Asteroid City (2023)

Rating: 8.5

Asteroid City is one of Wes Anderson’s very best films. A flawless ensemble of different characters are connected by a celestial event as they question their place in the universe, and seek truth in art and meaning in their lives. A cosmically perfect blend of Anderson’s distinguished style but with deeper and more profound work than we’ve gotten from him as of late. Production design, cinematography, score are expectedly Wes Anderson (meaning they’re terrific).

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Film Info:

Premise: Following a writer on his world famous fictional play about a grieving father who travels with his tech-obsessed family to small rural Asteroid City to compete in a junior stargazing event, only to have his world view disrupted forever.

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Focus Features

Directed by Wes Anderson

Screenplay by Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola

Story by Wes Anderson

Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Jake Ryan

Runtime: 1hr 45min

Rating: PG

Comedy, Drama, Romance

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IMDb Rating: 7.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 73%

RT Audience Score: 62%

RT Critic Average: 7.0/10

RT Audience Average: 3.4/5

Metacritic Score: 74

CinemaScore: B

Letterboxd: 3.7/5

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Fun Fact: Scarlett Johansson said she had no problem filming her full frontal nude scene however she said it was awkward as director Wes Anderson was too embarrassed to do it.

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Review:

written by Tyler Park

Asteroid City would make for a great double feature with Nope! (Absolutely insane that two summers in a row we've gotten personal auteur-driven alien invasion movies that are analogs for our need to find more beyond our own existence and how that relates to the creative process, both released under Universal too.)

Anyways…

I know I’m in the minority here, but Asteroid City is one of Wes Anderson’s very best films! Or at least, it’s his best in a while! Isle of Dogs and The French Dispatch were okay, but this was the true return to the Wes I’ve been missing! And it was so refreshing to see a real Wes Anderson project rather than all of those parodies of his style made on TikTok or with AI. This is some of the most interesting work Anderson has ever done — I appreciate the bold swing of this movie coming from Wes Anderson at this point in his career, and really, after seeing this movie you really can’t say Wes Anderson is just parodying himself. It’s easily him at his most metamodern, which won’t work for everyone, but I just ate it up! It’s a very existential film and something that I am still ruminating on days after seeing it. In the film, a flawless ensemble of different characters are connected by a celestial event as they question their place in the universe, and seek truth in art and meaning in their lives. The film offers a cosmically perfect blend of Anderson’s distinguished style but with deeper and more profound work than we’ve gotten from him as of late. Production design, cinematography, and score are expectedly Wes Anderson (meaning they’re terrific).

Asteroid City is Wes Anderson’s meditation on the endless search for meaning in life and art. The movie gets at something pretty profound about art and its ability to speak to those who are creating it, even when they don’t even understand what exactly it is that they are creating. The writer in the movie doesn’t understand what he’s writing, the actor doesn’t understand the character he is playing, and the character he is playing doesn’t even understand his own grief. But, as Jason Schwartzman’s character’s character says: “[his] pictures always come out”, which I think is Wes Anderson saying that as long as you create something that honestly comes out of you no matter how confusing or strange it is, the beauty in what you are trying to make will find it’s way to shine through. There’s something beautiful in making a piece of art that doesn’t make sense because perhaps that reflects what is mysterious or confusing about life itself. It seems to try to capture the effect that we are all actors in our own lives, playing parts, and reading lines we don’t fully understand in an ongoing pursuit of meaning. Anderson offers comfort by saying even if you don’t understand what you are doing in this life, you’re doing it right, you just have to trust that you’re doing it right.

There’s been a lot of movies lately where filmmakers are examining what compels them to make the art that they make — movies like The Fabelmans, Nope, Babylon, Empire of Light, and Bardo — and although some people don’t like this trend, what else can we expect from filmmakers when we are asking them to be honest and tell stories about their experiences. I really don’t like when people call these films self-indulgent — if you’re an artist who’s been doing this for decades, that’s what you’ve been living, and for someone to tell that experience only feels natural. So why not just let yourself sit back and enjoy Wes Anderson’s examination of the act of creating art? It can be quite enjoyable, intellectual, and of course, very visually pleasing.

I genuinely can’t explain how obsessed I am with the visual splendour of Asteroid City. I always love the way Wes Anderson plays with framing, aspect ratio, and colour — and once again he knocks it out of the park here! This might be the most alive Wes Anderson’s camera has ever felt. There are so many lovely moments spent just weaving around the set in all directions. The set was actually amazing and of course, Anderson’s use of mise-en-scene is unparalleled, and I adored the soft blue and orange colour palette as well! I really can’t get over how open this film is visually and thematically!

Detractors will say Asteroid City is more of the same from Wes Anderson — the singular auteur doubling down on his stylistic and thematic hobbyhorses, with help from a largely familiar cast of characters. In a lot of ways, they’d be right. From its witty kids to its perfect palette, the film is full of Anderson signatures. But more than mere repetition, Anderson’s latest is a culmination — a lining up of the stars to produce the rare piece of art that’s both masterful and unconscious, confident and curious. It’s a film about searching for meaning — in art, in life, in the stars — and one that’s crucially content with not reaching too hard for any meaning at all.

Plus… any movie with an actual road runner in it is bound to get a thumbs-up from me!

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Trailer: