Film Review: ‘Asteroid City’
PG-13 | 1h 45m | Comedy | June 23, 2023
I’ve never understood the attraction to bird-watching; the massive binoculars, the idiosyncratic hat—it leaves me as cold as a Wes Anderson movie.
But to each his own, you know? Like, for example, I’ve decided that I’m finally going to indulge a secret hankering and attend some top-fuel drag-racing this summer, where the fastest (11,000 horsepower) land vehicles on earth (apart from those Utah salt flat contraptions), reach speeds of 338.48 mph in just 660 feet (that current world record was set by a woman by the way). They say no words can describe the loud noise of it all. I sense, deep down, that action’s absolutely gonna float my boat.
And, so I think we can all agree by now that Wes Anderson movies are not even really an acquired taste; they fall more into the category of you either love them or you hate them. I liked “Moonrise Kingdom” and the one about the Fox. Hated “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “The Aquatic Life With Steve Zissou,” “Rushmore,” and “The Royal Tenenbaums.”
“Asteroid City” feels like Wes Anderson has finally arrived at the point of abandoning trying to appeal to a more mainstream audience, and will from here on out, cater exclusively to his hardcore fans.
He’s established his particular brand of bland weirdness, eccentricities, deliberate palaver, and he can now do what he pleases. And why not? It’s what every artist strives for. And it validates the job of the movie critic, which is nice.
‘Asteroid City’
“Asteroid City” has a multi-layered and rather confusing narrative, and not even the ridiculously top-talented ensemble cast is able to shed much light as to the goings on. It’s basically a meta-comedy about a play, about a TV show, that explores the creative people on both sides of the camera, and which comments on fame, writing, and the life-of-their-own phenomenon that stories accrue while being written.
“Breaking Bad’s” Bryan Cranston, similar to the narrator in Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town,” introduces us to a story that is a play written by one famous playwright, Conrad Earp (Edward Norton). This would be the story of Asteroid City, a town immortalized by an asteroid that lands where a children’s science fair is being held.
The kids and their families arrive at the desert town in the middle of nowhere. Much Anderson-style dialogue happens; lots of quirky and odd tidbits and factoids about nothing, that go nowhere, but nonetheless achieve a mild, and yet strange and lingering glow of 1950s’ Americana. Which has to do more with the desert-y, pastel-colored, vintage-vehicle-y, motel, diner, and cigarette vending machine ambience than anything else.
And suddenly, a space-ship appears over the science fair and a Wes Anderson cartoon alien descends a ladder and, in plain sight of everyone, absconds with the soccer-ball-sized asteroid. This sets a cat among the pigeons, lemme tell ya. Because now, everyone has to figure out what exactly this could mean. And whatever it means, you might miss the profundity of it due to a deep need to sneak a peek at your phone to see how much yawn-time you have left. Then again, you may be on the edge of your seat. Art is subjective.
Wrap Up
Despite “Asteroid City” being visually fetching, overall it’s just alienating. Maybe Anderson was shooting for Bertolt Brecht’s notorious “Verfremdungseffekt” (“alienation effect”) where the naturalism and emotion was meant to be drained from stage productions and the artifice of the theater highlighted, so that audiences could better concentrate on the words and meaning. After all, the narrator in “Asteroid City” makes it clear we’re watching a play.
Anderson’s whole body of work functions this way. And since Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt can be directly linked to his Marxist underpinnings, one could probably write a whole treatise on Wes Anderson’s politics, but that’s way beyond the scope of this review.
I can’t find literature to back it up, but I had a German acting teacher who knew Brecht, and who claimed that Brecht eventually rejected his own distancing effect theory, apparently referring to it as the “German-swear-word-deleted Verfremdungseffekt” in his latter days.
And so, for all intents and purposes, Anderson’s dialogue simply remains monotone, the sub-plots wacky, and the necessary component for holding an audience’s attention, conflict, like unto a flat tire stuck in some desert sand.
Tom Hanks would appear here to be filling in for one of Anderson’s main staple actors, Bill Murray. It’s the same type of character Murray usually plays. Anderson regulars Jason Schwartzman and Jake Ryan do their usual schtick, but you’ll most likely find that Scarlett Johansson, wielding a 50s-era Brooklyn accent, is the only actor in “Asteroid City” presenting a character you’d be curious to learn more about.
At his point, I’m not looking forward to anymore of these movies, but I’d actually like to live in a Wes Anderson type landscape. One where you could see the pennants of a top-fuel drag race venue flapping the distant breeze.
‘Asteroid City’
Director: Wes Anderson
Starring: Tom Hanks, Jason Schwartzman, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Liev Schreiber, Matt Dillon, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Jeffrey Wright, Hope Davis, Maya Hawke
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Release Date: June 23, 2023
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
