25th June 2023
As will become readily apparent should you take even a cursory glance at the opus article linked at the bottom of this introductory paragraph, I ADORE the films of Texas born filmmaker Wes Anderson. Although this career retrospective article only contains the first 8 films (“Bottle Rocket” in 1996 through to “The Grand Budapest Hotel” in 2014), you will also find my appreciations of 2018’s “Isle of Dogs” and 2021’s rather disappointing “The French Dispatch” within my archives and library here and suffice to say, every new release from the American director is eagerly awaited in the same vein as a new film from the Coen Brothers, Quentin Tarantino or Christopher Nolan to name just three of many, many more. So eagerly awaited in fact that I watched “Asteroid City” in its first available slot on opening day yesterday and just for good measure I returned at exactly the same time today to watch it all over again, this time in the company of my cinema loving son.
So it must be good, right, to return to see the film twice in 24 hours?
Well yes, and disappointingly no, but I warmed to the film considerably second time around and my original disappointment has dissipated somewhat and given the means and opportunity, I’ll watch it again for a third time on the big screen if only to watch an opening quarter of an hour of a film that was almost cinematic perfection.
"Wes Anderson and 8 twisted comedies" - original Medium.com article
Two of the major disappointing factors I noted from my first viewing of the film have now been somewhat assuaged and resolved with today’s re-watch. The first was the film was so good and so smile inducing in its opening 15 minutes that the rest of the film couldn’t possibly keep pace (it doesn’t but it isn’t as disappointing as I first believed) and the second is that I labelled the film as having no heart and again my original musing in this regard was incorrect. There’s a lot of heart here with the benefit of a second viewing and now, 48 hours on from when I first watched it, the only (minor) reservation I have that still stands is that it’s not as funny or comedic as I come to expect from a Wes Anderson film and again, my original take from the first viewing has been tempered with the great benefit of seeing it again, and seeing it again so soon and still on the big screen of a cinema. It is highly amusing in places but my son immediately said he found it very funny and dispelled my fears as going into the screening I thought he’d hate it. There’s a huge recommendation of sorts in there somewhere!
The opening quarter of an hour brilliantly sets up the surreal main course that follows, of directors playing directors, actors playing actors, a play within a play within the background to the play and the supposed real life surrounding our actors and directors in the world of Asteroid City (“population 87”) and its half built bridge and a motel owner who starts every sentence with “Of course, I understand” and the car chase and shoot-out between cops and robbers that runs through this one-horse town or rather in the background, the ultimate background and backdrop being the asteroid crater and the convention of “Junior Stargazers and Space Cadets”. Entering into this fictional world is a teacher with her ten, sometimes nine, children (eight if you count the young rascal caught smoking with the band around a campfire!) and a lifeless war photographer, a grieving father, a “Brainiac” of a son and an emotionless actress who one fears will maybe one day follow the path of Marilyn Monroe but not here, not in Asteroid City. That will come later in another world away from the one created by Wes Anderson, of a vibrantly colourful picture book world that just looks so goddamned beautifully unreal.
Oh, there’s also an alien and over an hour, a day and a week of quarantine our somewhat hapless heroes and heroines explore the meaning of life, death and the importance of family in the uncertainty and curiosity of the exploration of life and the world immediately surrounding us. It’s the circle of life of unrequited love and the losing of the love of actually living.
And it’s “today again”.
As always there are a host of returnees to a Wes Anderson film including, but not entirely limited to, Jason Schwartzman (upon whose shoulders the film is carried), Edward Norton as playwright “Conrad Earp”, Adrien Brody, Tony Revolori, Jeff Goldblum and a wonderful as ever Willem Dafoe. Virgins to the surreal world of Wes Anderson include Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Liev Schreiber and Margot Robbie among a stellar cast narrated throughout by Bryan Cranston and a helpful Steve Carell as the city’s owner of the one and only motel.
Just don’t stay in room number 7.
It’s the most Wes Anderson film that Wes Anderson has ever created, but I’ve probably written that sentence in any number of my other appraisals of the films from the Texas born master storyteller. Everything is in place from the changes in cinematic aspect ratio (introductions to each scene and every Act are in black and white 4:3 ratio before the vibrant, yellow tinged 1950’s colour is writ large when the film reverts back to the cinema widescreen ratio of 2.39:1) and you have a man hanging out of a window (a staple of every Wes Anderson film) amid a surreal, picture-book world that looks and feels so unreal that it rather charms you into smiling in wonder. Whilst I didn’t notice the slow motion zoom on the film’s hero or heroine, there were the recognisably familiar overhead shots and precise camera moves, a quickening telling of the narrative tale as one surreal image follows another that can mesmerise you into missing the story in the background, forever in the background.
Asteroid City grew exponentially in my affections from the end of my first viewing and halfway through the second hours later. It’s not “Rushmore”, “Moonrise Kingdom” or “The Grand Budapest Hotel”. But on a second viewing it isn’t “The French Dispatch” either!
If and when I watch it again I will no doubt fall in love with it.
Thus is my love for the cinematic creations of Wes Anderson.
“Asteroid City” also features within volume 1 of my 7 volumes of “Essential Film Reviews Collection” available via Amazon, with all volumes FREE to read if you have an Amazon Kindle “Unlimited” package. Here’s a helpful link together with my 8 self-published books to date which you’ll be unsurprised to learn, are also available via Amazon and should you wish to join in with the ethos of my “read along” concept, here’s my Youtube channel reading of my review too:
"The Essential Film Reviews Collection Vol.1" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.