Asteroid City is the latest of Wes Anderson’s cinematic creations. When the film first came out, it was met with scrutiny from loyal Anderson viewers and fans. I myself am a fan of his work. There are multiple different reasons as to why most have not liked it, but I’ve noticed a pattern; most people’s favorite films, such as Bottle Rocket and The Royal Tenenbaums end up being my least favorites, and the criticism I hear regarding Asteroid City is all things I disagree with.
Starting with background information, Anderson has gained an audience and become popular for having a specific cinematic style that is unique to him and all his movies. If you were to see it, you’d automatically associate it with him. He keeps that same style in this movie, but in an added twist, he uses stop motion, and also throughout the film, he shifts between black and white filters and effects.
The biggest criticism Anderson received regarding this movie was that he had disregarded storytelling and just made something he considers aesthetically pleasing. At first watch, the story and plot might seem lost and discombobulating when in reality, the plot is divided into two parts. These two stories are the reason he went back and forth from black and white and color.
Asteroid City, on the surface, is a movie about a play. Essentially, it is a movie within a movie. When we are watching real life, it is in black and white; when we are watching the play, it is in color. There are two sets of every character. All the actors, so to speak, have stories and lives of their own, while the characters in the play also live their stories. The main story is that multiple families travel to a science fair, and while they are there, an alien lands right in front of them. After witnessing that, everyone is then secluded and isolated for days. The main character of the play is a man named Augie Steenbeck who has just lost his wife. He travels for his son as he struggles to tell his children the news. Once he does, they all go about dealing with the information in their own way.
The whole movie and message that Wes Anderson wrote was that of grief. Multiple times, there is dialogue of grief between Augie Steenbeck and love interest Midge Campbell, and not just them, multiple characters speak about how they have lost someone or something in both the real world and the play.
The alien that shows up and disturbs the peace is a metaphor for how, even when you’ve accepted and learned to deal with the loss that you’ve had, something will inevitably remind you of the one you lost. To me and possibly to many others, the story is much more than just about death. I think it is also about life. How you live it, what you do with it, whether or not you have no regrets or many regrets regarding the decisions you’ve made.
To back this up, there is a scene between the actor playing Augie and the director Schubert Green where the actor walks up to Schubert and starts asking him, distraught and confused, whether or not he’s doing it right, and Schubert replies with something along the lines of “I don’t know but i think you are and your doing an amazing job.”
That scene, when I watched it for the first time, brought me to tears. When Augie asks if he’s doing it right, he doesn’t just mean the role, he means grief, he means life. And Schubert’s reply is something we all have heard before, or need to hear. The Reassurance of those words is all we need.
In conclusion, to watch this movie is to watch two movies at the same time. The stories make sense in that context and in reality. I recommend watching it twice before forming your final opinion of the film itself. I truly loved this movie, and it stays at the very top of my list of Anderson films. The story was beautiful, the cinematography was mesmerizing, and the touch of stop motion made me feel nostalgic towards the fantastic Mr. Fox.
If you ask me, this is one of his best films, and I highly recommend it. While people are allowed to believe what they want, I feel the criticism made by many is based on a very surface-level viewing of the film.
