I love reading and watching anything involving the 1950's, a time that had an implied turbulence about it without making itself manifest. There were atomic bomb testings in the desert, racism was sky high, economy was booming yet the Red Scare was full-throttle and the Roswell alleged alien ship crash was the government conspiracy of the day. Watching Wes Anderson's "Asteroid City" reminded me of the implications of an era when all seemed well, but really wasn't. Here we have people arriving at a pastel colored desert landscape spot whose only reason for existence is the novelty of an enormous impact crater. When "Asteroid City" focuses on the desert landscape, I was enthralled. When director Anderson switches to the black-and-white footage of a teleplay in progress titled "Asteroid City," I felt lost despite its clever meta narrative which is all too familiar at this point.
The fictional Southwest desert town of Asteroid City is phenomenally presented. We see the gas station, the cafe, the rock formations that look like papier mache constructs, and the various bungalows for rent. It is an astounding sequence, beautifully filmed in one take by Wes Anderson and his imaginative frequent cinematographer Robert Yeoman. Once we are set up with the characters, they are a quirky bunch that includes Jason Schwartzman as Augie Steenbeck, a war photographer who has brought along his "brainiac" son, his three daughters, and his wife's ashes in a Tupperware container; Scarlett Johansson as a movie star actress, Midge Campbell, who covers up her eye bruises with her sunglasses; General Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright) who opens the Stargazer Awards ceremonies with spun tales that sound like newspaper headlines; Tom Hanks as the grandfather of Steenbeck's kids who senses serenity in this town, and Tilda Swinton as a scientist at the observatory.
There is also Bryan Cranston as a TV host of the play "Asteroid City" though I was left aghast at the inclusion of this box-within-the box ploy. When Anderson switches to a 1.37: 1 aspect ratio of the black-and-white play and the semi-documentary about the play, I was confused and simply bewildered. What is the point of such scenes that are rather flat despite a cast that includes Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody, Edward Norton, Margot Robbie and others. These scenes have none of the spark of inspiration from the pastel colored hues of the town itself and are rather dull. Nothing compares to the buoyancy and whimsical nature of Asteroid City and its inhabitants (one of the renters of the bungalows has to settle for a tent due to an electrical fire). In fact, many of the jokes and visual puns really work and made me laugh like the addition of several vending machines, one of which can be used to buy a small plot of land that won't be worth much for 50 years, and an alien that shows up at the crater and steals the small asteroid. I also adore the smart, alert teenagers who love science and create contraptions that could almost disintegrate someone. To top it all off, there is a military quarantine order thanks to that googly-eyed alien.
"Asteroid City" is a decent, marginally entertaining Wes Anderson flick and you'll admire its originality and its audacity. Still, the constant switches to its teleplay origins will leave you with a headache. If we are to think that this fictional city is just a construct, isn't that obvious from its placid, prefab-looking, pastel-colored setting that makes you feel like drinking a glass of orange juice or the cartoonish critter that runs through the sole road that cuts through this town? These unreal, colorful and dramatic scenes already look like a Warner Brothers cartoon. I don't need Bryan Cranston to remind me.
