Wes Anderson has released another postmodern masterpiece, and it demands some serious explanation. It only came out this weekend, so I don’t have repeat viewings or a pause button at my disposal, but I still think an extended analysis is in order.
In summary, Asteroid City is a complex reflection on Anderson’s own contradictory artistic impulses—and how they combine to produce honest, emotional filmmaking. I’ll support that statement by going through the various layers of the film, starting with the events that take place in the fictional town of Asteroid City.
1. Asteroid City
The “Asteroid City” storyline criticizes technological progress and champions human emotions and irrationality. Consider that Asteroid City sits, both proximally and chronologically, adjacent to the testing of atom bombs. It’s a literal witness, therefore, to technology’s bleak dead end: the devastating culmination of “progress.” Likewise, it hosts a Junior Stargazers’ convention, and the stargazers’ inventions (which are owned by the government) seem likely to promote greed and destruction. One contestant has invented a war-ready particle destroyer. Another has made a breakthrough in “interstellar advertising.” Meanwhile, a savvy motel owner (Steve Carell) sells sham real estate loans through a soda machine.
In other words, advancement abounds—but to what end? Perhaps the answer lies in the town’s most memorable feature: a ramp leading to nowhere.
But the ethos of Asteroid City begins to change when an alien descends during a stargazing and steals the town’s famous meteorite. This moment is typical Anderson: an inexplicable event that ties characters together through shared wonder. (Recall the jaguar shark in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and the lightning strike in Moonrise Kingdom.)
After the alien’s appearance, the town’s cult of technology begins to weaken. An expert astronomer (Tilda Swinton) can’t make sense of the alien or its space path. Genius contestants Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and Dinah (Grace Edwards) forget about their nerdy inventions and fall in love. A cynical, abused actress (Scarlett Johansson) opens up about life and heartbreak to a photographer (Jason Schwartzman). A group of kids, preoccupied with the alien, can’t focus on science lessons, so a cowboy (Rupert Friend) steps in to meet their need to know: who—not what—is this mysterious being?
Overall, it appears that the alien, by virtue of its mysteriousness, spurs the characters to forgo rational thinking and act instead on their emotions. When the alien appears a second time near the end of the film, this budding rejection of pure logic explodes into a frenzy: the crater, once a site of dutiful, rote learning, now houses exuberance and absurdity. Typifying the change that has taken place, Woodrow’s invention, previously purposed for “interstellar advertising,” now serves to commemorate his adolescent crush on Dinah.
This tale’s optimism doesn’t run too deep, though. In the film’s epilogue, another atom bomb goes off in the distance. It seems that despite the unshackling of the characters’ deep feelings and silly quirks, technology moves along in the background, climbing up the ramp to nowhere.
2. The Making of Asteroid City
So that’s the thematic drama of the “Asteroid City” timeline. But in an even more challenging layer of the film, a gruff TV host (Bryan Cranston) introduces these events as a fictional play and narrates a “making of” documentary about the play.
What is this all about?
Firstly, I would encourage viewers not to take these documentary scenes too seriously. At one point in the “Asteroid City” timeline, the host accidentally wanders on to the set. This makes clear that the entire production—both the Asteroid City events and the “making of” documentary”—is meant to be seen as one unified fictional work. In other words, the documentary isn’t a commentary on the play, although it claims to be. Rather, the documentary is part of the play, and the artist who created both components is never seen.
That artist, of course, is Anderson. The documentary footage, after all, features Anderson’s signature tight framing and deadpan deliveries. In no way does it feel “real” as an actual TV program; stylistically, it’s just as artificial as the colorful Asteroid City events. This is all one show.
Therefore, the true question is: why did Anderson include this black-and-white portion? What does the documentary thematically contribute to the Asteroid City events that we’ve just analyzed?
We can arrive at the answer by examining the character of Augie. In the beginning of the “play,” he tells his children that their mother has died three weeks earlier. Clearly, he has struggled to process the event: not only does he deliver the news inappropriately late, but he does so with an awkward, robotic delivery, and he later admits to his father-in-law (Tom Hanks) that he isn’t okay.
Based on our earlier analysis, we should expect that, following the alien’s appearance, Augie should increasingly embrace his painful emotions and allow himself to grieve his wife’s death. But strangely, this never quite happens. Augie remains fairly stoic and inward, in contrast to the obvious arcs of other, more minor characters, like Woodrow. Something seems off.
This is where the documentary portion of the movie becomes valuable. Via the black-and-white scenes, we see that the fictional “Asteroid City” play was written by Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), an eccentric playwright. Earp, according to the documentary, was a solitary, passionate artist, as well as a closeted gay man who had an affair with the actor playing Augie. Given this portrayal of Earp, it makes sense that his play would emphasize human-centric themes. The dismissal of technological progress and the prizing of releasing concealed emotion are consistent with Earp’s appearances in the documentary.
But the director of the play, Schubert Green (Adrien Brody), demonstrates different qualities. A manic womanizer, he’s about to be divorced by his wife (Hong Chau) “for an All-Star second baseman;” however, he receives her disdain with outward indifference. He also pens contradictory, rambling letters to the actress playing Midge, underscoring an inability to organize his feelings and communicate them maturely.
These scenes set up Earp and Green as opposites. And in accordance with their clashing personalities, we later learn that Green has cut a pivotal scene from Earp’s script in which Augie dreams of his wife (Margot Robbie) and shares an emotional goodbye with her. This scene appears to have been the missing piece that would have completed Augie’s character arc.
We can infer that Green cut the scene because he himself reacts this way to negative events. For example, he has failed to properly process the imminent end of his marriage. The final product of the play therefore reflects the visions of both the exuberant playwright and the stoic, pained director.
A combination of festive vitality and troubled inwardness—what could be a more suitable representation of Anderson’s artistic style? Thus, the documentary layer of the film is a meta-metaphor for the competing impulses that define Anderson’s cinematic work.
After all, the story of Augie attempting to grieve for his wife with ambiguous results is a fairly typical Anderson character arc. In The Royal Tenenbaums, do the characters find closure for their various regrets? In Moonrise Kingdom, do Stan and Suzy grow up, or do they retain their youthful fervor? We get clues, but Anderson never tells us for sure. His characters are too inward for the answers to appear onscreen.
Why does he make films this way? Why does he channel Earpian passion, then temper it with Greenian stoicism?
The “making of” portion of Asteroid City addresses this question. The actor playing Augie wants to know why his character’s actions seem so inconsistent. But both Earp and Green tell him to simply play his part and forget about the inconsistencies.
The takeaway is that an artist’s job is to be authentic, even when his varied instincts don’t make obvious logical sense. Just as Augie photographs the mysterious alien and distributes his work for the world to see, allowing others to draw their own conclusions, Anderson merely records and commemorates mysterious human behaviors. He has no pretense of being able to explain them.
In a late scene, actors burst forth with the mantra: “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep.” This recalls Earp’s vision of the play as a story about a “slumber” that brings people together emotionally. It also recalls the cut scene in which Augie says goodbye to his wife while asleep during a dream. Both moments indicate that falling asleep is associated with emotion and irrationality, while waking up is associated with logic and intellect. The mantra repeated by the actors, then, means that logically interesting art is only possible when human emotion is embraced. In other words, “You can’t make intellectual art if you don’t embrace the irrational.”
So the actor playing Augie, in protesting the illogic of his character’s actions, has only stated a redundancy. People are illogical. Their actions don’t make sense. They, like Anderson’s characters, display both outward zest and inward torment. Explaining them intellectually is for scholars and critics (and bloggers). The artist isn’t interested in such things.
But he is interested in sharing honest recordings of humanity. Sending photographs to the newspaper. Releasing movies at the box office. Producing authentic work and letting the pieces fall where they may. After all, Augie’s prideful catchphrase recalls Anderson’s own fecundity:
“My pictures always come out.”
—Jim Andersen
(Note: Contributions to this analysis were made by Sharan Shah, film actor, see: A Simulation of Trendelenburg Gait (2016).)
For previous Wes Anderson reviews, see my piece on The French Dispatch.