The dialogue is littered with deadpan cutesy exclamations all accompanied by a parade of sandals and pulled-up socksĪll this is captured by cinematographer Robert Yeoman on cameras that pan pointedly from side to side (and occasionally up and down) in a manner reminiscent of the blindfolded crossbow operator from the 1960s/70s TV game show The Golden Shot. Meanwhile, Augie’s father-in-law, Stanley Zak (Tom Hanks), is en route to Asteroid City as is a spindly alien with designs on the town’s historic space rock, provoking a military lockdown. She’s a glamorous presence with a stargazer daughter, Dinah (Grace Edwards), who generates sparks with Woodrow. Augie is a pipe-smoking war photographer whose eye is caught by Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson). One such is Woodrow Steenbeck (Jake Ryan), AKA Brainiac, whose father, Augie (Jason Schwartzman), has his wife’s ashes in Tupperware, but hasn’t yet told Woodrow and his sisters of their mother’s demise. Hasten the day.Īsteroid City (the town, rather than the play, or the film) is playing host to a gaggle of “junior stargazers and space cadets”. In the distance, mushroom clouds explode, indicating nearby nuclear tests, while also distractingly reminding us that Christopher Nolan’s altogether more exciting-sounding Oppenheimer will be in cinemas soon. As for the people (starrily played by the likes of Tilda Swinton and Jeffrey Wright), they all speak in the same rapid-fire monotone of Anderson’s authorial voice. Everything looks like a set, through which Scalextric-style cops-and-robbers chase at regular intervals. This theatrical work, created by an Arthur Milleresque author Conrad Earp (Ed Norton), is set in the American south-west of the mid-1950s and addresses “infinity and I don’t know what else”.Ĭut to the widescreen, ochre-burned hues of the drama-within-the-drama a Pirandellian fantasy in which colourful characters (who occasionally break character to discuss motivation) converge in a desert settlement comprising a cafe, a gas station, a motel, an observatory and a meteor crater. We open in the boxy black and white of an old-fashioned TV broadcast fronted by Bryan Cranston’s host, inviting us behind the scenes of the titular play. Fans will doubtless be dazzled by its meticulous imitation-of-life-in-miniature visual aesthetic, yet I swithered between whimsical amusement, mild curiosity and outright irritation. This latest feature from the world’s most famous corduroy fan may nod cheekily towards the heyday of the Actors Studio (James Dean, Marilyn Monroe et al) but it’s as detachedly Andersonian as ever a Swiss watch-style meta-puzzle of interlocking stories with a faux-nostalgic, sub-Spielbergian edge and a stellar cast acting like animated mannequins. At worst, they put the “irk” into “quirky”, with T he Darjeeling Limited(2007) and, more recently, The French Dispatch(2021) stretching patience to breaking point. At best, these range from the piercingly acute family portraits of The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) to the bittersweet comedy capers of The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and the delightfully off-the-wall stop-motion animation of Isle of Dogs (2018). They go for intricately crafted doll’s house dramas featuring boxes-within-boxes narratives and arch, satirical conundrums. No one goes to a Wes Anderson movie expecting heartfelt melodrama or realistic human emotions and interactions.
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