The Southwest meets the celestial — and the stage — in Wes Anderson’s latest ditty “Asteroid City,” in which the auteur brings his singular blend of melancholy charm to a story about the stars, of all kinds.
Set in September 1955 in a tiny desert town known as Asteroid City (where the Arid Plains Asteroid touched down), the main plot takes place over the course of a week in which a motley crew who has descended on the town for the Asteroid Day and Junior Stargazer celebrations finds themselves unexpectedly stranded.
But the film itself is much more than that. Much like his previous outing, “The French Dispatch,” Anderson deploys a somewhat fussy, and slightly distancing framing device. The action that unfolds in Asteroid City is a play written by Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), directed by Schubert Green (Adrien Brody), and this is a televised staging (the TV broadcast is shot in black and white). The host (Bryan Cranston) walks the double audience through the behind-the-scenes action: Conrad’s writing process, the unconventional casting of Jones Hall (Jason Schwartzman) as the lead, Augie Steenbeck. We see the company performing improv exercises in a famed acting studio, the process of convincing a movie star to show up, and the dramatic demise of the director’s marriage.
