Population: 87 (and ME)
"It's very Lana Del Rey" -me describing absolutely anything
Disclaimer: spoilers? I feel like this isn’t the kind of movie that can be SPOILED by excessive information prior to watching, but you may not gain much from this one if you haven’t seen Asteroid City.
content warning: mentions of suicide
I always leave Wes Anderson movies feeling nothing but a sense of Having Been Entertained. No moral of the story. Perfectly contained in a box. I also feel like I act a little insane and talk weird coming fresh out of that experience. That might just be me though? I’ve been listening to The BTS Podcast lately and the urge to do a British accent afterwards is almost unbearable. One thing I do love about Wes Anderson movies is that you have to be fully immersed in the story, or you’ll miss something. No phones! It brings the Movie Theater Magical Effect no matter what setting you view it in IRL. A lot of other things released in recent years don’t have as much visual complexity or incomprehensible drama and thus I will be on my phone.
I am a lot of things, but proper film critic is not one of them, so this will be less of a review and more of a discussion of the Pros and Cons of various elements in the film Asteroid City.
ELEMENT 1: A shit ton going on meta-textually but simple stories within each layer
Pros: A cool narrative device also seen in Everything Everywhere All At Once
Cons: A confusing narrative device that was executed much better in Everything Everywhere All At Once, made even more confusing by
ELEMENT 2: A lot of recognizable celebrities
Pros: Clout
Cons: I could not remember anyone’s character’s name for the life of me if I knew their actor, with the exception of the 2 main characters. I tend to have a really good memory, so this was super annoying for me. However, if I DIDN’T know the actor, I remembered the character’s name! Some of the actors felt under-utilized to me. Willem Dafoe had kind of a cool speech, but he was only on screen for like 2 minutes! Overall, I think this movie would have been better with fewer celebrities. I said what I said, sorry famous actors! You did a great job but BRING BACK RANDOS IN MOVIES FOR 2024!!!
ELEMENT 3: The dual parents and kids love story
Pros: D.C. and W.S. <3 !! Nothing I love more in a movie or TV show teen romance than a nerd4nerd relationship. Need me a freak who will project our initials onto the moon for the whole world to see!
Cons: What happens after a set of parents and their kids fall in love? Do the kids’ future children think it’s weird that they have 2 grandparents and no cousins? This happened like 30 years ago in Clueless and we as a society kind of just let it slide. Maybe it slid a little too far based on the amount of horrendous step-sibling content on the front page of Pornhub. Also, the parents’ love story high-key didn’t resonate at all for me. Maybe I’m too young for it, maybe it’s…
ELEMENT 4: Both main characters as depictions of male vs. female pain
Here we depart from the convention of pros and cons, as I have too much to say. Starting with Midge Campbell, Scarlett Johansson’s character. I truly could not tell if she was supposed to be an example of the archetypal Traumatized Woman, a satirical criticism of that trope, or an off-color joke about traumatized women. That distinction was impossible right off the bat with the reveal of the ‘black eye’ under her sunglasses that’s actually makeup to get into character. We get into murkier and murkier territory as the film progresses. In each iteration of the character (the bleach blonde actress in the black and white setting playing Midge, Midge Campbell herself, and the role Midge is rehearsing for), she is suffering profoundly. Midge has a line about being found in a bathtub next to a bottle of pills “eventually”, as if it’s a matter of total certainty, and then a subsequent scene where she’s pretending to do that very thing. It’s not very clear if she’s rehearsing for her upcoming role or her own death. Is it romanticizing suicide or making a joke of it when she speaks from the bathtub after a few seconds of silence, eventually getting out with perfectly smudged eyeliner? Midge even has a line about the Suffering being because of her “history with violent men, beginning with her father”. Hearing and seeing all this felt misogynistic, even if it wasn’t supposed to be. I’m at least glad she was rocking bush when we saw her nude (saying NAKED feels rude, like I’m discounting real life Scarlett Johansson’s artistic choice to allow that shot). 1 shard of feminism detected!
Side note: the way they did her makeup was very classically Southern glamour. My Texas-born-and-raised great-aunt told me when I was 16 that if I didn’t think I looked good on any given day, the best look to serve was bright lipstick and big sunglasses. My great-aunt was married and then divorced five times.
Now for Augie Steenbeck, Jason Schwartzman’s character. Male pain and grief are hard to make fun of, especially when those emotions come from the only things men are socially allowed to have feelings about: 1) War, and 2) the death of your beloved wife. This narrows the same question I asked above for Midge down to two options: satire or example? What got me right away for his character was when the little girls asked “are we orphans now?” after he revealed to them that their mom died… three weeks ago. Homie was probably emotionally and/or physically distant way before her death! His line saying “I never ask permission” to take someone’s photo seemed inappropriate since Wes Anderson has a history of supporting men accused of sexual assault, including Bill Murray and Roman Polanski. The scene where he purposefully burns his hand on a griddle shortly after a discussion in which both he and Midge proclaim they “Feel Nothing At All” was also interesting. Very classically emo. War photographers are not soldiers themselves. They do not have to be on battlefields. They can go home. Why didn’t Augie go home? In contrast to Midge explicitly declaring the source of her issues, Augie’s origin story is still relatively mysterious. Augie’s pain is treated the same way as Midge’s throughout the film (50% flippantly and 50% staring it in the eyes), but the only difference is that there is no way to mock a man on camera in the same way you can mock a woman. We only saw one person naked in this movie. However, after Midge puts her robe on, he does ask permission to take her photo. Maybe there is hope for them both? I don’t know. That doesn’t seem like the kind of thing either of them would admit.
Bonus thought: I feel like Steve Carell’s land parcel vending machine was also supposed to be a commentary on something that kind of missed the mark. Manifest destiny? The horrible housing market??
Bests and Worsts:
Worst scene: Everyone chanting You Can’t Wake Up If You Don’t Fall Asleep as the “ending” right before the epilogue. Did I miss something?? What on earth was that??
Best scene: when Jason Schwartzman brings Edward Norton a special flavor of ice cream and feeds it to him then licks it back off the same spoon (hot) then becomes Augie Steenbeck and does a whole performance for him in character. When the performance ends Edward Norton says in the most tender voice imaginable, “you’re perfect,” and I start crying just a little bit from all the way outside the scene. Augie Steenbeck rips off his beard, turning back into Jason Schwartzman, then rips off his pants PRIOR to making out with Edward Norton. This seemed like an appropriate and relatable course of action given the situation.
Worst character: Adrien Brody. Hate his ass in this one. Sure, he looks hot in that slutty little tight white t-shirt, but this character is weird. Those letters he sent to the blonde actress playing Midge were very deeply psychologically mean and gross, even if they were supposed to be “to get her into character” or something!! Again, if it’s satire on the way male directors sometimes treat female actresses, that needed to be clearer.
Best character: Montana (the cowboy guy wearing full Wrangler denim) and his 6 piece cowboy band including Dwight the little kid. I’m not sure if Montana was supposed to look a little like Johnny Cash or if his love interest was named June for a reason, but I thought that connection was fun. This award is given semi-ironically as he praises the US military and his accent is overly fake. The real Canadian tuxedo cowboy guy of my dreams is still at large.
Worst small detail: IF THE CREDITS SAY “JEFF GOLDBLUM” COULD I PLEASE SEE HIM FOR MORE THAN 20 SECONDS??? That’s my man your honor!!! Yes I know he’s literally 71 years old and married to another woman but ???
Best small detail: The sign at the mechanic shop saying “death rides on unsafe tires”. Need that on a shirt. Need new tires, to be honest.
Did you watch Asteroid City? If you read through all this mess, I sure hope you did! What did you think? Let me know!