By now I’m sure we have all seen the Wes Anderson videos sweeping across the internet. Colourful, symmetrical videos, all overlaid with the jaunty tune of Alexandre Desplat’s ‘Obituary,’ and all captioned along the lines of ‘Vacations but Make It Wes Anderson,’ ‘A Weekend in Vienna but Accidentally Wes Anderson’ ‘You Better Not Be Acting Like You’re In A Wes Anderson Film When I Get To To The Coffee Shop.’ This weekend Anderson’s latest film Asteroid City hit the big screen with an all-star cast to remind us all that he is more than just a trend or an aesthetic, he is a powerhouse in the art of cinema. The proof is in the picture; colour grading your TikTok will not make you Wes Anderson because there is simply nobody out there doing it like him, and Asteroid City is one of his best yet.
It is a film that is discontent to be simply one thing and does not fit categorically into any one box. It is meta, both a production and a story about the process of producing. It is both a play and a movie, a comedy and a tragedy.
Asteroid City is an effective if sometimes confusing meditation on one of life’s most reflective questions: what is the meaning of it all? It is a film that is discontent to be simply one thing and does not fit categorically into any one box. It is meta, both a production and a story about the process of producing. It is both a play and a movie, a comedy and a tragedy.
The film opens in a boxy black-and-white 4:3 on a television set where an unnamed host played by Bryan Cranston directly addresses the camera. He introduces the evening’s program, letting us know that what we are seeing is a fiction, it is nothing but a ‘backstage’ glimpse into the creation of a new play, “Asteroid City,” that has been made ‘expressly for this broadcast.’ He presents the playwright, Conrad Earp who is played by Edward Norton. Earp then rises from his typewriter to present the characters, and envelope us into the narrative.
The drama starts soon after the playwright’s introductory remarks, bringing us into the world of a retro-futuristic version of a 1955 Southwest town that is hosting a science convention for five teenage prodigies. The town is in a barren, desert landscape located beside an atomic bomb test zone, and is home to nothing more than a diner, a gas station and a motor inn.
Divided into acts, the first section of the film really begins when the Steenbeck family arrive in Asteroid City, the titular town, to attend the Junior Stargazer convention; newly-widowed war photographer Auggie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), his son Woodrow (Jake Ryan), who is to be honoured at the convention, and his three younger daughters. Gradually the other convention participants arrive: famous movie-star Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) and her daughter Dinah (Grace Edwards), who, like Woodrow, will be honoured at the convention, three other teenage prodigies and their parents, astronomer Dr Hickenlooper (Tilda Swindon), and a bus full of elementary-school children who are being chaperoned by their teacher June Douglas (Maya Hawk.)
On the night of the Junior Stargazer convention, the motley crew gather by the Asteroid City crater where the teenagers receive various awards for their inventive contributions to science. However, as they stare into the sky they are almost blinded by a green light when a UFO suddenly appears above the crater and an alien emerges to reclaim the meteor that had produced the crater a millennium or two before. After the alien’s abrupt departure, the town is immediately placed under quarantine and the attendees are forced to grapple with the fact that there is life outside of Planet Earth, that something that exists outside of our planes of knowledge, something that may be able to answer the age-old question of the meaning of life.
The colour palette in the film is astonishing, especially in stark contrast to the black and white of the expositional scene and all subsequent scenes which take place in the film studio. The bright palette and soft pastel hues add an artificial quality to the film, signalling to the audience that we have entered a new fictional realm that is like our own but just so slightly different, or some might even say ‘alien.’ This is yet another screaming indication that what we are seeing is a hoax, one of the main points that Anderson drives home in this film; the artifice of storytelling and the suspension of belief when witnessing a production. Anderson is making sure that we are aware of our bodies in our seats, and is ensuring that we are aware of our participatory role as the audience, by using every tool at his disposal from the artificial colour scheme, to the fourth wall breaks to physical breaks from the narrative to talk about the process of making what we are seeing. He even goes so far in the script as to have the actors question the lines that they are delivering and the way in which they are playing their roles.
In this way, by alternating between the television story and the town-based drama and gradually putting these two narratives into a dynamic, meaningful play with one another, Anderson makes the point that although the events in the play seem removed from what we call reality, the actors playing their parts can relate to their scripts and their characters and the very real, human questions they are asking about the universe and their place in it. In the same way, we can relate to the magical, cinematic space of his films and find real-life qualities, maybe not in the colours, or the setting, or the outlandish, unreal dialogue, but in the very heart of the story. A beating heart that shines through the lens of Anderson’s camera.
There is nothing ‘accidental’ that you can do to recreate an Anderson film. There is nothing accidental in the stylized way he orders the worlds that he creates.
So put down your phone, and close down TikTok for a moment.There is nothing ‘accidental’ that you can do to recreate an Anderson film. There is nothing accidental in the stylized way he orders the worlds that he creates. Go and see Asteroid City and study his cinematography, his artistry. Enjoy yourself. Get a bit meta. Watch romance evolve. Question infinity and your place in it. And maybe then we can talk about TikTok trends.
WORDS: Ava Bolger
