ambitious and dazzling outings, with its fluid aspect ratios and rigorously detailed frames wedded to each successive “magazine article’s” conceptual gambit. Asteroid City reprises Anderson’s use of black and white for the framing device here, but takes on an intentionally phony rendering of a 1950s Area-51-adjacent hamlet, even incorporating some goofy CGI. In its self-consciously theatrical performance of a small town, as well as its individual chapter title cards, Asteroid City is something like Anderson’s spin on Lars von Trier’s Dogville, which was shot on a soundstage mimicking a village where the actors pretended they were opening doors and enclosed in imaginary spaces. Like Dogville, Asteroid City is also a spoofing American exceptionalism and myths of Americana: at the Stargazers’ Convention (the reason, we should say, Augie and his family are in Asteroid City to begin with), there is a big, propagandistic sign that reads “for a safer America.”
But in contrast to von Trier, Anderson seems to harbor a real belief and conviction in a fulfilling life, albeit one still pockmarked by hurt and death. Asteroid City is aglow with a hope for new love. And especially since that earnest sentiment is woven in and around an intricately designed corpus, it’s rarely simplistic.
Photo courtesy of Focus Features
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