Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) accompanies his young son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) to Asteroid City for the Junior Stargazers convention where his science project is in contest for the top scholarship prize.  One evening, during a ceremony led by Dr. Hickenlooper (Tilda Swinton) to view an astrological phenomenon, an alien spaceship lands and an Alien (Jeff Goldblum, sometimes) steals the asteroid that gave Asteroid City its name.  The city is placed under quarantine by presidential decree enacted by General Gibson (Jeffrey Wright), but the Junior Stargazers and their parents are not happy with this development and are eager to leave the dusty desert behind to return to their homes. 

Cannes staple Wes Anderson delivers his latest candy-coated drama, Asteroid City, which was released theatrically by Focus Features after its festival premiere.  At 104 minutes, the film is expectedly packed, not just visually or on the call sheet, but structurally Anderson really flexes his ambition on the page with a nesting doll style framing device that makes this one of his most robust features to date despite only occupying a single major location.  The film opens with The Host (Bryan Cranston) who introduces a television special about the final play written by Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), “Asteroid City,” and the troubled backstage drama between the star, Jones Hall (Jason Schwartzman in a double role) and the director, Schubert Green (Adrien Brody). 

To discuss Asteroid City, it is easiest to view the two stories separately before examining how they inform each other and overlap in the final fifteen minutes.  What better place to start than with Cranston’s Host who introduces audiences to both the film and the play in a Mankiewicz-inspired role.  Shot in tight black and white, as if viewed on a 1950s television set, the Host shows us Conrad at work over a typewriter.  Artists making films about making art have been seen time and time again, with increasing saturation as of late, but Anderson smartly does not linger here too long to wax poetic about the trails of creativity even though this theme will come out later through the machinations of the plot in an incredibly exciting and emotional way.  Brief as these scenes may be, however, they work exceptionally well with the director’s specific brand of melancholy and while the two stories become increasingly intertwined as the film continues, they start off independent of each other. 

As Conrad works on the play, Jones enters coming off of another rave performance and circling the lead role of Auggie in “Asteroid City,” showing his intent by debuting some of the character work which he has already determined he will bring to the stage.  He shares a hug and a kiss with the play write, but Anderson shies away from building anything else around this romance teasing audiences with a bit of a mystery early on in the film.  As the play enters production, Shubert struggles with his star who has concerns about the part and fears that he does not understand the role.  All valid concerns, but Shubert – with problems of his own such as a crumbling marriage with Polly (Hong Chau, in a dreadfully short appearance) – seems largely unfazed by his lead actor’s concerns and more preoccupied with his own specific brand of obsession over art; a commentary on the various degrees of Method which Anderson has cited as an inspiration for the film.  Making his home for the duration of the play in one of the wings of the theatre, Brody gives an absolutely – and intentionally – insufferable performance as the director and plays a perfect foil to Norton’s Conrad who feels that art should flow from the soul instead of being constructed meticulously by the hands.  Whereas Shubert is wildly performative in creating a true experience on the stage, Conrad’s plight is much more private, again drawing allusions to what would have been a forbidden homosexual relationship with the play’s lead.   

Having written himself into a corner, he attends an acting class led by Saltzburg Keitel (Willem Dafoe) talking to his students – who will consequently end up populating the cast of the play – about this middle ground state of awareness he is looking to achieve but just cannot seem to capture.  How does one balance art and reality? As they discover together, Anderson unleashes a beguiling mantra that is meant to inform the film: “You can’t wake up if you don’t go to sleep.”  After doing the grammatical math and working through the double negatives, it seems to be saying that the answer to creative problems often comes when it is not overworked, but applying it to only the artist’s struggle is a bit difficult here given that the film is very much a reaction to the Covid-19 lockdowns. Additionally, the deliberate setting of the film in the era where not-so-fringe factions of a major political party seemingly want to steer America to – away from “woke” in order to make it “great again” – by their systematic eroding of decades-held rights makes this thesis statement a more troubling-than-intended chant which feels far more politically motivated than Asteroid City cares to meaningfully engage with.  Thankfully, though, the political message, once worked through, is still a strong one even if it does not relate easily to the arc which the film has set up.  We, as a society, cannot rest while racism and sexism are as rampant as ever, and a new era of fascism is seemingly on the rise.  That the film pivots to such a political arena is surprising, and while it may not have been the film’s intention to engage in these topics, Anderson has proven himself to be too purposeful in his work to have included all of these symbols, metaphors, and motifs for this to be simply a coincidence. Ultimately, the message is one of solidarity, saying that we need to stand up and stand together, only then can we grow from the pain of the past few years and move on to a brighter future.  

At its core, the play, which does occupy the lion’s share of screentime and is filmed in Anderson’s trademark pastels, is a family drama unfolding in a small desert town charmingly designed by frequent collaborator Adam Stockhausen. In addition to Woodrow, Auggie also has his three young daughters in tow: Andromeda (Ella Faris), Pandora (Gracie Faris), and Cassiopeia (Willan Faris) who fulfill a dry and darkly comedic arc over the course of the film.  It is revealed early on that their mother, Margot Robbie in an otherwise nameless role, had died some three weeks prior and her ashes are being stored in a Tupperware container.  Augies, however, was unable to tell his children that as he was not sure how, and so he kept it a secret feeling it would be best. Stranded in Asteroid City after the family car broke down, Auggie eventually calls his father-in-law, Stanley Zak (Tom Hanks filling in what seems to have been modeled on the Bill Murray role), and after a tenacious heart-to-heart, he agrees to come and pick the family up after the Stargazers convention.  While there, Auggie begins to form a friendship with his new neighbor at the motel, Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson), a famous actress practicing for an upcoming role and also in town for the Stargazers competition. It is clear that the two lost and broken souls have a lot of support to give to one another. 

On its own, this adult plotline provides more than enough to fuel a feature-length film, but like with most of Anderson’s most memorable plots, he is at his best when he views the world through the lens of his younger cast members.  Here, in addition to Woodrow, Anderson’s outcasts include the other Stargazers: Midge’s daughter, Dinah (Grace Edwards), eccentric daredevil Clifford (Aristou Meehan), the whistleblower at his school’s newspaper Ricky (Ethan Josh Lee), and Shelly (Sophia Lillis) who unfortunately falls to the outside of the massive ensemble without much screentime or plots of her own.  The major players of this young cast are Woodrow and Dinah who begin a tentative relationship that mirrors the growth between their parents who also find themselves caught in each other’s flirtatious lures, though Auggie and Midge are too afraid to act and find comfort in the barriers they built around themselves.  That they are foils to each other could not be more obvious, but it is still well constructed that it does not feel inconsequential or that we were miles ahead of the story and left waiting for the payoff for these moments when they do arrive. Intentions of the script aside, the real standout of the cast and the one who seemingly embodies’ their director’s fears and vulnerability is Clifford.  Meehan plays the boy in an appropriately pestering way but the performance and the script are working in perfect unison so that when his late-in-the-film revelation about his fears and anxieties are addressed, it is one of the finest moments of an already fine film. 

It is hard to look at the structure and separate the two major plot lines of Asteroid City but because of the strength of the “play,” it begs to question whether Cranston’s behind-the-scenes tour of the tortured artist is truly necessary.  As mentioned, Meehan’s work as Clifford does more in a single scene to put a name to the fear of the artist than the entire backstage plot does, and sometimes, especially in the heavily stylized world of Wes Anderson, less can be more.  As a social or political document, again the action that takes place on stage in “Asteroid City” does more to promote Anderson’s message that the power lies with the people more than the acting class mantra that is shot with such clear importance.  The revelations of the film are slow to take form, and only after the credits roll and with full knowledge of the events both on and off the stage, can one begin to see what it is that Anderson is trying to say here.  He is tackling two very different topics which makes the film a little hard to track in the moment on the initial viewing, as it seems like it is pointing towards one unified thesis when actually it is delivering two. It is further complicated by how the separate framing devices interact and inform one another. Done in such an unconventional way, only with space can audiences begin to make sense of what has been presented.  This creativity and breaking of form is certainly not a bad thing, it is just far deeper than the pastel palate would lead one to initially believe, especially given the simplicity of the director’s preceding two works in Isle of Dogs (2018) and The French Dispatch (2021); a critical reaction which Asteroid City is also seeking to address. 

Anderson’s latest is not just a return to form, but a challenge laid out by the director to prove to detractors that his films are not just style over substance. He stumbles a little in the execution and clarity of the message, but like all his best works, there is a clearly beating emotional heart at the center of the film. With all the trappings that made him such a beloved presence on screen – the symmetrical aesthetic, enormous casts, and a music box score from Alexandre Desplat – there is plenty for fans of the auteur to comb over across multiple rewatches as if he is boldly proclaiming that he is not afraid to indulge his creativity and follow the ideas that speak to him. Asteroid City is a film that requires multiple viewings to appreciate all the love and care that has been poured into each and every frame. With so many moving parts, it is like watching the inside mechanisms of the most ornate and elaborate music box, beautiful in its own right but appreciated most when experienced as a whole.