Asteroid City (2023): aliens and metaphors

★★★★★

SPOILERS BELOW

When I arrive at the Philadelphia Film Society's Second Street location on Thursday, June 15, I am wearing a bright green stud in my nose decorated with the likeness of an alien. I am wearing a navy blue tee shirt that shows astronauts swinging on the rings of Saturn, and my hair had been up in sloppy space buns before they became uncomfortable on my subway ride. In accordance with my own personal scriptures I buy a medium popcorn and a small Pepsi, and as I wait for the opening titles to roll I think about Rushmore, The Royal Tennenbaums, The Grand Budapest Hotel. I have been watching Wes Anderson movies since I was in my early teens, and it pains me that before the movie starts I'm already a little disappointed. From the trailers, I expect a western Kodachrome extravaganza— all style, little plot, a phone-in in light of the people on TikTok who think they can recognize and execute Wes Anderson's style better than him.

Instead, what I leave the movie theater nearly weeping over is an uncomfortably real portrayal of grief and loss, set in an isolated place, focused on isolated people. It is Wes Anderson at his best— gut-wrenching, poignant moments communicated by characters just as incapable of expressing their deepest emotions as I am. Real characters in an unreal world, who don't always know the best thing to say (who often say the worst thing). I leave with a surreal feeling— a mix of hope and dread, an excitement to start my next story, whatever it may be, an understanding that a combination of both the best and worst parts of my life are in front of me.

Asteroid City splits its time between black and white and Kodachrome— the black and white sequences depict an old anthology-style TV show, hosted by Bryan Cranston, presenting the back stage process of a fictional play, Asteroid City, written by playwright Conrad Earp (Ed Norton). The Kodachrome sequences depict the on-stage events of said play. The play centers around a motley crew of travelers staying in the desert town of Asteroid City during the town's yearly Asteroid Day celebration— a remembrance of the day the town's namesake asteroid made contact with the Earth. This Asteroid Day, the town is playing host to: a convention of Junior Stargazers and their parents, notably recent widower Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) and actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson), a band of cowboys, an elementary school teacher and her class on a field trip. Not to be forgotten is Stanley Zak (Tom Hanks), Augie's bitter and grieving father in law who comes to pick up his granddaughters, town astrologist Dr. Hickenlooper (Tilda Swinton), and an accommodating but opportunistic motel manager (Steve Carell).

When an alien arrives in the middle of the Asteroid Day celebration and steals the famed asteroid, the town is put on lockdown by General Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright).

What Works:

The moment I keep returning to in Asteroid City is one between Augie, Stanley, and Augie's son and Junior Stargazer Woodrow (Jake Ryan), just after the alien makes contact on Asteroid Day and the small town is in chaos. While Woodrow, whipped into a frenzy by the presence of the extraterrestrial, is spouting out grand questions about the universe and the search for the meaning of life, his father and grandfather are having a discussion about how they'll be able to get the girls to school the next day.

It's simple and it's short, but it's the meaning of the whole thing— the real world contains just as many fascinating and terrifying unknowns as outer space.

This contrast— what is real and what is fiction— is by far the most exciting element of the film. In the literal sense, the cuts between black and white and color, the cool and composed New York theater scene and the lively world of the play itself, serves as a clear and fascinating frame for the idea that real life is just as tumultuous and exciting as the lives of the characters on stage. We see this crossover clearly in a scene where the actor playing Augie removes himself from a scene, saying "I still don't understand the play," and enters the black and white world once more to have a conversation with director Schubert Green (Adrian Brody), the emotional crux of the whole movie.

I'm sure I don't have to tell you that everyone brings their A-game to Asteroid City, but the stand-out truly is Scarlett Johansson. Her performance as a disaffected but profound starlet with a string of broken marriages is subtle and complex, worlds away from the over-the-top one liners of the MCU. You truly believe in the chemistry between her and Schwartzman, as she is the first one to coax an actual expression of grief out of Augie about his deceased wife.

What Doesn't:

As you can imagine, I don't have a bad word to say about Asteroid City— every element is woven together elegantly, no one story or face out of place in the surreal world Anderson has created. I do take pause though when I consider the celebrity element of the movie. Those familiar with the Wes Anderson canon know that it's common to see some familiar faces spanning his work, the usual suspects as it were— Adrien Brody, Willem Defoe, etc. Asteroid City cranked the fame element to 11, and it did raise a question for me: everyone wants to work with you, but does that mean everyone should get to? Hanks' and Johansson's stellar performances aside, Asteroid City thrived more in its niche, or just plain unknown faces.

Steve Carell's profiteering motel manager, Tilda Swinton's scientist, and Margot Robbie's brief appearance as the actress playing Augie's deceased wife whose scene was cut, all took me, even if briefly, out of the story. While there's no denying that names sell tickets, I wonder if we're getting to a point in cinema where it has to be this many names.

Final Thoughts:

When Augie's actor storms off the stage and back into the black and white world, wracked with anxiety that he's not portraying the character in a way that honors the now-deceased playwright, his lover Conrad Earp, he first passes Jeff Goldblum (a delightful little cameo) in a hair and makeup chair. Goldblum's character, seen just this one time, is that of the actor portraying the thieving alien in the stage play of Asteroid City.

We hear him tell the makeup artist, "I don't play him as an alien, I play him as a metaphor."

Augie stops and asks, "a metaphor for what?"

Bewildered, Goldblum's character looks up and says, "I don't know yet."

If you blink, you'll miss it, but the most important part of the whole exchange is the final syllable.

Yet.

The affirmation that we will find the answers even if they're not the ones we're necessarily looking for. That we don't have to know exactly what we're doing or how to express ourselves, as long as we're trying. That even if we're not healed right now, we will be someday.

Asteroid City is invading theaters June 23!