I surfed through several reviews and some youtube videos but I am yet to find someone to echo my feelings about this film. I have seen the film this evening and while I believe it that I require a second watch to fully grasp everything about it, I will give my review for now.
Asteroid City is a film about a film about the making of a play. The film starts with a 4:3 black and white screen with Bryan Cranston playing a film host documenting the inception and rehearsal of a popular play called Asteroid City which ran hundreds of times by now in 1955.
The beautiful colored shots of the film are supposed to be the play rehearsal while the black and white ones are supposed to happen in the film's real setting. Thus, when we are watching the scenes in the desert it is supposedly people who are rehearsing for the play. For example, Scarlett Johansson is playing a successful well-known actress in the play but she is not well-known in real life. The distinction of what is and what is supposed to be can be discerned by this and other instances in Asteroid City where the actors and actresses break character from their rehearsal to converse about their real lives (such as when Augie reads the lines from the script on the window, and when Augie exits the set of the play itself).
Visually and aesthetically the film is an excellent addition to Wes Anderson's collection of features, and while technical aspects such as production design, cinematography and color saturation are beautiful, they do not totally vouch for the movie's storytelling itself.
The biggest problem with the movie is that it was unclear when actors were breaking their rehearsal on the set of Asteroid City, thus you would not get the insights needed to understand what the characters they are playing are going through, or what are the actors themselves going through. For example, at the end of the film Augie is questioning the director of the play whether he is playing the part right, an integral element of the film's thesis I would say, but we were unable to answer that question because we were unable to tell whether the developments we've seen in Augie's character has happened to him as an actor or to the widower he is playing. Another example of this is when Tom Hanks gives several remarks regarding the agent of Midge Campell. As a viewer I did not 100% understand whether he was being in character talking about the imagined character of Madge, and hence it would not totally make sense to brag about this about his son-in-law who he seems to not like all that much, or whether he was talking about the actress who was playing Madge which makes much more sense but I guess she's not supposed to be very famous (as I understand from the scene with the understudy in the train). Another example is multiple remarks about Augie sleeping with Midge and I could not understand whether this is supposed to happen in the play or whether it happened while they are rehearsing.
In some scenes I felt too much was going on. Too much movement and people and it was hard to keep track of what was happening exactly. Two examples of these are the scene with the teacher teaching the kids while they are dancing with the cowboys towards the end, and the scene when the General receives a letter from the president and he has way too may people around him. Finally, I would say that a big problem was also the number of characters in this film. There are so many of them, from kids to bigger kids to actors and actresses to behind the play producers and others. It was simply too much and the result is a feeling where we know nothing about what is going on to any of the characters.
To sum up, while the film is visually pleasing and certainly stimulating on an intellectual level, several flaws in its direction and story-telling lessens its efficiency while the size of its cast deprives characters from audience familiarity.
Asteroid City is a film about a film about the making of a play. The film starts with a 4:3 black and white screen with Bryan Cranston playing a film host documenting the inception and rehearsal of a popular play called Asteroid City which ran hundreds of times by now in 1955.
The beautiful colored shots of the film are supposed to be the play rehearsal while the black and white ones are supposed to happen in the film's real setting. Thus, when we are watching the scenes in the desert it is supposedly people who are rehearsing for the play. For example, Scarlett Johansson is playing a successful well-known actress in the play but she is not well-known in real life. The distinction of what is and what is supposed to be can be discerned by this and other instances in Asteroid City where the actors and actresses break character from their rehearsal to converse about their real lives (such as when Augie reads the lines from the script on the window, and when Augie exits the set of the play itself).
Visually and aesthetically the film is an excellent addition to Wes Anderson's collection of features, and while technical aspects such as production design, cinematography and color saturation are beautiful, they do not totally vouch for the movie's storytelling itself.
The biggest problem with the movie is that it was unclear when actors were breaking their rehearsal on the set of Asteroid City, thus you would not get the insights needed to understand what the characters they are playing are going through, or what are the actors themselves going through. For example, at the end of the film Augie is questioning the director of the play whether he is playing the part right, an integral element of the film's thesis I would say, but we were unable to answer that question because we were unable to tell whether the developments we've seen in Augie's character has happened to him as an actor or to the widower he is playing. Another example of this is when Tom Hanks gives several remarks regarding the agent of Midge Campell. As a viewer I did not 100% understand whether he was being in character talking about the imagined character of Madge, and hence it would not totally make sense to brag about this about his son-in-law who he seems to not like all that much, or whether he was talking about the actress who was playing Madge which makes much more sense but I guess she's not supposed to be very famous (as I understand from the scene with the understudy in the train). Another example is multiple remarks about Augie sleeping with Midge and I could not understand whether this is supposed to happen in the play or whether it happened while they are rehearsing.
In some scenes I felt too much was going on. Too much movement and people and it was hard to keep track of what was happening exactly. Two examples of these are the scene with the teacher teaching the kids while they are dancing with the cowboys towards the end, and the scene when the General receives a letter from the president and he has way too may people around him. Finally, I would say that a big problem was also the number of characters in this film. There are so many of them, from kids to bigger kids to actors and actresses to behind the play producers and others. It was simply too much and the result is a feeling where we know nothing about what is going on to any of the characters.
To sum up, while the film is visually pleasing and certainly stimulating on an intellectual level, several flaws in its direction and story-telling lessens its efficiency while the size of its cast deprives characters from audience familiarity.