A crater lies in the middle of Asteroid City. Thousands of years ago, an asteroid struck at this point. In Wes Anderson’s new film, a war photographer, an actress, a group of highly intelligent children, and eventually even an alien gather around this crater. Together they tell a story about death, loss, grief, new love, luck and the infinity of life itself.
That sounds relatively simple, but the director of the Grand Budapest Hotel makes it so told as intricately as the distant sci-fi relative Inception – only more touching. The film celebrated its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.
The simple version of the retro sci-fi movie’s intricate narrative
Asteroid City is… where do we start? Best in Color: The colorful story follows a widower and war photographer (Jason Schwartzman) who stops in Asteroid City with his four children on his way to see his father-in-law (Tom Hanks) for a science competition in 1955. There he meets actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson), both lost souls colliding at this point in the desert. Anderson arranges other figures around them. For whom the stopover in Asteroid City becomes life-changing, like circular waves drifting away on a lake.
Asteroid City is also a play by Conrad Earp (Edward Norton) about a widower who meets an actress in the desert. And third, Asteroid City is a black and white TV show about the making of a play by Conrad Earp about a widower who meets an actress in the desert. That’s the simple summary.
Check out the trailer for Asteroid City:
Asteroid City – Trailer (German) HD
Fans of Wes Anderson will hardly be surprised by this intricate narrative, the director often gives his films a literary framing. He framed his last work, The French Dispatch, as a collection of short stories in a fictional magazine. Grand Budapest Hotel was a memory within a memory within a novel.
Asteroid City pushes the whole thing with its narrative layered salad so far that the question of who is the actor, who is the character, who is “real” is overcome by dizziness. The answer: nobody and everyone. In addition, Inception looks as uncomplicated as a Teletubbies episode.
What Nolan and Anderson have in common
The detour to Christopher Nolan is not that far off the mark. Both directors are obsessive constructors and each tell stories of loss. In a direct comparison, however, it is striking how thick Nolan lays it on in Inception to underline Cobb’s tolerably touching obsession with his lost wife. Loads of narrative and DiCaprio-esque sweat prick your emotions until you either give in or go numb.
In contrast, Anderson lays it on thick on everything else, except for the emotional collisions. The garish color spectrum of Asteroid City almost hurts the eyes, the actors (ie the really real ones) speak as mannered as usual. The camera sweeps the room with the smoothness of a 55-ton main battle tank.
The scenes of approach, on the other hand, are characterized by a gentle melancholy, as if no one wanted to say that something special had appeared between them for fear of chasing it away. A flirt? A new love? A glimmer of hope for sure.
The universe on a piece of earth
Asteroid City seems at first glance, however from everything else to act: highly intelligent children who tinker with lasers and jet packs in their spare time, a fictional playwright who has a crush on an amateur actor, vending machines that dispense cocktails, cigarettes and property deeds. A shy alien.
Universal
Asteroid City
Or like this: Nolan shoots a whole film with Oppenheimer about the creation of the atomic bomb, in Asteroid City the mushroom clouds are one detail among many on the horizon. The film’s 1950s America oscillates between future departure and crippling paranoia, and our characters have that choice, too.
The art of Wes Anderson is this Mass of disparate puzzle pieces as if by magic into a clear picture that goes straight to the heart. He didn’t succeed at all in the playful Isle of Dogs, and only partially in The French Dispatch. But in Asteroid City it is.
Wes Anderson focuses the vastness of the universe on a speck of American dust. Then a widowed war photographer meets an actress, a coincidence almost as big as the impact of this asteroid on this very piece of earth. Nolan has to top such an explosion first.
Asteroid City launches on 15th June in German cinemas.