Wes Anderson’s ‘Asteroid City’: An oasis of wonder

Twenty-five years since Rushmore, Wes Anderson’s love for the theatre of life as well as that of the purely performative kind has not waned one bit. His actors, the vibrant setting that they are placed in, and the roles that they slip into are a central part of the canvas that the writer-director brings alive in Asteroid City, banking on his own unique visual and directorial playbook.

The wonderfully artful Anderson’s latest offering, which premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, is about a play within a film that pans out in a flat, clear desert landscape where one can see all the way to the distant horizon. The view is broken only by characteristically surreal structures and spaces that enhance the tactility of the images.

The film received a six-minute standing ovation at the Grand Theatre Lumière. The applause may not have been the longest or the loudest for any film at this year’s edition of Cannes, but it indicated that at least parts of the audience related to the colourful and whimsical, if not overtly dramatic, world that Anderson has rustled up.

(L-R) Jason Schwartzman, Wes Anderson, Scarlett Johansson and Tom Hanks attend the Asteroid City red carpet during the 76th Cannes Film Festival
| Photo Credit:
Getty Images

The vivid vastness of the immaculately constructed frames defines it like nothing else can. Asteroid City is the kind of film in which comprehending the story is not as important as the telling of it. “I don’t understand the play,” says Jason Schwartzman’s Augie Steenbeck in a scene. The director of the play, Schubert Green (Adrien Brody), replies: “Doesn’t matter. Just keep telling the story.” That, in significant ways, holds true for the film.

Adrien Brody attends the Asteroid City red carpet
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Getty Images

The ensemble cast of Asteroid City, written by the director with frequent collaborator Roman Coppola, is a veritable who’s who of actors Anderson loves and has gathered around himself. It includes Schwartzman, with whom this is Anderson’s eighth film since the actor debuted in Rushmore as a teenager. The duo’s collaborations over the years have seen the actor co-write The Darjeeling Limited and co-conceive The French Dispatch and Isle of Dogs.

“I was 17 when we first met,” said Schwartzman, at the Cannes presser. “Wes was the first person that wasn’t in the family that was over the age of 20 who actually asked me a question and was curious about what I was interested in. He sometimes sees in us things that we do not see.”

Jason Schwartzman at the Asteroid City press conference in Cannes
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Getty Images

The rest of the formidable roster includes Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell and Matt Dillon.

Steve Carell in a still from Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy Pop. 87 Productions

A precise framing

Asteroid City, which Anderson has co-produced, is set in an imaginary mid-1950s American desert town where a group of child geniuses congregate for a Junior Stargazers’ convention in the company of their parents and other adults.

Asteroid City hinges on a play being staged for a TV show about the events that occur in a desert where young stargazers share their ideas with each other
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy Pop. 87 Productions

An extraterrestrial’s arrival and other unsettling developments throw everything out of gear. A quarantine is imposed on the attendees, among whom are a war photographer (Schwartzman), an actress (Johansson), a scientist (Swinton) and a host of other intriguing characters.

Talking to the media after the screening, cast member Cranston said: “This is a movie about a television show doing a story on theatre. Wes wraps his arms around all the three mediums that we are involved in. I think Asteroid City is his love letter to the performing arts.”

Anderson agrees. “Actors are different from everybody else on the set,” he says. “They are different from all the crew members; they are different from me. They are connected to each other. They are the ones who are on the screen and everybody watches the things they do. That is what binds them together.”

Wes Anderson, in his summer go-to seersucker suit, at the Asteroid City photocall in Cannes
| Photo Credit:
Getty Images

Asteroid City hinges on a play being staged for a television show about the events that occur in the desert location where the young stargazers share their ideas with each other. The meta devices add a layer to the film and give the actors something extra to ‘play’ with. “I did not realise until we were making the movie that every single actor was playing an actor playing a role,” says Anderson.

A key part of the plot — a group of people are forced to isolate in an already isolated place — has stemmed from the COVID-19 protocols that were in place when Asteroid City was being written and filmed. A quarantine wouldn’t be part of the film if we weren’t in the middle of one, says Anderson. “The making of the film during the COVID protocols suited us… I loved that we formed a troupe, stayed together and sat at the long table for dinner. Our set was enormous, but it was a closed desert that was there for just us,” he adds.

‘The making of the film during the COVID protocols suited us’
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy Pop. 87 Productions

Damien Bonnard, director Wes Anderson and cast members Jason Schwartzman, Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson pose ahead of the screening of Asteroid City
| Photo Credit:
Reuters

Staying in his wheelhouse

The real and tangible space in which the sci-fi drama unfolds is, of course, pure Wes Anderson. In an era of CGI excess and of superheroes, dragons and wizards, Asteroid City celebrates the genre without resorting to overt make-believe. “The atmosphere I want to make for the cast informs the way we produce the movie,” he says. “In Asteroid City, there were so many things that we could have done in post [production].”

A still from Asteroid City
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy Pop. 87 Productions

Anderson, however, did everything on the set. “That changes the experience of people playing the parts,” he explains. “It feels like being in a play. I am drawn to the old techniques. The way I make a film is much more similar to how movies were made in the 1930s than most movies that are made right now are.”

For Anderson’s fans on the subcontinent, the old-world feel of Asteroid City receives a fillip in the form of a memory game that the young stargazers play — a tribute to Satyajit Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in a Forest) — and which includes a mention of Indian scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose. And that is only one of the many delightful little surprises that the magical film holds in its folds.

(L-R) Jake Ryan, Scarlett Johansson, Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman at the Asteroid City photo call
| Photo Credit:
AP

It might take some moviegoers a bit of an effort to find an instant connect — Anderson is after all an acquired taste — but, if the recent viral Wes Anderson TikTok/Instagram trend is anything to go by, the film is on its way to immortality.

The writer is a New Delhi-based film critic.