Wes Anderson has always been a filmmaker that does it his own way. He has a distinct style, his stories are always unique and he’s always trying to push his films to exist in their own quirky world. Asteroid City is an excellent example of that. I was originally going to do a basic spoiler free review of the film, but after finishing the film and seeing the reception this film has gotten from others, I felt it would be more beneficial to break down the film and why I think it works. Asteroid City is a complex puzzle of a film and it seems like some are not really fully understanding what the film is going for. Along with the review, I will also deliver an interpretation of what it all means.
Asteroid City to put it simply is Wes Anderson’s play on Close Encounters of the Third Kind. A film where a town comes in contact with an alien and they discover things about themselves in the process. This is definitely a Wes Anderson film in the best of ways. The film is beautiful to look at as every shot is like a painting. The script is quippy but also has that dry style that is prominent in most of his films. The ensemble delivers like they always do in this film. My biggest problem from The French Dispatch was the anthology approach. The film had strong moments and weak moments leading to me enjoying it but not as a whole. Asteroid City fixes that by focusing in on one thing and giving us the closest experience to Moonrise Kingdom we could have gotten. If you are wondering if you should watch this film, that would be a yes. It’s a great film overall and one that Wes Anderson fans will especially enjoy.
It’s hard to talk about this film without getting into the real meat of the film. The movie did a great job being deceptive with the marketing as the film isn’t as straightforward as it leads you to believe. The film follows the story of a group of people who are in a town for a science event and they come across an alien. They soon begin to become introspective as the experience shakes them to the core. They also find themselves falling into a sudden psychosis as some begin to lose their minds. That is the plot of the play in the film. What they didn’t market was that Asteroid City is a fictional play in the film’s larger plot. There are breaks from the story that focus on the writer as he tries to come up with a revolutionary play that changes minds. It’s easy to see that this is suppose to be Wes Anderson himself. The film balances those two elements as it goes on and does it well. The fact that these two separate stories exist gives the film a surreal feel to it. The two plots aren’t just in the film to be wacky though as the film links them together in a very interesting and thought provoking way.
The subtext of the film seems to be what some are not grasping fully. When the second act kicked into gear, I began to understand the intention of the small town alien story and in the third act I fully understood the writer plot and how they tied together. For the first act of the film, I found myself intrigued but confused as it was very unconventional in many ways, even for a Wes Anderson film. Once I started to dig into the film, it strengthened the film for me completely. Once you break past the surreal, it’s pretty clear that this is a film about the 2020 shutdown and how we all became introspective. The general story of the alien and the quarantine is an external look at the world when the shutdown came out of nowhere and how some learned about themselves while others went crazy. The writer storyline is very much the internal look at Wes himself through the process. We see his loneliness at that time as he also grapples with the idea of his art and his pursuit to make something more elevated. One scene in the third act specifically has Jason Schwartzman breaking out of the play and explaining how he doesn’t get it. That’s a common theme throughout the backstage play portion of the film, the idea of fully understanding what the material you’re working with means. To some the city itself could be a representation of isolation during those months in 2020 and that’s how I definitely read the material. The film seems to be Wes Anderson trying to put to paper what he felt during the lockdown in his own unique way. He decides with the film to show off his creation while also showing outwardly the creative process.
Asteroid City is many things. It’s a story of isolation that is akin to what we all felt, an introspective tale about our place in the world and the universe, and also a look at how we truly don’t have control of our reality and what comes of us after we leave the world. Through the story of the writer’s passion project and the alien isolation drama itself, we see these ideas manifest and develop as the film goes on. It’s quite unfortunate that some aren’t really grasping the film’s big picture because it’s a fantastic yet complex tale that I can’t even fully comprehend at this point in time. This is definitely one of those films that needs to be seen multiple times based on the layered story and the surreal elements. Asteroid City is my favourite Wes Anderson project since Grand Budapest Hotel and I hope people don’t write it off. This film is filled to the brim with some fantastic and personal internal and external themes, the audience just needs to dig deep to find them, like finding the prize at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box. Asteroid City is one of Wes Anderson’s best and most mature works and I appreciate it for that reason.
The Rating
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