Asteroid City shows why some people hate Wes Anderson so much (and others love him)

The idiosyncratic Texan director is one of the most polarising figures in cinema, writes Louis Chilton. His latest offering typifies exactly why some people are put off him – and why he’s still such a vital filmmaker

Wes man: Jason Schwartzman in ‘Asteroid City’ (Focus Features)

Let’s go see the new Wes Anderson film.” To some people, these eight words sound like the sure promise of a great time. To others, a violent threat. When it comes to filmmakers, few, if any, are as likely to elicit a strong reaction as the 54-year-old Texan. Through films such as The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson has developed a singular style – his films are often compared to dollhouses – much parodied but never replicated. Admirers laud him as a giant of the medium; detractors find the smothering artifice of his style twee and airless. Asteroid City, Anderson’s latest offering, exemplifies exactly why people are so reflexively put off his oeuvre. But it also shows exactly why he’s so vital.

Perhaps the main criticism of Anderson is the supposed frigidity of his films, the way his characters seldom betray their emotions, even in the throes of inner crisis. This is true of Asteroid City. Early in the movie, we see Augie Steenbeck (played by Jason Schwartzman) make a telephone call to father-in-law Stanley Zak. (Well, technically, Schwartzman is playing an actor playing Augie Steenbeck, as part of an elaborate play-within-a-film framing device.) He tells Stanley, who is portrayed by a silver-haired, mustachioed Tom Hanks, that he is stuck in Asteroid City with his four children – science “brainiac” Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and three young girls – and he needs Stanley to come and collect them. (Asteroid City, by the way, is a misnomer: it’s a small desert settlement next to a meteor crater, barely more than an outpost.) Stanley then brings up Augie’s wife. We infer that she has died, and that Augie has not had the heart to tell his children. “It’s never the right time,” Augie says. “It’s always the wrong time,” Stanley replies. The way this conversation is staged, in an unsentimental near-monotone, typifies Anderson’s approach to pathos. But the idea that it’s somehow insincere couldn’t be further from the truth.

The scene is Wes Anderson in a nutshell, from the matter-of-fact dialogue to the arch, symmetrical framing. Stanley, an upper-crust patriarch, passingly evokes Gene Hackman’s prickly Royal Tenenbaum. Repeated references to his golf course nod to a fascination with hobbies that has peppered Anderson’s work since his breakthrough feature Rushmore (1999). The characters, as they usually do in Anderson films, speak about grave personal issues with a plain, detached manner. In the following scene, Augie makes good on his promise and tells his children about their mother’s passing; there, the blunt, dispassionate dialogue is dialled up even more for comic effect. (More echoes of Tenenbaums here – specifically the scene wherein Royal informs his kids he’s getting divorced.) Sceptics will point to these scenes as evidence of Anderson’s emotional constipation. Of the glibness of his writing. It’s true: most other filmmakers would surely have expanded such a scene into a sweeping emotional moment, replete with tears and shouting. Feelings writ large, all there on the screen. But not him.