Aster­oid City

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.

For this one, with its tele­scop­ic sights set on the out­er pock­ets of exis­tence, trav­ellers are loaded up with a gold­fish bowl space hel­met, a vin­tage SLR cam­era, a vend­ing machine Mar­ti­ni and some indus­try-grade seat­belts, all the bet­ter for pro­tect­ing from the whiplash one might expe­ri­ence from tak­ing in an extreme­ly tall tale which trav­els at rough­ly 17,500 mph.

So what is this strange object? 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 as 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?

A short digres­sion: for this writer, see­ing 1998’s Rush­more at the cin­e­ma at an age where my mind and taste were still rather mal­leable, my hori­zons were jar­ring­ly, thrilling­ly expand­ed. Aster­oid City recre­ates that bliss­ful for­ma­tive feel­ing, in that it plays like Anderson’s pris­tine moment of artis­tic tran­scen­dence, where he has final­ly passed through the star­gate of whim­si­cal method and has almost become at one with the medi­um he so adores. As one of mod­ern cinema’s arch nos­tal­gists, and (one might spec­u­late) a per­son who believes he was born in the wrong era, it’s ter­ri­bly mov­ing to be made to feel nos­tal­gic about the abid­ing plea­sures of his own work.

But let’s back-track for a sec: ​“pris­tine” is most cer­tain­ly le mot juste to describe Aster­oid City, as even for a direc­tor prized for his com­po­si­tion­al fas­tid­i­ous­ness, this one refines his modus operan­di into some­thing that is both immac­u­late and a lit­tle more refined than usu­al. It’s also pris­tine in its merg­ing of script, visu­als, edit­ing and per­for­mance, a film where all the mov­ing parts purr in a way that’s almost erot­ic in its plea­sure-giv­ing capacities.

And yet, the sto­ry com­pris­es tan­gled loose ends, dis­cur­sive decon­struc­tions of the dra­ma, and a sense that we are mere­ly observ­ing a group of peo­ple in the process of pass­ing through the land­scape. One might even go so far as to describe this as Anderson’s first non-nar­ra­tive fea­ture, and it’s a for­mal attire that suits him mightily.

To drill down to specifics, 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 an unspec­i­fied south­west­ern US state. 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 he’s actu­al­ly 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 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/​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.

From the per­spec­tive of influ­ence, Ander­son has always been chalked up as an acolyte of François Truf­faut, with Jean-Pierre Léaud’s loqua­cious fop Antoine Doinel as his inspi­ra­tional supreme being. This new film might con­sti­tute a sur­pris­ing and ful­some piv­ot to the loose-leaf mod­ernism of Jean-Luc Godard. There’s a vivid expres­sive­ness to the visu­als, a jazz-like impul­sive­ness to the struc­ture, and an arch poet­i­cism to the dia­logue, where cadence, tim­bre and into­na­tion are as impor­tant as mean­ing, if not more so.

The sheer musi­cal­i­ty of the direc­tion and the flu­id con­nec­tiv­i­ty of images takes Anderson’s craft to dizzy new heights. The set-square 90-degree pans that intro­duce us to the dusty burg of the title feel like they’ve been fond­ly ripped out of Week-end or Pier­rot le Fou. It con­sti­tutes the pop­py essence of JLG in his late-six­ties pomp. As an ode to the joys of col­lec­tive endeav­our, you might even say this is Anderson’s most open­ly left­ist work to date.

A lit­tle more French New Wave while we’re on the sub­ject: one of the rea­sons why Jacques Demy​’s 1967 film Les Demoi­selles de Rochefort is one of the great­est ever made is because the direc­tor empha­sis­es the melan­choly notion that cin­e­ma is a machine that allows you to make friends with peo­ple, and then by design, snatch­es those very same peo­ple away from you, for­ev­er. It is a sto­ry about the ran­dom inter­sec­tions and serendip­i­tous roman­tic clinch­es that occur between a group of radi­ant youths across a week­end in the pas­tel-hued port town of the title.

Aster­oid City adopts a sim­i­lar tem­plate, chron­i­cling a brief, event­ful gath­er­ing in a place on the edge of nowhere, and then teas­ing us with the notion that all such things must even­tu­al­ly come to an end. The play ends, the play­ers dis­band, they make some­thing else, and faint mem­o­ries become doc­u­ments of record. Both are films about the gid­dy excite­ment of going to the cin­e­ma, and that feel­ing of sor­row when the lights final­ly go up and the flick­er­ing image has gone away.

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.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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