After COVID delayed the release of The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson has wasted no time in getting his follow up, Asteroid City, to us (with two more movies – a Roald Dahl adaptation and a father-daughter drama starring Michael Cera – also coming imminently). If you have any fears that the project might feel a little rushed because of this, though, you can assuage them now – Asteroid City is another hyper-stylish, melancholic triumph from Anderson, and it’s just great to be back in the World of Wes (especially as it’s his first slice of Americana in over a decade) so swiftly.
As all the marketing has suggested, Asteroid City mostly revolves around the eponymous desert town in the American southwest, built around a meteorite impact crater, and a mid-‘50s ‘Young Stargazers’ Convention’ which is interrupted by the arrival of a genuine alien. Yet, that’s only part of the story – you see, the events in Asteroid City are actually part of a play being put on in the film’s ‘real world’, the flashes to which frame the action, giving additional depth to the goings on whilst simultaneously keeping the audience at a distance.
Anderson’s films have long traded in artifice, but none have quite doubled down on it like this. Actors play actors who are playing actors, whilst characters in the play break the fourth wall before breaking the fourth wall again in ‘reality’ (is that, then, the eighth wall? or the sixteenth?). Initially, it is a little jarring, but once it all comes together, Anderson is able to work his irresistible magic, keeping his typical balance of big laughs and stifled tears as his ensemble of broken people attempt to understand themselves and one another and the incomprehensible cosmos. It’s also a technique that allows him to extol the virtues of artistic collaboration, a very nice message from an auteur whose seemingly individualistic stylings have made him one of the 21st Century’s very few household name directors.
At the heart of both layers of the story is Jason Schwartzman, playing war photographer Augie Steenbeck in the play and his talented but befuddled actor behind the scenes. In both worlds, as it were, Schwartzman gets the gut-punch scene and he’s just wonderful, whether playing a bereaved widower struggling with guilt over falling in love again or trying to find a way to explain the play to himself. Around him are the typical cast of Anderson regulars, from Tilda Swinton as an inquisitive scientist to Adrien Brody as the play’s heartbroken director, while new additions to his ensemble prove to be perfect fits.
The teens who make up the Young Stargazers, including Augie’s son Woodrow (Jake Ryan), are all great, reminiscent of the Moonrise Kingdom kids, and big new marquee names like Scarlett Johansson and Tom Hanks slot in effortlessly. As actress Midge Campbell (and her behind the scenes counterpart), Johansson is tremendous fun, wry and witty and more loving than she lets on, and Hanks, to oversimplify things, gets the Gene Hackman in Royal Tenenbaums role as Augie’s wealthy and stern, yet entirely empathetic, father-in-law Stanley.
There’s not a weak link in the cast (and I’d be remiss to not mention Jeffrey Wright, who, between this and French Dispatch, is the best addition to the Anderson troupe in years, just absolutely nailing his very specific tones), and Asteroid City is one of Anderson’s very kindest films. Even when the government puts Asteroid City into a lockdown following the arrival of the alien (a silent, stop-motion creation), there are no antagonists, just people who are mostly thrilled to be around one another, discovering new secrets of the universe together. It’s lovely stuff.
It almost goes without saying at this point, but Asteroid City is another visual marvel from Anderson. It’s not as beautiful as The Grand Budapest Hotel or as staggeringly intricate as The French Dispatch, but Asteroid City is still a place to get lost in and fall in love with. Robert Yeoman’s cinematography (fun fact: his camera team includes one of Hanks’s sons, Truman) is as clean and crisp as ever, using the desert sun for some moments of just outrageous prettiness, and Alexandre Desplat has turned out another twinklingly catchy score to complete the gently hypnotic atmosphere.
For all its grand scope and its cast of roughly one million A-list stars, Asteroid City ends up feeling like one of Anderson’s most personal movies, looking at how we try to find meaning in our own lives and choices through the arts and sciences and whether or not these attempts are just folly. It’s not quite on the level of his twin masterpieces of Tenenbaums and Budapest Hotel, but this invitation inside the head of one of our most vital and distinctive filmmakers is still quite the gift. In the age of lazy TikTok and ghoulish AI covers of his work, Asteroid City dunks on Anderson’s imitators with a story told in a way that truly only he could manage.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 
Saw the trailer for this, does look interesting.