Wes Anderson’s movies have always had several layers to them. A good example is “The Grand Budapest Hotel”, which starts off with a young girl reading a book of the same name, turns into an interview with the aged author (Tom Wilkinson) of said book, which turns into the young author (Jude Law) interviewing the aged subject of that book (F. Murray Abraham), which, finally, turns into the subject of the movie itself, a story about the young subject of that book (Tony Revolori) and his apprenticeship at the Grand Budapest Hotel under the supervision of the esteemed M. Gustave (Joseph Fiennes). Except by now, after several tellings over decades of time, the style of the resulting movie has undergone several distinctive transitions in style (like a visual game of telephone) each more fantastical than the last. The final form of the Grand Hotel, exceptionally pink and ornate, is too fantastical for real life. But since we, the audience, know that what we are witnessing is a superimposed artifice on something that happened to real people, (It is not explicitly stated in “The Grand Budapest Hotel”, but the story takes place somewhere in Eastern Europe (maybe Budapest, Hungary) and the bad guys in the background are clearly the Nazis and then the Soviets of the 20th Century), Wes Anderson deftly gets to have it both ways. He can indulge his artistic vision without distracting from the underlying humanity of the characters.
This is a technique We Anderson used again in “The French Dispatch”, masterfully I would say. It is a technique that is employed again in “Asteroid City”, which presents itself as a Radio Drama (shot in black and white and hosted by Bryan Cranston) which is about the creation and production of a play (Edward Norton is the playwright), called “Asteroid City”. By the time we get to “Asteroid City”, we are in a very Wes Anderson and Co. tableau. It is a desert on the border of Oregon and California, sparse and clear, but not looking particularly hot. It is the 1950s and there are roadside diners, cadillacs, and atom bomb tests. The colors are mainly sky blue, tennis green, and sand. But for the same reason this technique was successful in “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “The French Dispatch”, it fails here. In those previous movies, the artifice was superimposed on what was a real story about real people. Here, the audience is told that there isn’t ultimately a real story about real people. We are told “Asteroid City” is a fictional play written by a playwright that isn’t based on anything that actually happened. As a result, it isn’t just the art direction that is artifice in this movie. All of the characters and story in “Asteroid City” are artifice too.
The play “Asteroid City” concerns an annual science camp for budding teenage astronomers that takes place in a sparsely populated village centered around an asteroid impact crater and the government research facility that studies it. The families of the teenage astronomers visit to have a science fair, with scholarship for the winner, and watch an astronomical event (something about ellipses). During this astronomical event, an alien spacecraft shows up, an alien gets out of the spacecraft, takes the asteroid, and leaves without a word. Now this happening could mean several things to all sorts of different people. Even if the people who witnessed the event didn’t know what it meant, that still would have meaning. However, if the event never happened and the playwright who made it up doesn’t know what it means, well, then it truly is meaningless.
This is the problem that “Asteroid City” has. In its backstory, the Radio Drama about the making of the play undercuts the play storyline itself by presenting it as something that didn’t happen, or could have happened a completely different way based on the whims of its creators. And if you are like me, and don’t find the travails of Writer’s Block or Actor’s Motivation all that original and/or interesting (like at all), you may find yourself wondering if the movie would be better off if every single black and white scene of the Radio Drama were cut from the movie. I don’t think it adds anything. I think it arguably distracts and trivializes the main story. At the very least, cutting those scenes would make the movie 15-20 minutes shorter. While I’m changing things, how about making Scarlett Johannson something other than a movie actress? Why are we watching an actress playing an actress practicing lines for a movie different from this movie which is a radio drama about the making of a play? The previous sentence isn’t even a joke. It should be.
Not that “Asteroid City” isn’t enjoyable in parts. I especially liked the speech of General Gibson (Jeffrey Wright) and the Cowboy/Alien song. I think there should have been much more of young Ricky Cho’s anti-authoritarian storyline. I enjoyed seeing Jake Ryan with another ten years on him (I first saw him in Moonrise Kingdom and Inside Llewyn Davis in 2013-2014 respectively) and Jason Schwartzman in a starring role, his first in a Wes Anderson film since Rushmore. It’s just mediocre.
Hey, they can’t all be winners. Wes Anderson and Co. produced four great movies in a row over the past decade (Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Isle of Dogs, The French Dispatch). It would be greedy to expect a fifth. All things must pass.
