We’re Living in the Era of Deadpan: On “Asteroid City,” “Barry” and Our Nationwide Crisis of Emotion

by Ted Kluck

I’m 33-minutes into Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” and it’s terrible, despite starring everyone anyone has cared about in Hollywood in the last three decades, which list includes but is not limited to Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Carrell, Matt Dillon, Edward Norton, Liev Schrieber (the voice of HBO’s “Hard Knocks”!) and lots of other notable Hollywood people. 

Like all Wes Anderson projects, it functions primarily as a “reel” for Wes Anderson.  Every set piece is more achingly ironic and hipster than the last, and every line is delivered with a degree of soulless detachment that borders on the psychotic.  The result is a movie that (again, 33 minutes in) is devoid of any heart, soul, humanity, or interest of any kind.  It is a collection of images, not unlike going to a friend’s house and flipping through the impressive photography books on his coffee table to pass the time.  Which is to say it is exceedingly boring. 

This is a good time to explain that I used to love Wes Anderson movies. 

Wes’s early work – thinking “Bottle Rocket,” Rushmore,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “The Life Aquatic” – was shot through with pathos.  Each of these movies is about some aspect of family – brotherhood, fatherhood, marriage, career, etc.  Yes, the movies have the “Wes Aesthetic,” (hipster clothes, hipster phones, and hipster cinematography) but they also have the critical elements of storytelling (a point, a plot, characters you care about) that make a thing watchable/interesting.  Most importantly, liking Wes Anderson used to make you feel cooler/smarter, which is an emotion (more on this, soon).  “Asteroid City,” by contrast, lacks any of those things, but what it has in droves is…deadpan. 

What do I mean by deadpan?  A sort of soulless, heartless, dead-eyed delivery of lines which render a scene (about a murder, or about a child losing a parent, or whatever) devoid of any emotional/relational impact.  I began to notice this while watching HBO’s hit series “Barry,” which stars Bill Hader and is a dark comedy about a hitman who moves to Los Angeles and falls in love with the idea of being an actor.  Except that Hader’s Barry character is so deadpan about literally everything – acting, killing, having friends, having a love interest – that it’s hard to imagine him being capable of falling in love with anything or anyone.