Spoilers ahead for Asteroid City.
There is a nuclear bomb nestled in the heart of Asteroid City. The eleventh film of indie darling Wes Anderson, Asteroid City seemed like a welcome shift for the king of twee, dipping his toes into McCarthy-era American science fiction the same way he dove headfirst, somewhat clumsily, into Japanese science fiction in his 2017 film Isle of Dogs. The deserts and charming puppetry are not, however, what makes Asteroid City the welcome shift it is. Like in Isle of Dogs, the science fiction is a distraction, meant to entice and provoke conversation that loops around the film’s point, weeding out the audience like cinematic Darwinism. I am afraid we might have failed Anderson’s last test, as Asteroid City’s detonation happens exactly one frame into the film’s narrative, refusing to be misinterpreted or overanalyzed. Bryan Cranston, as the host of a televised play in the 1950s, introduces us to the writer of said play, “Asteroid City”.
In many ways, Edward Norton’s portrayal of the enigmatic Conrad Earp feels slyly reminiscent of what the average audience must think of Anderson himself. Earp is charming but obtuse, obsessed with words at the detriment of meaning, and more than a little “sexually progressive”, to use the backhanded terminology of both 1950s America and your terrible relatives who rented The Grand Budapest Hotel and “didn’t see what all the fuss was about”.
Asteroid City oscillates between “Asteroid City” and Asteroid City, the black-and-white recording of a well-loved play and the impossibly colorful version of said play only the most willing of audience members could have crafted in their heads. As the film progresses, these two versions of the same tale crash into each other, the aspect ratio, chronologies, and perspectives crumbling under the weight of this deep need to be understood. Who is demanding to be understood, to be felt, to be perceived in a way they find acceptable? Is it Conrad Earp or Wes Anderson? This isn’t to imply that Asteroid City is autobiographical, I’m sure it is in as much as every film is autobiographical, but little more. What it is, instead, is a flaming arrow shot across time, piercing the last ten films of Anderson’s catalogue and staring down the barrel of the wreckage to prove that those films had pumping blood and beating hearts, that they were far cries from the ornate dollhouses they’re represented as by well-meaning creative teens and malicious users of generated imagery (incorrectly described as artificial intelligence). If The Grand Budapest Hotel was the culmination of the first age of Wes Anderson, and I would argue it is, the three films since have begun a new age, with Asteroid City as the most recent and most fiery declaration of this shift.
Much like “it was all a dream” endings, “everything is an in-universe fiction” can be a deflating revelation, and it was wise for the trailers and marketing to keep this aspect of Asteroid City well-hidden. Entice the audience with a magical, sun-drenched world of intrigue, and open the film with the uncomfortable truth that all that magic is fake even by fiction’s standards. It’s a silly thing to be bothered by when you look at it from a wide enough lens, the knowledge that the film’s events are fake wouldn’t be news to anybody over the age of three, but such reveals often feel like they miss the point of the magic of storytelling. We know it’s fake, why are you telling us that even in this darkened auditorium our imaginations are constrained by the logic and rules of the real world? The ground shakes. Our conception of Asteroid City might have been razed by minute one, but the aftershocks are on their way.
The aftershocks arrive, sparingly. As the audience settles into the technicolor fiction, we’re thrust out. Hong Chau steals the film (as she often does) in a long-take farewell to the director of “Asteroid City”. Bryan Cranston’s host pops into the colorful frame for a moment, almost realizing he’s impossibly no longer in monochrome, before quickly making an embarrassed exit. The aftershocks get louder and closer like booming thunder, denying the audience any chance to forget that this isn’t the Wes of The Life Aquatic or Moonrise Kingdom.
As the film approaches the climax, told with kinetic propulsion as the third act of “Asteroid City” goes off relatively smoothly, the final aftershock comes. And it threatens to burn the auditorium to the ground. Jason Schwartzman, as actor Jones Hall as war photographer Augie Steenbeck, exits the scene. For the duration of the film, Steenbeck has been funny, quick, but devoid of the charismatic honesty that Anderson’s greatest protagonists have had in spades. Schwartzman’s work in Rushmore or The Darjeeling Limited has shown he is at times uniquely capable of offering the X factor that Anderson’s films require, and yet here he is…stiff, tick-heavy, and overacting. This film’s greatest trick comes not with an acknowledgment of Jason Schwartzman’s failure, but of Jones Hall’s failure. The play’s director notes Hall is fidgeting with his pipe and moving his eyebrows too much, clear that Hall is overcompensating for a lack of confidence in the material. He says as much, complaining that he doesn’t understand what the play is even about, only that it’s affecting him personally in a way he can’t articulate. The director’s response of “don’t try to understand it, just keep telling the story” feels profound but without direction to the struggling actor, who doesn’t return to the scene, but instead delves further into the backstage. All the artifice of “Asteroid City” is meaningless to him, like a child lost in a supermarket where every shelf is lined with directionless purpose. Finally, at the end of his panicked trot, Hall exits the theater, standing on the balcony, as far away from the stage he can get without exiting the premises entirely.
Here, Hall sees the actress (Margot Robbie) who was originally cast to play his deceased wife in a previous version of the play that used her in one of Steenbeck’s dreams. The actress is in a different play now, on her own break, far more confident in her mediocre work than Hall is in his esoteric effort. She recites the deleted scene for him. It moves him, magnificently, violently. With this, Hall is able to return to the play. If “Asteroid City”, even a removed piece of it cut for pacing, can move him, maybe it can move the audience. The play is not the point, it is a delivery method.
Wes Anderson’s penchant for whimsy and precision are not the point, they are the delivery method. As Hall seismically comes to terms with this, he can now fulfill his purpose: to be in a Wes Anderson film. Not because he is good at raising his eyebrows on cue, but because he feels it. “You can’t wake up if you don’t go to sleep” is the philosophical march that is written on the flaming arrow of Asteroid City, chanted in harsh lights and Dutch angles at the climax of the film. As Jones Hall walks off stage and allows himself to succumb to the nuclear bomb nestled in the heart of “Asteroid City”, he can finally awaken. He finishes the play. The scene ends. The film ends.
He is ready, as are we, for Wes Fucking Anderson.
Davey Peppers 