Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Asteroid City’ on VOD, Wes Anderson’s Most Visually and Thematically Ambitious Movie To Date

After The French Dispatch, I didn’t think Wes Anderson could get anymore, you know, Wes Andersonic. Then along comes Asteroid City (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video), which ratchets up the filmmaker’s unmistakable idiosyncrasies another notch or three – it might be his most nesting-dolled, deadpanned, symmetrical and side-panned movie yet. It’s definitely his most star-studded, considering he adds Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie, Steve Carell and Scarlett Johansson to his stable, alongside Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Adrien Brody, Edward Norton and Jeffrey Wright. Oh, and he also adds a space alien this time, just to make things less weird.

ASTEROID CITY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: This is a TV program, black and white, cropped to the Academy ratio, hosted by an unnamed gent played by Cranston. The show is about Conrad Earp (Norton), a playwright seated on a stage set, slaving away over his typewriter. He’s writing Asteroid City, which comes alive before our very eyes in grand, widescreen color: It’s 1955, the desert town of Asteroid City, pop. 87. A series of pans and spins show a gas station, a diner, a motel and a Point Of Interest, a massive crater from a meteor that crashed to the earth eons ago. Occasionally, a roadrunner scampers by; occasionally, a mushroom cloud appears on the horizon for yet another atom bomb test; occasionally, we’ll cut away from this setting and return to the black-and-white scene. Above the motel, a sign welcomes a group of – get a load of Anderson’s wording here – space cadets for a convention that will fill its rooms and the coin banks of its many vending machines, which dispense everything from cocktails to deeds for real estate parcels. 

Into this scene rolls a tow truck, pulling a car filled with Augie Steenbeck (Schwartzman) and his four children. The oldest, Woodrow (Jake Ryan), is one of the space cadets, and his three younger sisters are often framed like the Triple Goddess, likely with great deliberation, since I’m not sure Wes Anderson would do anything any other way. The mechanic (Matt Dillon) assesses the car. Augie calls his father-in-law Stanley (Hanks) to retrieve the girls since they’re stuck in Asteroid City; Augie and Woodrow will stay for the convention. Augie, a war photographer and an atheist, sits all the kids down and breaks the news to them that their mother passed away from an illness a while back, and he waited to tell them because the time was never right, and by the way, here’s a Tupperware container containing her ashes. 

Soon thereafter, others arrive for the convention: Midge Campbell (Johansson), a famous actress, and her space cadet daughter (Grace Edwards). June (Maya Hawke), a schoolteacher leading a busful of young would-be space cadets. Stanley, to pick up the girls. Dr. Hickenlooper (Swinton), a scientist at the Asteroid City observatory, and General Gibson (Wright), the convention host, who will give the young space cadets awards for their inventions. Montana (Rupert Friend), singer for a cowboy musical troupe. Various other parents and their space-cadet children (notable among them: Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Sophie Lillis, Stephen Park). The motel manager (Carell) greets them all. As promised, occasionally we’ll return to Norton’s playwright and Cranston’s TV host and meet other black-and-white characters played by Brody, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Robbie and others. Where this all leads, I won’t reveal; what this all means is up to you.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Wes Anderson films remind me of Wes Anderson films. Maybe they have color palettes recalling Pedro Almodovar, and sprawling, dynamic casts and ambitions like Robert Altman’s work. But they pretty much stand alone in modern cinema, Anderson’s influences getting lost in his own style. So: Asteroid City is very much a logical progression from The French Dispatch, and that, from The Grand Budapest Hotel, and that, from Moonrise Kingdom. It’s absolutely in line with the films of the latter half of his career.

Performance Worth Watching: I’m not sure who breaks your heart more here, Schwartzman or Johansson. When they’re sharing a scene – those are the moments when the emotional heart of Asteroid City reveals itself. 

Memorable Dialogue: As usual, Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola’s script is terrific. A few favorites:

“I love gravity. It might be my favorite law of physics at the moment.” – Woodrow

“All my pictures come out.” – Augie

“The time is never right.” – Augie

“The time is always wrong.” – Stanley

“You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep.” – many characters

Sex and Skin: Brief full-frontal Johansson.

Our Take: Asteroid City is a movie about a TV show about a play, and all of the boundaries between these “realities” blur at one point or another, unpredictably so, surely by design, because what kind of provocative fun would it be otherwise? This strikes me as Anderson’s commentary on the relationship between art and artist; the former always exposes the latter whether you want it to or not. That doesn’t mean we can psychoanalyze Anderson from our seat in front of the screen in any specific manner – which, frankly, would be far from enjoyable – but rather sense the broad, common anxieties of the human creature, most prominently the existential despair wrought from loneliness and uncertainty. 

Loneliness echoes in the interactions between Augie and Midge; their motel windows face each other, and they reveal their aching souls as he shows her his photos and she asks him to help her run lines from her latest script. The famous Anderson Deadpan has rarely been so justifiable as it is in Johansson’s performance, which reflects the irony of a woman who’s adored by so many but truly known or seen by so few; she puts up protective walls but shows no fear in disrobing for a stranger. Her pain is exquisitely wrought by Johansson, in one of the most thoughtful performances of her career.

As for uncertainty? That’s far more absurd than loneliness, and manifests via atomic-era fears and the arrival of a UFO smack in the middle of the awards ceremony for the space cadets (by the way, the film frequently calls them “junior stargazers,” but I assert they’re soon to be space cadets, as their journey from hopeful youths to bewildered adults is just beginning). You never know when some otherworldly decree will seemingly descend from the heavens, or essentially from nowhere, to wreak havoc: An illness that kills a mother of four, for example. Or an auto accident. An alien being with skinny appendages and big, mysterious eyes? Less likely, but maybe. 

None of these types of occurrences “make sense” in the grand scheme of things; an artist like Conrad Earp explores the uncertainty in his writing, just as Augie tries to give perspective on the miseries of war in his photos, just as Midge taps into grief to deepen a character, just as Anderson uses his exacting visual methods to create an illusion of control in his films, while the world outside of them offers very little of it. The irony and futility of Anderson’s method generates a bleak sense of comedy – the implication: we’re all suffering here, might as well laugh about it – that finds elegant purchase with the sweet innocence that underscores his younger, more exuberant characters, who play childlike games until they fall in love with each other and take a fast track to a broken heart.

That feeling of profound connection and disconnection is a common thread throughout Anderson’s films, the latter exemplified by his shoebox-diorama aesthetic, with his crisp, linear camera movements and meticulously arranged set pieces. Asteroid City finds Anderson leaning ever heavier into his Andersonness, as unconcerned as ever whether you love or hate it. I believe the film to be his most visually and thematically ambitious, and a potential masterpiece; I’m not sure if I wholly understood it – that may come with inevitable and likely compulsive repeat viewings – but I loved it. I found myself laughing frequently at odd times, as if moments of extreme silliness and hearty intellect had accumulated past my capacity to contain them, and my mind-body/body-mind didn’t know how else to release the tension. It’s a thoroughly sad, thoroughly ridiculous film, absolutely by design. 

Our Call: To quote the script: Gadzooks. STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.