You Say ‘Barbenheimer,’ I Raise You ‘Oppenoid City’
The world is still swept up in the glory of Barbenheimer, but let’s consider a different, and arguably more interesting double feature at this year’s summer cinema. Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s weighty biopic, and Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s mellow dramedy, came out a month apart and probably seem like complete opposites, but there are a surprising number of parallels between the two films.
Both Nolan and Anderson are in the third decade of their respective careers, having explored a plethora of genres and worlds that have garnered them ample awards and acclaim. Nonetheless, there has been significant backlash to both their filmographies as their respective catalogs have grown. Nolan and Anderson have received their fair share of critiques on their “emotionally cold, pretentious, overly convoluted” work, which already sets their 2023 releases in conversation with each other — especially considering the films share the same time period.
Asteroid City. Focus Features / Universal Pictures
Asteroid City and (parts of) Oppenheimer are set in post-World War II America. Asteroid City, a charming yet melancholy film, is an ensemble piece following parents and their children competing in a junior stargazing competition in the 1950s American Southwest. While this isn’t a film about the war, the generation-defining event looms heavily in the background.
The United States was forever changed after WW2. The nuclear arms race against the Soviet Union was in full swing, and the country traded one war in for another. Fear and paranoia over a nuclear attack or all-out war permeated every inch of society. Moreover, harsh anti-Communist sentiments also grew to a blistering peak during this time. Simply being accused of any sort of USSR association or espionage could have you blacklisted from work, jailed, or completely ejected from society. This atomic anxiety finds its way into both Asteroid City and Oppenheimer.
The closest thing we have to a protagonist in Asteroid City is Augie Steinbeck (Jason Schwartzman), a troubled war photographer. While there is the more obvious plot — Augie is attempting to move forward from the death of his wife — his anxieties about the future also represent the imminent Cold War. Most of the characters in Asteroid City have trouble accepting their circumstances — Midge (Scarlett Johansson) and her trauma, Schubert (Adrien Brody) and his divorce, Augie (Schwartzman) and his grief. All of this is tied to the town of Asteroid City itself having to grapple with the existence of aliens. At the climax of the film, when all the characters chant, “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep,” there are three meanings. These characters need to accept their personal struggles, everyone needs to learn how to accept and grapple with the existence of aliens, and America must deal with the consequences of World War II and the subsequent Cold War. In case Anderson didn’t make the connection clear enough, there’s a scene where we learn that the town of Asteroid City is used for atomic bomb tests.
Asteroid City. Focus Features / Universal Pictures
Oppenheimer seems straightforward at first, the three-hour-long biopic about scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) shoots the audience through several years as we see the inception, utilization, and aftermath of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Anyone familiar with Christopher Nolan knows that he can never do anything by the book; instead of delivering a typical biopic, Nolan meticulously peels back the layers of a complex man who struggled in both his personal and professional life.
Augie Steinbeck is a coward, as is J. Robert Oppenheimer. Both men attempt to (or in Oppenheimer’s case actually do) abandon their families when they realize that they are not fit to be parents. While Oppenheimer’s case is a true story, Nolan’s depiction of the theoretician's life still offers a critique of post-World War II America. Oppenheimer is a harsh look at the facade of the traditional nuclear family — a concept that was considered an intrinsic and inseparable part of the American cultural fabric at the time.
David Brooks of The Atlantic writes: “During this period, a certain family ideal became engraved in our minds: a married couple with 2.5 kids. When we think of the American family, many of us still revert to this ideal…. We take it as the norm, even though this wasn’t the way most humans lived during the tens of thousands of years before 1950…” The nuclear family isn’t realistic or feasible for most families. Augie leans on his father-in-law, Oppenheimer on his close friends. Right-wing ideology bemoans the “death of the nuclear family,” and both Anderson and Nolan use their protagonist’s family dynamics to further the very intentional anti-conservative and anti-fascist commentary coming from both films. It’s almost eerie how these two men — one real, one fictional — parallel each other.
Oppenheimer. Syncopy Inc. / Atlas Entertainment / Universal Pictures
These two films continue to intersect not just politically, but also stylistically. Both Nolan and Anderson switch between color and black-and-white cinematography to frame their films. A simple method to delineate time frames and settings becomes a much more clever storytelling device in the hands of these Academy Award-nominated filmmakers.
Asteroid City is a film about a TV show about a playwright and his play. In this intensely meta film, Anderson chooses black-and-white to show the behind-the-scenes of the theater workers, and color to portray the play. But Anderson also loves to break the fourth wall; theater actors remove themselves from the play and suddenly become their actors, the TV narrator accidentally finds himself in the play, and the actual film actors break character and start using their real-life accents. There’s a certain fluidity in how scenes move quickly from color to black and white, not only maintaining the film’s dynamism but also signifying that not everything the audience sees should be taken at face value. Nolan plays with that fluidity as well, using black-and-white in Oppenheimer to portray the objective truth, while color is used to showcase Oppenheimer’s more subjective memories and retellings of his time on the Manhattan Project. We see the same scenes in both versions, providing much-needed context for the audience.
Asteroid City and Oppenheimer converge on similar themes to explore the nuclear and political anxieties of the American public; characters are repeatedly questioned and put on trial for their left-wing beliefs. Although both films are set in the past, you can’t help but think that they’re also parallels to our current reality as fascism continues to infect the United States. This is a double feature that may get less attention than the juggernaut that is Barbenheimer, but Oppenoid City is an even richer viewing experience.