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.
Though we’re often pulled out of the colorful Southwest Space Age world of Asteroid City to visit this artsy, bohemian New York City theater world, the dreamlike, surreal quality to the theatrical framing is a necessary foil to the arch perfection of this shiny hamlet perched upon the desert landscape.
If the actors are ruled by the subconscious, their characters are ruled by science. The town is run with precise order by the motel’s manager (Steve Carell), and rigidly governed by military protocol, enforced by General Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright). Dr. Hickenlooper (Tilda Swinton) encourages the visitors to share in her enthusiasm for astronomical events and their underlying mathematics. But after a shocking alien encounter, the town is placed under a government quarantine, extending the weekend trip to a weeklong odyssey of the mind, as all is exposed under the clean desert sun.
At the heart of this story is a terrific Schwartzman as Hall-as-Augie, a widower war photographer with his four children in tow, and Midge (equally great Scarlett Johansson) the movie star mom of a Junior Stargazer. Two “catastrophically wounded people,” while everyone else watches the sky, Augie and Midge only have eyes for each other, gazing from their respective bathroom windows. They’re both obsessed with the practice of their art — and they make a fine pair, the discerning photographer’s eye observing the star who has become comfortable with her own visibility. Their brainiac kids, Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and Dinah (Grace Edwards) strike up a budding romance of their own behind the lens of a telescope, observing stars of a different kind.
Naturally, the film is dense with wordy witticisms, referential names and visual jokes, but Anderson allows us to linger, a little, in his carefully crafted design, which is not so much a jewel box but more like a diorama this time around. Though we’re told this is a “play,” it’s not filmed or presented as a contained theatrical experience, but rather as an intensely cinematic work, with a sentient, even humorous camera that reveals the space and characters in leisurely pans and textured Kodak film.
There’s a sense of wonder, and possibility, suffused throughout “Asteroid City” that comes from the melding of the scientific and the subconscious, as the group contends with the life-altering questions that arise from their encounter and subsequent confinement: a young religious school teacher (Maya Hawke) fumbles her lessons about the planets until she realizes that the folksy wisdom of a cowboy (Rupert Friend) and a sense of play can keep her tethered to the Earth. A stern, grieving father (Tom Hanks) finds comfort in the otherworldly rituals of his strange triplet granddaughters. Government officials abandon protocol in deference to forces beyond their control.
The funny and profound “Asteroid City” feels like the movie of the summer, eerily tapping into the current news about UFOs, while synthesizing the retro pop styling of “Barbie” with the atomic age anxiety of “Oppenheimer.” It all leads back to deeply existential queries and conversations. Questioning, curiosity and yearning for something more are all deeply humane and timeless pursuits, driven by love or a desire for it.
At one point, Matt Dillon’s mechanic says “it’s all connected but it’s not working,” a tossed off but startlingly incisive line that somehow captures the exact feeling of what life feels like in this moment. Indeed, Anderson hasn’t just delivered his best film in years, he’s also managed to capture the zeitgeist in his own unique way.
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‘ASTEROID CITY’
4 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: PG-13 (on appeal for brief graphic nudity, smoking and some suggestive material)
Running time: 1:45
How to watch: In wide theatrical release Friday
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