Aster­oid City – first-look review

The last time Wes Ander­son took us on a class trip to the the­atre, option­al safe­ty glass­es and earplugs were pro­vid­ed to all patrons. With his scin­til­lat­ing and arch­ly metafic­tion­al new work, Aster­oid City, he allows us to bask in the friv­o­lous delights of a play, while also care­ful­ly dis­man­tling the process of artis­tic cre­ation in real time. It’s the type of film you might imag­ine the great Max Fis­ch­er him­self might have direct­ed had his scholas­tic brief encom­passed a bells-and-whis­tles homage to mid-cen­tu­ry pulp sci­ence fiction.

It is, on one lev­el, an adven­ture pic­ture about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of deep space explo­ration, about meek extrater­res­tri­al vis­i­tors, the fam­i­ly unit in cri­sis (of course!), and a slew of beau­ti­ful lost souls suc­cumb­ing, at the expense of love, to the allure of the work­ing life. Or more specif­i­cal­ly, a love of mak­ing things with your hands. On anoth­er lev­el, it is a mov­ing paean to the actors whose expres­sive faces, whose Chablis-dry line deliv­er­ies, and whose ardent com­mit­ment to what they view as a grand and coher­ent vision, has pow­ered Anderson’s pic­tures for com­ing-up-to 30 years.

Clas­sics of the Ander­son cor­pus such The Roy­al Tenen­baums, The Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dis­patch employ a lit­er­ary fram­ing device to both jus­ti­fy the expres­sion­ist flights of fan­cy on show, and use this play­ful dis­con­nect to mine con­cen­trat­ed lev­els of human emo­tion. Aster­oid City is about the sto­ry, and the telling there-of. It’s the most gor­geous cin­e­mat­ic Matryosh­ka Doll you ever did see. Or more like lit­tle nest­ing space ves­sels, break­ing apart as they ascend into the Tech­in­col­or atmos­phere. Pas­sion radi­ates from the screen, but in a way that’s more self-crit­i­cal and less earnest than his pre­vi­ous 12-gun-salute to the clas­sic-era scribes of The New York­er mag­a­zine, The French Dis­patch. Could this be his mas­ter­piece? Could it?

The film offers a chron­i­cle of the qui­et­ly pro­found machi­na­tions that occur in a cul­tur­al­ly spar­tan yet sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly fecund Amer­i­can desert tract that’s locat­ed on farm route six, mile 75 in a south­west­ern US state that isn’t spec­i­fied. Jason Schwartz­man (an Ander­son totem on sparkling form) plays Augie Steen­beck, a war pho­tog­ra­ph­er with a geo­met­ri­cal­ly cut beard and intense mien that leads him to resem­ble Orson Welles’ hir­sute mys­tery man, Mr Arkardin (though was in fact inspired by Stan­ley Kubrick). He’s in town with his ​“braini­ac” son, Woodrow (Jake Ryan) to present an inven­tion at this year’s Junior Stargaz­er fes­tiv­i­ties, in which a gag­gle of sci­en­tists, mil­i­tary folk and intrigued onlook­ers gath­er to wit­ness a once-in-a-gen­er­a­tion cos­mic event.

Every­one is shacked up in a motel run by a raff­ish and relaxed Steve Carell (a sur­pris­ing­ly won­der­ful new addi­tion to Ander­son stock play­ers), and the recent­ly-wid­owed Augie shares adja­cent win­dows (and more) with unas­sum­ing grande dame of the big screen, Midge Camp­bell (Scar­lett Johans­son, remind­ing us why we fell in love with her in the first place).

Mean­while, timid school­teacher June Dou­glas (Maya Hawke, anoth­er love­ly new addi­tion) attempts to cor­ral the end­less­ly inquis­i­tive mem­bers of her class while also being roped in by wan­derin’ cow­boy bal­ladeer, Mon­tana (Rupert Friend, who frankly deserves his own spin-off pic­ture). The last per­son to men­tion is Bryan Cranston, our angu­lar, Rod Ser­ling-like nar­ra­tor who con­nects the hot fic­tion­al plains of Aster­oid City to the cold ​“real­i­ty” of a com­pa­ny of strug­gling six­ties the­atre actors search­ing for moti­va­tion through slo­ga­neer­ing and self-doubt.

Ander­son uses these par­al­lel timelines/​realities as a way to com­ment, with bruis­ing hon­esty, on his own place as a writer and direc­tor, while also cre­at­ing a cel­e­bra­tion of what it means for real work­ing to play-act for a liv­ing. By con­stant­ly under­scor­ing the arti­fi­cial nature of the sto­ry, he has land­ed on a way to make every­thing feel more mov­ing, where ​“find­ing” a char­ac­ter is akin to dis­cov­er­ing a new con­stel­la­tion and earn­ing the priv­i­lege to name it.

All this to say, Aster­oid City is Anderson’s most com­plete, rich and sur­pris­ing film to date, and per­haps his most auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal in some obscure, alle­gor­i­cal way, in that it stands as tes­ta­ment to how film­mak­ing is about bring­ing artists togeth­er and attun­ing them to a spe­cif­ic wave­length. On a more super­fi­cial lev­el, it’s a film which push­es his patent­ed funny/​sad dichoto­my to its wildest and most enjoy­able extremes.

It runs you through the emo­tion­al wringer, one minute offer­ing a jaw-drop­ping train-car­riage screw­ball work­out wor­thy of Howard Hawks, the next, giv­ing a hor­ren­dous­ly mov­ing and per­fect­ly judged lit­tle scene which involves one of the actors who was cut from the final pro­duc­tion. Wes has punc­tured through the stratos­phere, and the only ques­tion left to ask is, will he ever turn back to Earth, or ven­ture off into the infinite?