Asteroid City: The Artistic Process and The Meaning of Life
By Rose Drage
Most cinephiles are able to recognise a Wes Anderson film from just one frame. From the simplistic, symmetrical sets with bold, pastel colours, to the deadpan delivery of his witty dialogue. There is something about his films that have a certain magic to them. This Wes Anderson charm is more present than ever in his latest film, Asteroid City.
Set in the post WWII American west, the film follows a ragtag ensemble of characters as they process the changing political and socio economic climate in their own ways. From a war photographer, Augie Stienbeck, and his four children struggling with the emotional turmoil of their mother’s death, to a film star, an eccentric scientist, and an oddly adorable alien, this film doesn’t stray from Wes’ charmingly bizarre cast of characters. They are all so different but there’s something incredibly human about their sincerity.
What makes Asteroid City so special, however, is the meta narrative. The story of the town, Asteroid City, is a fictional story which is being played out by actors in a play. The film is separated in two layers of meta; it opens in black and white as a man talks about the making of the play, but then as act I begins, the film bursts into an array of Wes’ signature pastel colour palette. The film switches between the monochromatic behind-the-scenes of the play, and the coloured portion- the story itself.
This is what aroused a lot of critiques of the film- many people have complained that it’s too complex, that there’s too much going on and that it lacks substance. They say that Wes has prioritised the pretty cinematography and funny dialogue, instead of putting any real emotion into his film.
I would argue that the thing those very critiques are complaining about is the whole point of the film: uncertainty. This film was conceived in a time where almost the entire world had just been under total lockdown from a pandemic, where news media is becoming more and more distressing. What better way to express the uncertainty of the 2020s than in a film infused with chaos. The characters’ confusion and anxiety can easily be interpreted to represent our own. Through the disorder of their environment and their whole worldview, the characters are constantly asking the same question: what does it all mean?
This existential panic comes to a climax at the end of scene three. After the alien returns the asteroid back to the crater it came from, all hell breaks loose. Children with weapons and flying on jetpacks, people yelling over each other; the air of instability has come to a burning climax. Augie Stienbeck, our main character, turns and walks to one side of the crater, where we see a door outlined in the orange dirt. He opens it, and walks into the black and white backstage area. You see a crane lifting up the boy you just saw flying on a jetpack, you see actors getting ready for their scene. Augie’s actor, Jones Hall, walks with determination to where the director, Schubert Green, who had been living in the set for a couple of months.
He asks “Am I doing him right?”. ‘Him’ being his character, Augie. He complains that he feels lost and that he feels like his own heart is being broken every night. Something that I’m sure many of us can relate to from time to time. Most of all, Jones says that he’s worried that he still doesn’t understand the play. To this his director replies “Doesn’t matter. Just keep telling the story. You’re doing him right.”
This is a message that hit me like a ton of bricks the first time I heard it. Movies put so much emotional weight on ‘finding your purpose’, and real life is not that simple. Coming of age stories like to tell us that finding yourself is a journey that you go through, where the destination is ‘yourself.’ What this film is trying to tell us is that the world is constantly changing in ways that can’t be condensed into a three part storyline with a beginning, middle, and end. Equally, we are as ever-changing and nuanced as the world around us. The characters are constantly trying to find a version of themselves that makes sense. This is clear in lines like “I never had children. Sometimes I wonder if I wish I should’ve...” where the emotion is so watered down by layers of self analysis that they become almost incomprehensible. Wes is telling us that we don’t have to try to constantly show the best possible version of ourselves. That, in these times where it’s difficult not to feel overwhelmed, all we have to do is keep going. As long as we do that, we are enough.
This theme can also be applied to the artistic process, and Wes Anderson’s stage in his creative career. The nuclear success of his recent films ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ and ‘The French Dispatch’ leave him at a pivotal point in his filmmaking. This is usually a crossroads for any artist reaching this stature; they either continue defining their style and excelling in their field, or they fall under the pressure and fail to meet the new expectations, losing their moment in the public interest. Wes decided to do something interesting at this moment, by creating a film about the storytelling process itself- a film all about uncertainty and how it affects the creative process.
There is one scene that, without any context or further analysis, feels completely absurd. It is set in a dimly lit actors studio, where an acting class is being attended by all of the different actors of the play. Suddenly, one of the actors stands up from her seat and speaks out the words “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep”. All of the other actors murmur to each other, until more of them stand up and say the same line. Eventually, that one sentence is being repeated by all of the actors as the alien slowly walks towards the camera. It feels like a really strange dream- unsettling but inexplicably comforting. When you think about it in the context of an acting class, however, you can begin to assign some meaning to it.
Lee Strasburg is a theatre director, teacher, and actor who is known for popularising method acting and teaching it to many well-known actors. One of the methods he would use in these classes is where he would put his actors to sleep in order to get rid of any tension inside their mind and their body, which would allow them to become the character even more. The teacher in this scene vaguely resembles Strassburg, and this puts the words “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep” into a new context. In order to succeed, you have to let go of all the doubts and trust yourself enough to go on.
When I’m acting, playing guitar, or even writing essays like this one, I am overwhelmed by this nagging doubt in my head about whether I’m doing it right, and what the point is of what I’m doing. The scariest thing about art, for me at least, is the fact that no-one can tell you if you’re doing the right thing. Only you know the message and the emotions that you’re trying to express. You’re alone with the seemingly impossible task of taking the multitude of emotions inside of you, and translating them into something meaningful. You can try to break it down into micro-movements and different techniques, but you can’t rely on those techniques alone. At some point, you have to trust yourself enough to simply do the thing that you know how to do. “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep.” This means essentially the same thing as the one word that I have been told over and over again by my guitar teacher, my drama teacher, and so many other people at stressful times: “Breathe.”
You know that you can do this because you’ve done it so many times before. The only thing stopping you from doing it is your overactive consciousness.
This is what I believe Wes Anderson is trying to tell himself with this storytelling; at this critical moment in his career, where he is especially known for his films perfection and innovation, he is telling himself not to crumble but to trust himself and let the Wes Anderson magic happen. Outside of the context of the creative process, this notion still entails a message that can relate to all of his audience, especially people of our age.
You might not know what you’re doing it all for, but you have no choice but to keep going, so you may as well try to enjoy it and bask in the absurd chaos of it all. This can be applied to our student lives, as well. We’re told to work as hard as we possibly can in order to get the best grades, and for what? So that if we do this for long enough, we can be accepted into a good university? But then what? Have a good career? A family? The truth is, we have no idea what the future will hold for us. We can assign meaning to our results; “If I keep getting A*s in physics, I can be an engineer”, but we have no way of knowing what will happen once we leave the school system. A large portion of people don’t even pursue what they learn in university. We aren’t grown people yet. Our brains haven’t even finished developing. We are being asked by the universe what we want to become, but most of us aren’t yet sure what we want to do with our lives, so what do we do? The only thing we can do- “Just keep telling the story.”
“You’re doing it right.”
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