Wes Anderson’s ‘Asteroid City’: An oasis of wonder

Wes Anderson’s marvellously inventive Asteroid City is set in a desert, but there is nothing arid about it

Twenty-five years since Rushmore, Wes Anderson’s love for the theatre of life as well as that of the purely performative kind has not waned one bit. His actors, the vibrant setting that they are placed in, and the roles that they slip into are a central part of the canvas that the writer-director brings alive in Asteroid City, banking on his own unique visual and directorial playbook.

The wonderfully artful Anderson’s latest offering, which premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, is about a play within a film that pans out in a flat, clear desert landscape where one can see all the way to the distant horizon. The view is broken only by characteristically surreal structures and spaces that enhance the tactility of the images.

The film received a six-minute standing ovation at the Grand Theatre Lumière. The applause may not have been the longest or the loudest for any film at this year’s edition of Cannes, but it indicated that at least parts of the audience related to the colourful and whimsical, if not overtly dramatic, world that Anderson has rustled up.

The vivid vastness of the immaculately constructed frames defines it like nothing else can. Asteroid City is the kind of film in which comprehending the story is not as important as the telling of it. “I don’t understand the play,” says Jason Schwartzman’s Augie Steenbeck in a scene. The director of the play, Schubert Green (Adrien Brody), replies: “Doesn’t matter. Just keep telling the story.” That, in significant ways, holds true for the film.

The ensemble cast of Asteroid City, written by the director with frequent collaborator Roman Coppola, is a veritable who’s who of actors Anderson loves and has gathered around himself. It includes Schwartzman, with whom this is Anderson’s eighth film since the actor debuted in Rushmore as a teenager. The duo’s collaborations over the years have seen the actor co-write The Darjeeling Limited and co-conceive The French Dispatch and Isle of Dogs.

“I was 17 when we first met,” said Schwartzman, at the Cannes presser. “Wes was the first person that wasn’t in the family that was over the age of 20 who actually asked me a question and was curious about what I was interested in. He sometimes sees in us things that we do not see.”

The rest of the formidable roster includes Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell and Matt Dillon.