The retro sci-fi film Asteroid City, in which Scarlett Johansson shows why she is the absolute goddess of the genre, is in cinemas from today.
Wes Anderson (The French Dispatch) had a city built in the desert, including cacti and mountains, for his new film Asteroid City. The result impresses with enormously elaborate sets. Unlike some of the cult director’s other films, however, they do not obstruct the view of the characters. One of them is played by the great Scarlett Johansson. Since today, you can watch the retro science fiction film in German cinemas.
Asteroid City takes you into the idyll between atomic bomb tests and alien visits
Asteroid City consists of several narrative levels, as one is used to from director and writer Anderson. The outermost narrative ring is a black-and-white TV show whose host looks suspiciously like Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston. This show chronicles the making of the play Asteroid City by a fictional author (Edward Norton), from the writing process to casting to opening night.
Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman plays the actor who gets the male lead (or does he play an actor who plays an actor who gets the lead?), we see him behind the scenes and on stage.
But we also see him in Asteroid City, the picturesque town of 87 people on whose horizon atomic bomb tests are conducted in 1955. In this colourful film-within-a-theatre-within-a-show, family man and widower Augie (Schwartzman) meets actress Midge (Scarlett Johansson), while Anderson arranges quirky residents, extraterrestrial day guests and way-too-clever kids around them.
For this convoluted tale, Anderson once again assembled a voluminous ensemble, including Tom Hanks, Steve Carell, Hong Chau, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton and Margot Robbie.
The retro sci-fi film is a feast for the eyes
Featuring the usual Deadpan humour and an abundance of design detail, the film rarely lets the eye rest. Recreated in a Spanish desert, Asteroid City is a feast for the eyes even by Anderson standards, its delightful artificiality reminiscent of ’50s genre classics in which at best the aquamarine sky was real, and often not even that.
Those who are sensitive to Anderson’s extreme artificiality will be exposed to an atom bomb of allergens in his new film, so rigidly does the camera move, so stony do the scenes appear, so thoroughly composed is every movement and every sound.
