Take Me Down to Asteroid City, Where the air is hot, and the girls are gritty. . .
Wes Anderson is an amazing filmmaker. A little crazy perhaps, but amazing anyway. I went to see his newest, “Asteroid City,” Sunday at the Manlius Theater, which, thank goodness, is back in business. I loved it. It will be hard to explain why I loved it, though. I think the main reasons were the strangeness and the humor of the experience.
It’s a story about a play that is taking place as we watch. The play is on a huge soundstage with a motor court, a diner, a bus station, a bunkhouse, an auditorium of sorts, and a lot of desert which you can buy from the vending machines at the motor court. Ten dollars worth of quarters will get you a desert plot about the size of half a tennis court. A plot with no possible use. At the beginning and then occasionally, the play is interrupted by a black and white scene of the backstage and commentary by a sort of Walter Cronkite narrator on the nature of theater and some other things.
The movie has some unforgettable characters played by a remarkable cast of actors including Maya Hawke, Jason Schwartzman, Scarlet Johansson, Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie, Adrian Brody, Bill Murray, Steve Carrell, and Brian Cranston, If that is too few Hollywood biggies for you, there are also in the cast Rupert Friend, Hope Davis, Tilda Swinton, Jeffrey Wright, Jeff Goldblum, Matt Dillon, Rita Wilson, Liev Schrieber, Willem Dafoe, and Bob Balaban. When after watching the film you read the cast list, you will have no idea who some of these actors played. They are all so good, save for Maya, Scarlett, Jason, Steve, and Tom who are superbly good.
“Asteroid City” is about a science conference for teenage science students in 1955. This location is chosen because a famous asteroid crashed in this spot 600,000 years ago. There are also A bomb tests occurring maybe 50 miles away every so often. The period costumes and set pieces right on it. The lighting is terribly bright, high noon desert light. Be sure to sit close if you are soon to have cataract surgery and want to read the signs and see any little, but important bits of the action. I sat where I always sit and learned a valuable lesson.
The plot concerns how everybody in the cast gets to know everyone and the audience figures out who these people are as they interact. Maybe two-thirds of the way through the film, an alien drops in at a ceremony taking place. Everyone is sore amazed. Schwartzman, a photographer, takes its picture as the alien poses coyly with the chunk of the famous asteroid he is stealing. The alien is built like Jack Skellington. Later on the asteroid is returned. The alien leaves and the science camp goes on military lockdown. Then some more fun stuff happens.
I forgot to mention the Faris triplets, darling 11 year old actresses who often steal the screen as Schwartzman’s daughters who believe themselves to be part witch and part alien. They want to bury their mom’s ashes in the middle of the motor court. Mom has been dead for about a month, but it took their dad 3 weeks to get the nerve to tell them. I also should mention their teenage brother played by 19 year old Aussie actor Jake Ryan. The guy has an amazing nose. He is really good in his part, a main character!
I think this movie is about the importance of art, music, theatre, photography, science, being in love, despair, accepting death, making friends, being tolerant to people or aliens who are different that you are, and, the meaning of life. The question of just what that is is posed several times during the film.
It’s time, I guess, for this review to ride off into the sunset in the back of Tom Hanks’ giant 1955 Cadillac convertible. Which is just how the movie ends.
Greg Ellstrom
