I’ll be honest and open here; the first Wes Anderson movie I’d ever seen was The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) – and mind you, I was late to the party. This was a film Berk and I knocked out when we began to finally sit down and go through movies we’d not yet seen way back in the day. I would argue that not knowing of Wes Anderson or his unique style of filmmaking made the experience all the more pure – no hype, no excitement, no anticipation – just simply me, the average guy, going in blind to a movie I’d not seen by a director I didn’t know about.
Wow…I was enthralled and captivated! There was so much to love…it was quirky, it was witty, it was stylistic – Wes Anderson immediately gained a new fan that night. While I’ve still got a few to scratch off my list, I’ve since watched some of Wes Anderson’s prior films, and have ensured I see every subsequent film he’s done since The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), bringing us to the most recent entry into his filmography: Asteroid City (2023).
Directed by Anderson and written by Anderson and Roman Coppola, the movie begins with the Host (Bryan Cranston) explaining to the audience that this film is an (in-universe fictional) television depiction of a play written by Conrad Earp (Edward Norton). Presented in a dramatized and stylized manner, we are given neat symmetrical sets with a (usually) fixed or on-rails camera and a unique color palette as we meet Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), a wartime photographer, and his four children, son Woodrow and three adorable daughters, as they arrive to Asteroid City for the town’s 1955 Junior Stargazers’ convention. Asteroid City, a tiny town with a (you guessed it) asteroid nestled in a crater, is full of unique, strange, and quirky guests that will bear witness to phenomena that change their worldviews, and allow us a chance to study each of them and their unique circumstances.
This list is too long, but Wes Anderson spared no expense in bringing an A-list cast to this film, including (in addition to Schwartzman, Cranston, and Norton): Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Willem Dafoe, Margo Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jeff Goldblum…and much more. Everyone gets something to do that is often charming, humorous, or compelling. This film was full of the laughs and idiosyncratic quirks you’d come to expect from Anderson while managing to have some heart and a subtle message to take away upon its completion. The humor, imagery, and character interactions absolutely worked for me, and it kept me engaged during the clean-and-lean runtime of 1 hour and 45 minutes.
Two things I particularly loved about this movie were the cinematography (by Robert Yeoman) and the use of various aspect ratios and shifting color palettes (e.g., from pastels to black and white). Additionally, upon further research, I learned that the set was built to place emphasis on natural lighting and small, intimate spaces. Each act of the film was presented with a title card indicating the Act and list of scenes to be portrayed (e.g., act i, scenes i – iii, act i, scenes iv – vi, etc.) at intervals, and I completely ate it up. I’m a sucker for Anderson’s artistic choices, and I appreciated much here.
While I do not think this is Anderson’s greatest film, I do believe it is perhaps his most abstract. It is rich with comedy, it is well-acted, it is intimate, and it is polished. I know that I am an easy fan to please with Anderson – I’d easily admit I’m biased here, even – but I love what this film had to offer, and will eagerly look forward to his next. The witty and enjoyable Asteroid City earns the Must See raising from me…I look forward to heading back to theaters to watch this a second time with my wife!
Asteroid City is in theaters on June 23.
Rating: Must See
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