Five reasons to see ‘Mad Heidi’ instead of ‘Asteroid City’
Wes Anderson’s 11th feature narrative film, Asteroid City, is enough to prompt a review of his career, 27 years after Bottle Rocket. The story of typical Andersonian goings-on in a quirky-but-cute desert hamlet might even be called the quintessence of Anderson’s distinctive filmography—if by “quintessence” we mean endlessly restated precious absurdity adorned with the filmmaker’s trademark stylistic touches, trotted out once again as if they all were brand new.
Mad Heidi, on the other hand, is a self-described “modern grindhouse epic,” a 2022 Swiss production directed by Johannes Hartmann and Sandro Klopfstein that seeks to run author Johanna Spyri’s beloved 19th-century children’s tale—the adventures of a sweet-but-headstrong “mountain girl”—through an exploitation meat grinder, complete with ultra-violence. Plus a little cheese.
The modern moviegoer’s dilemma is this: Whether to schlep off to the latest Wes Anderson flick, even if one is a bit tired of his oft-repeated mannerisms, or to take a chance on the drastic rethinking of a much-parodied juvenile fable about an innocent young woman from the Swiss Alps and her lovable old grandfather.
Don’t fret. Here are five ways that Mad Heidi is more fun than Asteroid City:
THE CONCEPT: By most mainstream yardsticks, Mad Heidi is an annoying piece of lowbrow piffle and Asteroid City is an accomplished, if heavily derivative, work of art. So how is it that a viewer keeps looking at their watch while the latter is playing, and the raucous, outrageous former triggers an eruption of nervous giggles? The same reason that someone jumps on a vintage Indian motorcycle instead of sitting down in a Toyota. Heidi irreverently rehabs a dangerous antique; Asteroid sticks close to home.
THE PLOT: In Anderson’s film, a famed photographer and his talkative family get stranded in the title village when their car breaks down, and meet people as self-involved as they are. It’s essentially a remake of The Royal Tenenbaums—or The Grand Budapest Hotel, or The Darjeeling Limited—under different circumstances. Mad Heidi imagines what would happen if Shirley Temple grew up to become a revolutionary, fighting against an insidious corporation intent on corrupting Switzerland’s famous Emmentaler cheese.
THE CHARACTERS: Heidi becomes a vengeful Swiss patriot once she learns the truth. Her best friend—and lover—Goat Peter is a Black man who sells his natural cheese in the village. The country’s most powerful figure is a decadent businessman in league with the leader of an army of stormtroopers. Frau Rottweiler is the sadistic warden of a women’s prison. In Asteroid City almost everyone is very accomplished and the dialogue tends toward the studied, understatedly absurd.
THE ACTORS: Casper Van Dien (President Meili) is the only American actor in Mad Heidi. Alice Lucy (Heidi), David Schofield (Heidi’s grandfather) and Kel Matsena (Goat Peter) are British, and the rest of the cast are European. As such, their over-the-top antics bring a freshness to the project. By contrast, Wes Anderson’s stock players—Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Tilda Swinton, Scarlett Johansson, Edward Norton, et al.—are very, very familiar. The happiest surprise is Bryan Cranston as the interlocutor. But let’s be honest: no one is at all surprised to see Tom Hanks show up in any movie, anywhere, in any role.
CHEEKINESS FACTOR: Asteroid doesn’t have that. Its proceedings have a safe, middle-class, thoroughly researched sameness that smothers the slender story. Mad Heidi has the great advantage of being a tasteless foreign import with salacious shock scenes, prominent among which features a character being sodomized with a mustard-smeared bratwurst. Things like that never occur in Wes Anderson’s corner of the universe.
Seriously, though, the Swiss film is devoted to obliterating outdated hierarchies; Asteroid City is about the satirical futility of trying to do so. The choice is clear.
Mad Heidi is being screened one night only, Wednesday, June 21, at three Bay Area theaters including Emeryville’s AMC Bay Street 16.
In theaters.
