Film Review — Asteroid City

Summary

Simon Dillon's review of "Asteroid City" expresses a loss of patience for Wes Anderson's characteristic quirkiness and a lack of emotional depth, despite the film's technical proficiency and impressive cast.

Abstract

In a detailed film review, Simon Dillon conveys his frustration with Wes Anderson's latest film, "Asteroid City." Dillon criticizes the film for being overly self-indulgent and lacking the heart that made Anderson's earlier works, such as "The Grand Budapest Hotel," poignant and engaging. He describes the movie as a technically proficient but shallow exercise in style, with its multi-aspect ratio cinematography and meticulously constructed sets failing to compensate for the absence of genuine emotion. The narrative structure, which includes 4:3 monochrome television aspect ratio segments and a play within a film, is seen as annoyingly arch and serves to highlight the film's disconnection from realistic human emotion. Despite a star-studded cast, including Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson, Dillon believes their talents are wasted in a sea of Anderson's smugness, with the film's quirkiness crossing the line into annoyance.

Opinions

Dillon has reached his limit with Wes Anderson's hipster archness and idiosyncratic framing devices, especially when they lack emotional resonance.
The reviewer accuses "Asteroid City" of being too far up its own backside, valuing style over substance and prioritizing auteur credentials over poignancy.
The presence of a highly talented cast is not enough to save the film from its own hermetically sealed smugness.
Dillon finds the film's use of metatextual elements, such as actors breaking character and metatextual layering, to be self-indulgent and not as clever as the film believes itself to be.
The review implies that "Asteroid City" is an example of Anderson's work where the quirkiness overshadows any meaningful exploration of themes like grief and existentialism.
Dillon suggests that those who appreciate cinematic style over emotional depth might find the film enjoyable, but he himself found it insufferable.

More interminable quirk and archness from Wes Anderson.

Credit: Universal/Focus Features

I have finally lost patience with Wes Anderson. He’s tested me many times with his hipster archness, presented within trademark idiosyncratic framing devices. I can just about tolerate this if his stories contain an iota of heart, but any contained within Asteroid City lies buried under mountains of interminable quirk. I don’t care about his auteur credentials anymore. With a film this far up its own backside, so what if he’s a singular director? Without the poignancy of his best work (The Grand Budapest Hotel, for instance), it’s a shallow (albeit technically proficient) exercise in clever multi-aspect ratio cinematography of meticulously constructed, pseudo-Brechtian settings.

The Anderson faithful may cry blasphemy, but I don’t care. I’ve had enough. There’s a fine line between offbeat and annoying, and here it has been crossed. Not even the presence of Tom Hanks can inject life into this one. Nor can any of the rest of the glittering cast, which includes Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell, Edward Norton, Jake Ryan, Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwartzman, Grace Edwards, Maya Hawke, Rupert Friend, Geoffrey Wright, Hope Davis, Steve Park, Liev Schreiber, Matt Dillon, Jarvis Cocker, Jeff Goldblum, Tilda Swinton, Bob Balaban, Fisher Stevens, Adrien Brody, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, and Margot Robbie. An extraordinary assembly of talent squandered in a sea of hermetically sealed Anderson smugness.

The film is interspersed with 4:3 monochrome television aspect ratio snippets, wherein Cranston’s host dryly explains the making of the play we are viewing, regarding the writer, director, and cast, and their various behind-the-scenes dramas. This annoyingly arch framing device carries over into the “play” wherein the film bursts into opulent widescreen colour, in the titular Asteroid City; a tiny town in the middle of the American southwest desert circa an alternative 1950s, built from a deliberately fake-looking set. Said set includes a semi-constructed bridge, a motel, petrol station, diner, and observatory. Amid this hyper-artificial environment, occasional atom bomb tests go off in the distance, police chases inexplicably zoom along the road, and a Road Runner puppet makes occasional meep-meep noises.

Arriving in town is recently widowed war photographer Augie Steenbeck (Schwartzman), with his children. They make a stop for vehicle repairs and attend the annual celebration of “Asteroid Day”, when an asteroid struck the area and made a huge crater, thousands of years previously. In addition, Steenbeck’s son Woodrow (Ryan) is present to join other extraordinarily gifted teenagers in a scientific innovation competition, also a part of Asteroid Day celebrations. An extraordinary incident I won’t reveal results in a quarantine of the town. Around this, various subplots are explored, including Augie finally telling his children their mother is dead, whilst enlisting the help of his late wife’s father (Hanks), who never much cared for him. Augie and actress Midge Campbell (Johannson) are also mutually attracted. A surplus of archness and quirk ensues, whilst anything resembling realistic human emotion is suffocated by Anderson’s deeply irritating auteur-mandated whimsy.

All quirk and no play make Wes a dull boy. I thought we’d reached peak quirk with The French Dispatch, but here he dials the quirk up to eleven and beyond. For instance, metatextual shenanigans about an actress playing an actress playing an actress, who then rehearses her acting, aren’t as clever as the film evidently thinks. Nor are actors inadvertently wandering into scenes they aren’t in, or breaking character with asides about motivation. If Anderson wants me to endure self-indulgence of this magnitude, he had better be crafting a film of substance. The trouble is he isn’t.

Still, if you get your cinematic kicks from films that imply they have something important to say about grief, existentialism, and the human condition in general whilst actually saying nothing at all, perhaps you’ll enjoy the emperor with no clothes that is Asteroid City. It is clearly in love with itself, so audience love is optional. Just as well, because I found it downright insufferable.

(Originally published at Simon Dillon Books.)

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