It’s a fun ride for fans to ‘Asteroid City’

Large ensemble of players in a story that takes unpredictable, absurd turns

By JOHN PAUL KING

It’s tough being a Wes Anderson fan. If you are one, you know exactly what we’re talking about. Loving the work of America’s most eccentric filmmaker means accepting the fact that there will always be a significant number of other people who can’t stand it, and that any effort to explain why you like his films to someone who doesn’t has almost as much potential for being divisive as a conversation about politics, though the stakes are admittedly much lower.

It also means putting up with the fact that his quirky directorial aesthetic, which has been parodied for decades now by TV shows like “The Simpsons” and “SNL” and become the inspiration for a massive explosion of AI-aided spoofs all over social media – is now enshrined in popular culture as an easy target for satire, almost certainly familiar to more people as the butt of a joke than as the stylish work of a meticulous auteur. To be fair, though, the jokes are usually funny, and many of those send-ups were made by Anderson fans themselves, paying tribute to the uniquely fey cinematic style they love.

The director’s latest, “Asteroid City,” is bound to provide considerable fodder for both heated debate and high-concept snark; indeed, it is such a “Wes Anderson film” that it sometimes feels like it is making fun of itself – and whether that is a good thing or not may depend on how you feel generally about Wes Anderson films.

Explaining it is complicated, but we’ll try.

The bulk of the movie takes place in a fictional tourist town in the American Southwest – built around the site of an ancient meteorite impact – in 1955; it chronicles an unexpected and mysterious event that occurs there during a convention of junior astronomers, as well as the subsequent impact it has on their lives. Yet the fictional town itself is also fictional, the creation of celebrated mid-century playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), and the story we are seeing is in fact his most famous play; the film simultaneously chronicles that background saga, as told via a vintage TV anthology series, complete with “re-enactments” of crucial episodes that took place during the creation and production of the play itself.

As for the characters, the main focus lands on former war photographer Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), whose genius teenage son (Jake Ryan) is being honored at the convention. There’s also a famous movie star (Scarlett Johansson) and her daughter (Grace Edwards), a fellow honoree. Others in the mix include Augie’s disapproving father-in-law (Tom Hanks), an Army general serving as host for the event (Jeffrey Wright), the easygoing town mechanic (Matt Dillon), the politely brilliant astronomer in charge of the local observatory (Tilda Swinton), and the shifty manager (Steve Carrell) of the town’s lone motel, where the entire visiting entourage is staying. Outside the action, as it were, we also get to meet the gifted stage director (Adrien Brody) and pioneering method acting teacher (Willem Dafoe) who helped bring the play to life, and the austere but friendly television host (Brian Cranston) who ostensibly presides over it all. And these are just the most prominent of the film’s two dozen significant characters.

All of that seems like a lot, even for a Wes Anderson movie, which typically features a large ensemble of players in a story that takes unpredictable (and often absurd) turns. Factor in the element of campy homage to the nostalgic science fiction movies of old, complete with UFOs and all the alien conspiracy theories those carry with them, and it becomes apparent that there are a lot of layers here.

Yet those elements are merely a premise, a conceit that establishes the rule of a game that proceeds to get even more “meta” from there. Actors appear in dual roles, both as their character in the central narrative and the fictional-real-life performers that portray them; there’s an inversion of styles that seems to dovetail in on itself, in which a theatrical play is experienced as a contemporary film, the “true” story about said vintage play is set up as vintage TV documentary, and supposed real-life events are presented as scenes from a play – a hall-of-mirrors pattern that suggests the fourth and unseen perspective of a real life audience – which means us - viewing the film itself. Anderson’s movie, as it turns out, is perhaps meant really to be about us, all along.

Even if that interpretation is on target, there’s still plenty of room for the signature Wes Anderson style, in this case taken to new heights of exaggeration; the familiar pastel color palette is now hyper-saturated, evoking hand-tinted vintage postcards or the lurid technicolor of 1950s cinema; that connection is underscored by countless nods to iconic films of the period, including Johansson’s image as both a Hitchcock-inspired icy blonde and an earthy Ava Gardner-esque sex goddess, with a dash of Liz Taylor thrown in for good measure.

Then there’s the inescapable fact of its mid-20th Century setting, which evokes not only the kind of corny “alien panic” sci-fi movies “Asteroid City” affectionately lampoons, but the strong current of worldwide trauma that emerged in the arts and culture of the era. After two world wars and a bomb that introduced the permanent threat of nuclear doomsday to their psyche, humanity was – understandably – preoccupied with finding meaning in a universe that suddenly felt indifferent, and the artists of the day led the search. Since Anderson’s bemusingly post-modern reassembly of these elements is centered on an imagined theatrical masterpiece that emerged from within that zeitgeist, it’s hard not to see a connection being drawn to our own time, when new daily threats force us to endure a similar state of perpetual existential crisis. In any case, Anderson’s familiar blend of precocious whimsy and melancholy nostalgia is tinged with a more profound sadness this time around, even if it is effectively counter balanced by a light heart.

What strikes us at more personal level, though, is the subtle but significant queer core that stems from the creation of the play-within-the-movie by a Tennessee Williams-esque tragic genius – whose presumed queerness is revealed in a scene too exquisitely orchestrated to spoil. It seems a minor touch, but rather than some token effort at inclusion, it feels like a nod to the unsung influence of queer artists, whose outsider status throughout history has granted them an observer’s eye which has played an important role in showing the rest of society the things it might have trouble seeing for itself – as the best artists have always done.

We could say more about this film – the sublime performances, which manage a wealth of emotional range inside the “Andersonian” parameters of the cast’s deadpan delivery; the impossibly kitschy handmade scenery; the self-referential humor that bubbles under so much of what appears on screen – but we won’t. If you’re a fan, you’ll want to pick through the details for yourself.

If you’re not, we know nothing we can say will convince you to see it anyway, and that’s probably for the best.

LOS ANGELES COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT