Seeing The Stars In and Above ASTEROID CITY (Patreon)

1. WES = WES

I love the work of Wes Anderson.

But I also understand why the conversation around him tends to get flattened. Perhaps it’s unavoidable. He has an ornate, singular, easily-identified style and there is often an inherent, mannered, ostentatious whiteness to his worlds. Both of these are perhaps fair observations, but they are also surface level observations. And they give way to the same tired, cyclical conversations about “twee” filmmaking, tone, style over substance, and a bunch of things that really have nothing to do with the soul of his work at all. So, quite frankly, I really don’t care too much to acknowledge them. Especially because, from minute one, he’s been treading in the grounds of emotionally resonant themes.

For all the fun window dressing, Anderson makes films about repression, loss, stern parental figures, and the way comic crudeness cuts through the much ballyhooed ostentatiousness. And while every film treads in theatrical presentation, it is in the details that you find all these subtle and sublime flavors. There’s the comically grand criminal delusions of Bottle Rocket, or the gifted kids crashing into adulthood in Royal Tenenbaums, or even the way “civilized behavior” can either get used to support or fight fascism in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Currently hitting a run where he’s less interested in giving you a rich story, but how far he can push the DEPTH of his thematic explorations. I understand that The French Dispatch has dense, seemingly impenetrable verbosity, but I basically wrote a mini-book of over 22k words about the world of details within it and how I think it’s his most fascinating and thoughtful film to date. For it beautifully speaks to the complications art, politics, racism, homophobia, and a host of things that people say he never deals with, when really, he’s dealing with them head on. Dismiss it all if you like, but it’s a film doing quadruple backflips with its thematic insights.

This is all to say that when much of the conversation of Anderson’s latest film Asteroid City came out of Cannes, a lot of it seemed to fall along the lines of “Wes is back!” and I always feel confused by the verbiage. Whatever your own relationship and arc with his work, I’ve noticed it’s something that gets said *every* movie, which just highlights the irrevocable point that he’s never really left. And it is in this blissful state of lack of concern with these conversations that I went in to see Asteroid City on Friday. Which means I got to walk in with a curious, open, and quietly excited mind… And turns out: yay, it’s great! And if we talk about the shift of subtle and sublime flavors of his work, here we get a sun-drenched town of bright blues and desert pastels (I made this as a joke but Ii’m like 60% sure it was modeled after Cars Land AKA Radiator Springs in Disneyland, if you’ve been there you’ll get it). But more importantly, the little town serves as the setting for the 1960’s world of road trips, space travel, ray guns, atom bombs, and the constant threat of death... It’s also very funny. But as for my grand thoughts on the meaning of the film, it’s funny how much of my reaction to it…

Quietly starts with a realization.

2. JASON AND ME

I feel like I grew up with Jason Schwartzman.

It’s not just that we’re about the same age, it’s more that his character in Rushmore was one of those absolute lightning bolt moments for me. An apotheosis of so many feelings, instincts, and wants, and fears piled together into this familiar, but exaggerated figure. Because Max Fischer was the kind of kid who also desperately wanted to be an adult. We call this “being pretentious” but in the truest sense of the word and the film was just so great at highlighting the many ways he and I, as well as many other kids at the time, were just spectacular idiots. It’s all putting on heirs. Making “art” that is but is but thin veneers of tropes and copies of pastiche - and yet there’s a weirdly sincere element to it, as well. They’re loving acts of creation. And within Max, you sense that there is something so much deeper, a grating fear of just about everything. Thus, all the walls of pretension have to come down so that he can make peace with his youthful life in the now. It’s a remarkable film. And it so readily tapped into something I sensed then, but fully understand now in the years looking back.

Naturally, since that film I have also followed Schwartzman’s career with a loving eye. Perhaps because he’s a singular performer with an unmistakable, droll cadence that I’ve always had a soft spot for. Especially when he’s doing great work in films like I <3 Huckabees, Marie Antoinette, Bored To Death, Scott Pilgrim, and even just now he just had a great turn in Across The Spider-Verse. But all the while he’s also been quietly popping up in Anderson’s work. But I was delighted to discover that, for the first time since 1998, he really gets the central role in Wes’s latest effort. And yet, the second I saw him… I immediately felt the arc of time.

Because Jason is that figure I always associated not only with my selfhood, but that youthful vigor that went along with it. In his 20s he still seemed like a teen. In his 30s he still seemed like a 20 Something. But now he comes on screen as that full on aging dad, complete with gray in the beard, as well as a heart full of longing, loss, and regret. And I was instantly reminded how much I’ve aged just the same. There isn’t any grand revelation beyond this. It is just a thing that was immediately - and deeply - felt. But you really can see Schwartzman mining this feeling, too. Which is how he ends up giving one of his best performances ever. Not just in the comic deadpanning of bad news to his kids, nor the double performance with the actor BEHIND the performance (we’ll get to that), but how it all works as a signpost of connection, fear, and the complete understanding that time moves in infinite, unforgiving fashion. Which is more than apt given the topic of the film. Because in true Anderson fashion…

Asteroid City is much deeper than what you may see at first glance.

3. STAR SHIPPIN’

Three things are for certain: death, taxes, and that movie stars will want to work with Wes Anderson. Granted, there are a handful of directors who have hit that particular status. Heck, there was a whole run there where actors signed up for Malick films knowing the final cut just  might just end up having them standing by a pool. Whoever the famed director is, maybe the actors do it because they know they’re getting their moment within the filmography. Maybe they want to meet said director and see them at work and learn what they can. Maybe it’s because they know the work will likely come out well and be respected. Maybe they just want to hear stories from all the other actors. Or maybe it’s just to say they did it. No matter what the reason, I’m delighted Anderson is now in that rarefied space. Which is all how you get a poster that lists: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlet Johannson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Steven Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, and Jake Ryan, and Jeff Goldblum.

I mean, there have been worse casts.

But there’s usually a spectrum to this. You’ll see some actors show up for a sometimes thankless role, or sometimes they’ll get to inject a little boop of humanity, or sometimes they get to positively shine. A perfect example of this is Jeffrey Wright’s first time inclusion in The French Dispatch, where his turn as a James Baldwin proxy is elegant, mournful, caring, and nothing short of one of my favorite performances ever. And here, Wright appears as a general in what might seem a largely thankless role were it not for a sudden, singular speech. One where he takes an opportunity to tell us a chapter-laden, pithy history of his entire life - a funny, but guttingly deep story about the nature of war, loss, and relative inanity. It’s that perfect Anderson manner where it seems like a joke, but it’s actually just people saying all too true things that cut to the bone. And it’s these kinds of moments where his actors shine. Including some new faces…

For much has been made that this is Tom Hanks first role in an Anderson film, but rather than don silliness as an eccentric, we instead see him effortlessly slide in the curmudgeonly elder role (perhaps best played by the Hackmans and Murrays of yore). And yet, there is very little pomp or pastiche to it. Hanks plays the gruff patriarch in a grounded, fully inhabited way that beautifully brings his scenes right down into the earth. Other first forays with Anderson include Matt Dillon, whose staid energy completely works for the beleaguered mechanic. Sometimes it’s just about doing a lot with a little. Maya Hawke shines in a role I’ll speak about later. Margot Robbie gets a late, albeit crucial monologue. And the casting of Jake Ryan as Schwartzman’s son is one of those things where you have to question your sanity and ask, “is that his actual teenage son and / or clone!?!?!?” But then you also get complete discoveries in bit parts like Ethan Josh Lee who plays the student Ricky Cho, a late film hero who brings it all alive with indignation. But most of all there is the new co-lead of Scarlet Johannson, a subject whose real life deserves fodder for a number of errant comments and role misjudgment, but who on screen remains an infuriatingly great actor. And it’s critical given how much of her performance has to do with the subject matter of the film itself.

Cause it’s about stars, baby!

In one way, it’s about the literal movie star gracing their presence. Because everyone can’t stop staring as Johannson plays “Midge Campbell” with a shade of Liz Taylor and many other stars of yesteryear.  She fittingly has this kind of deadpan 1000 yard stare of a person who has spend their entire life being gawked at. There’s a deep self-awareness to everything. Which is why her character can toss off half a dozen gems about acting and life as mere throwaway lines, whether it’s about “black eyes on the inside” or how she’s “never felt guilty but knows how to play it.” But she’s just as lost and restless as everyone else, all part of the trademark Anderson ennui. It is here you can realize that existentialism is in a movie stars’ very essence. She’s a person trained to pose, go through the motions, practice her lines, and find the next role. It’s the art of being other people. But who is she? That’s too hard to really reckon. She knows what she isn’t, revealing bluntly with little things like  “I love my daughter, but I’m not a good mother” because she knows she can’t be present and prioritize, which, wouldn’t you know it, is also the very thing her co-lead is struggling with.

Because Jason Schwartzman plays Augie Steenbeck (the name for the machine that you used to edit film for decades). He’s a war photographer. And once again, we have another character with a 1000 yard stare. He’s seen the worst that humanity has to offer and he’s constantly wrestling with that simple, haunted question: how do you protect your kids when your entire job is to stare at the horrors of the world? It's a question that goes double considering the fact that his wife, their mother, died three weeks ago and he’s finally just getting to tell them now. But it’s telling that his kids are three precocious daughters who are ungrounded from “reality” and instead declare themselves to ardent witches and mummies and other fantastical creatures that reflect their own youthful wavelength. This is youth itself. Which is why perhaps has both an easier time and more trouble with his older son Woodrow, who is the reason they are in Asteroid City in the first place.

Because this sleepy desert town is home to a science facility that is granting awards to Woodrow and four other genius kids who seem to have invented some pretty miraculous things. These kids are the future, you see! The dreamers of a better tomorrow! And they will bring about all the things that will save us and bring us glory! Read: the technology to defeat our enemies, lift ourselves into the sky, and even put our good old American flags on the moon itself. Because yes, the film is directly bringing us to that pesky and troubling intersection of science / the pursuit of knowledge and how it can immediately be perverted for nationalism and death itself. I mean, there’s a reason the atom bomb tests going about the desert around them, surely already dooming every single character in this play with waves of radiation. It is all part of the bright and shiny desperation of a world already on the brink. But everyone has to stick to the script, play their role, and do what makes everyone around them proud!

Then an alien shows up and the world loses its mind.

I love every single thing about the scene. It’s his wide eyed, confused look. The way it just picks up the asteroid and leaves without a world. But all these characters had an assured sense of what they thought the world was and who they were within it. But then THIS happens. What did it mean? What did the alien want? Are they all broken now? Thus begins an act two comical spiral where everyone is in a state of anger and bewilderment. It is, of course, invoking the infamous alien landing in Roswell New Mexico, but the more interesting part is how this all results in a lockdown that puts them all in quarantine. This doesn’t feel like an accident. It feels like Anderson’s coy and not too gauche way of talking of the pandemic and all the existential feelings that go along with it. Which all makes for a good metaphor. I mean, what DID the Alien want? How will our characters find the answers?

What’s this whole silly yarn about?

4. YOU CAN’T WAKE UP IF YOU DON’T FALL ASLEEP

Anderson’s always been a keen user of framing devices.

In one way, there’s always been a literal application of this in terms of his actual shot framing. He’s always favored that straight-on, center-focused angle that always gives a “theatrical presentation” in a way that takes on a stage-like Brechtian quality (sorry to use the term, it just fits). But it creates a purposeful sense of playtime. It’s telling us this isn’t Capital R Realism. It’s a diorama. Or a little play where characters can act grand, silly, or inane. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t deal with very real things, either. It’s just creating a very purposeful sense of distance to help our digestion of it. But the framing goes one further with actual structural notations. Even in Rushmore, the month-specific theater curtains clearly separate all five acts. And many of his other films have used similar title cards to create the right sense of expectation in the viewer, informing them of where they are in the story. Heck, The French Dispatch had a table of contents. And here we are very much given the same. It’s a play in three acts, but there’s an added layer beyond the structure, which is also a familiar one.

Because Anderson has also had a habit of nestling stories within stories. Sometimes a character will reference a play, or a memory, or a fictional telling of some event. Grand Budapest hops between them with reckless abandon, though different aspect ratios are our guide. But as ostentatious as it may seem, Anderson is not trying to buck you off the proverbial path. He’s not trying to break the reality of the movie. No, it’s ALL the movie. He’s just showing you all the layers of the cake. And there’s always a reason for these inclusions. Because it gives the film itself the ability to comment and take you inside the perspective of various events. To wit, there’s the incredible scene with the cook in The French Dispatch, where the author and editor argue over whether or not the scene should be included, given the way it fixates on the pain of a person of color. Which is Anderson’s way of addressing the responsibilities of what he shows and doesn’t. It helps comment on the way certain stories get told, along with understanding where the instincts come in the first place.

None more apparent than in Asteroid City. The film is about a play being written by Conrad Earp, played by Edward Norton, who is channeling none other than Tennessee Williams. That would be the esteemed writer of A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass Menagerie (to double down on the parallel, Adrien Brody’s director character Schubert Green is a clear stand-in for Elia Kazan). While Williams might not have written something as outright farcical as Asteroid City (which is very much in Anderson’s voice), the themes very much end up overlapping. And the point is to examine WHY writers like Williams, Arthur Miller, and Eugene O’Neill wrote these sad, heartbreaking stories that were often full of ennui and existential dread about the world unraveling them. Pick your poison. They were watching a post-war new suburban society quietly march toward silence, repression, and nuclear annihilation. In short, it was a way of talking about it without talking about it. And the fact that Conrad is a gay author like Williams is part of how talking about these feelings through codified straight relationships makes the themes of repression all the more important to understand.

But what story was Conrad Hall trying to tell us anyway?

As an audience, we get these little bits of insight in his scenes with the actor playing Augie, the hints of their complex love and relationship. But one of the most telling moments comes late in act two where he makes a request of Saltzberg Keitel’s acting class (stand ins for Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner, played by Willem Defoe) to give him inspiration. Because he wants to imagine a scene where all the characters in the play could fall into a deep sleep. It may seem an odd, even errant detail, particularly for how much it gets fixed upon. But essentially it’s invoking the “topsy turvy” tradition of old theater where seemingly every comedy or musical would have the characters be affected by a potion or spell, causing them to fall into some deep, transformative slumber that alleviates their worldly concerns and turns them into these lighter and freer beings. And there, they discover some deeper, more essential part of themselves. Essentially, it represents the best hope for catharsis in stories, especially from repression. And yet it feels so frustratingly impossible for Conrad and his work. Which is why his request is not met with a scene of transformative discovery. Instead, it’s met with its own, highly repeated phrase that feels like the vengeful fates of the Greek chorus chanting against him…

“You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep!”

It gets repeated again and again and again. Because there is no topsy turvy to be found here. No grander catharsis of transformation. No beautiful moment of “waking up” to a new life. Instead, there is only where you are. And as a writer, that sometimes means a constant, sleepless angst coupled with that constant, longing day dream. One where you’re always imagining some beautiful answer to the world’s problems around us. You’re always stuck in the process. Always wanting to sleep. Always wanting the big “it” to stop. But it always goes around anyway. The bombs keep going off. The car is always ahead of the police. The roadrunner always darts about… You can’t wake up from all this… You can only pass away from it. Which brings us to the most important “story within the story” moments near the end.

At the climax, the alien returns and all hell breaks loose (note that it happens at the exact moment a second quarantine is threatened) and everything turns to pandemonium. Given that it’s our big climax, we should see all these arcs come together in some sort of powerful fashion, but instead it gets skipped out on. Our lead actor Schwartzman exits out of his scene, wanting an answer for why his character purposefully burned his hand but a scene earlier? What was the reason he did such a silly, stupid thing? Was it just to see how hot it was? Was it to feel something awful? Why? But as we learn from the desperation in his eyes, there’s a longing behind these questions. He’s asking his director, but really he wants to ask the author, Conrad… but as we’ll learn in a moment, he can’t. Conrad, like so many talents of those years, died in a car accident that left him bereft. His lover, his mentor, and the “god” of the universe of this story is gone and he needs to understand the reasons at the core. We finally see how his own loss is being channeled into the Augie performance we’ve been seeing. And it loads it all with a sense of devastation.

But in his pleas, Schwartzman finds two essential reflections. The first with his director, who is essentially telling him to keep going. Don’t worry. Do the play. Say the lines. It feels like it invokes the Shakespearan notion that “all the world’s a stage” and we are all but actors playing a role. But it also feels more like the sage advice of putting one foot in front of the other until things start feeling different. Schwartzman tries to internalize this, so he then goes outside for some fresh air, but there we finally meet Margot Robbie, the actress whose one flashback scene from the play was cut. It may seem an odd choice for a “climax,” especially given their seeming unfamiliarity and her wooden recollection of the words to come, but this is purposeful. Because the point is for Schwartzman to hear Conrad speaking to him again through the work. Especially because this “deleted scene” captures Conrad’s view of the brief, critical, beautiful moment of their love. And with Robbie’s wide-eyed, hopeful look, we can see that he’s trying to find some lost connection. But in grief? We can only hear the hollow, pale imitations of our loved ones' words. Which is why we, as Conrad says to, must cling to a photograph, a moment in time, and remind ourselves: it looked like this.

Because all we have is what we’re left with…

5. TOUCHING THE ASTEROID

One of my favorite little mini stories within the film is with Maya Hawke’s character. She plays a young christian teacher taking her class on a field trip and, well, she does her best to keep the kids on the straight and narrow (the smoking scene in particular is hilarious). She also meets a bit of counterpoint in a handsome cowboy named Montana (Rupert Friend), though such things are not to be entertained. But as soon as the Alien shows up? We see how much she’s quickly frazzled. She’s trying to put this new, mind boggling information into the canon of God and everyone just wants to talk about the Alien 24/7. It’s emblematic of how life gives you a script, a role, a system of belief and then the random eccentricity of the unknowable world can challenge it all so quickly. But near the end, she gets this lovely, brief, but oh so important moment with our handsome cowboy, who happens to grab her hand and dance around with her. And suddenly we see those worries drop and the most freeing little smile as she goes do-si-do with the fine man in front of her.

And it’s emblematic of everything that Asteroid City is trying to say.

Every person in the roadside town is facing a crisis, whether large or small, but they all come together to exist as this microcosm that feels more like a delicate ship in a bottle; one that could be smashed to pieces at a single moment. Sure, the G-Men trying to keep a lid on the chaos, but Ricky Cho’s gonna break The Story of All Stories to his school paper. Life is going to break out into chaos. Everything will melt away. Radiation will eat at the body. Atoms of decay will get through the cork and eat away at the wood of the tiny ship. The glass of the bottle will erode and return to the sands of time. And yes, you can ponder the great “why” of it all, but the most telling moment in the final fracas is when the Alien drops the asteroid back and there is writing on it. Is it a hidden code? A threat? The meaning of life? But the general almost instantly realizes that the alien was doing inventory?? Oh, how beautifully mundane!

One that speaks to the old adage of whenever we are treated to some grand news of the happenings in the universe, you still have to face the reality of the everyday and go,  “yeah, but I still have to buy milk in the morning.” It’s the idea that no matter what, there are always these little momentary things in front of us that don’t just get in the way… they are the way. They are life. And even the constant bumps of nuclear annihilation are nothing compared to the personal losses that devastate a billion times more. But maybe they’re all the same? Maybe it’s an alien visiting, too? It all swirls together, but in a way that makes moments all the more delicate and precious. Which is why the two leads find themselves asking “what is this?” Are they an item? Maybe they’re just just two ships in the night, but it’s also the most treasured and rare of things: two people who feel the same thing at the same time in the same space.

Why are we alive?

Because we are alive. It’s the maddening bit of circular reasoning that is also part of a more maddening freedom. Maybe it’s all part of Anderon’s zig zagging response to a global pandemic, but it strikes much broader at the same existential questions that great writers were wrestling with back in the fifties and sixties (and every time). The stars have already written the tale of the universe. The only real solace lies in the simple, inarguable actions of doing the things right in front of us. Buy milk. Dance with the cowboy. Treasure the photograph. Be around your kids. Tell your girlfriend you love them.

Write it on the moon.

<3HULK