‘He had made a request for his usual escort, the one from his days on the circuit, to meet him at the pier by way of the Green Line bus. As always, she was late’
They’re just two sentences, but they’re two fantastic sentences. Two fantastic sentences made even more fantastic by way of Alec Baldwin’s warm delivery. They could be the starting sentences of a short story, a novel, whatever you like. At this point, we have a smattering of information about Richie’s glittering former career as a tennis player. As for the ‘she’, absolutely nothing.
The bus rides smoothly into position and stops, dropping off a serene Margot Tenenbaum (Gyneth Paltrow in perhaps her best film role; either this or The Talented Mr Ripley), made all the more serene by the use of slow motion and the opening of Nico’s dreamlike ‘These Days’. Richie stares on in a dazed stupor as Margot continues to walk towards him, then stands up and shyly crosses his arms as ‘These Days’ fades away.
The moment lasts for less than a minute, but it’s the distinctive use of music and vibrant imagery that makes a huge emotional impact. As Music Supervisor Mike Ladman notes of the musical interlude, the audience ‘can have some poetic freedom. And you don’t need to say exactly what you’re seeing right now’. Music and imagery do all the emotional legwork without a single word needing to be spoken by either Margot or Ritchie during the slow motion. Wes Anderson continued this tradition with magnificent effect in many of his later works, of course, but has never quite captured that wonder and awe since. Will he come close in Asteroid City? We’ll have to find out.