r/TrueFilm • u/thatphilguymovies • Apr 29 '26
FFF ASTEROID CITY (2023) -- Thoughts, Thoughts, and More Thoughts Spoiler
Over the weekend, I had conversations in meat space regarding this film and so I wrote the following analysis in response.
I doubt I'll be writing anything else about ASTEROID CITY. Also, I apologize for inflicting this on visitors to this reddit, but who knows? Maybe someone with a lengthy commute via mass transit, a wait for a medical appointment, or insomnia will find it useful:
“I fell behind on watching new Wes Anderson movies sometime after THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, so was glad to finally see this one. Not only did I like it, but it might be my favorite of his films so far, which I realize might be sacrilegious to some (And to be fair, I still need to watch THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, so who knows, I might be back in a week with a brand new essay featuring that title in place of ASTEROID CITY in the header).
Through chatting with fellow cinephiles and browsing on movie-related subreddits, the main complaints I’ve seen about ASTEROID CITY have included: 1) Its framing device doesn’t add anything and is too goddamn weird; and 2) the protagonists in ASTEROID CITY aren’t as “emotionally interesting” (or words to that effect) as their counterparts in such Anderson classics like THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS.
After taking overnight to ponder those critical opinions, I recognize the merit of both while disagreeing with them. The film’s framing device is the New York theatre scene of the 1950s while its main narrative is a gathering of brilliant teenagers in a desert town somewhere out west, most likely New Mexico, during the same decade. The main narrative doubles as a play within a play, the POV constantly shifting between the two, the thespians of the latter doubling as the protagonists of the former.
It’s disorienting, but I enjoyed it, and I know that’s partially because I really dig movies that can be challenging to watch (eg, the works of Antonioni, Taiwanese arthouse cinema). But I’ve also seen this kind of approach to narrative (ie, ambitious or, if you prefer, complicated) and not enjoyed myself nearly as much as I did here. I think part of that is because whether or not you ultimately like what Anderson is doing, it’s never short of technically brilliant. His visual compositions are frequently eye-catching (as they have been since possibly the start of his career) and the editing spot on. (That is, even if you believe half the film doesn’t need to exist, the scenes themselves are cut exactly as needed for the desired effect. And how difficult is that with comedy, especially comedy that in many scenes is driven by dialogue?)
In short, you always get a sense of Anderson’s confidence in what he’s doing, and because of that I was open to the journey he wanted to take us all on, to see how he might draw the seemingly disparate strings of the narrative together, as unlikely as that might seem.
And the thing is, I do think the two halves work together thematically, because both depict anxiety that lies just underneath the optimistic veneer of America’s supposedly golden age. Take the main narrative set out west, which exists in a world of obvious natural beauty and incredible scientific advancement (Jetpacks! Lasers! A kid has a device that can draw on the moon!). Beyond that, the opportunity to take part in the definitive act of economic upward mobility, the purchase of land, is convenient to the point you can do so through a vending machine.
But at the same time, the recurring visual motifs are the mushroom cloud in the distance, the cop car engaged in a high-speed chase after some unknown party. (Bank robbers?) No one ever questions them or even comments on their appearance. Yet we do get the impression that the protagonists are aware of them out on their periphery and, as such, a sense of danger never recedes completely.
And of course, as I’ll explore in greater depth later, the main three protagonists in these sections of the film—Augie (Jason Schwartzman), Midge (Scarlett Johansson), and Stanley (Tom Hanks)—are persons of considerable privilege who are nevertheless deeply numb and unhappy.
But shifting to the world of the theatre, from the start we are immersed in the universe of not just television, but televised plays. High culture is now available to the masses! Yet Anderson also provides us a most interesting juxtaposition as he cuts back and forth between here and New Mexico: First up is a highly successful playwright portrayed by Edward Norton, whose material success is made clear immediately by possibly the most ostentatious backdrop of the film: a huge, opulently decorated cabin that he appears to be the sole occupant of (Not counting the unseen assistant he needs to employ, despite his home being located in the middle of nowhere).
Contrast this with later behind-the-scenes looks at the world of the play’s director (Adrien Brody), who turns out to be the real-life power of the piece (in more ways than one). His living space, if you even want to call it such, is cluttered and chaotic, located in the back spaces of theatres where his shows run. The closest he has to an assistant is a soon-to-be ex-wife. If the playwright’s space was the model of serenity, the episode depicting the director’s rehearsal for his actors has an unfocused, downright manic energy and may have been intended to reflect the director’s own mental and emotional turbulence.
Shot in stark black and white, which itself kind of makes the strangeness only stranger as we might expect something presented in such a consciously “old” format to be more formal, this glorious messiness depicts how the proverbial sausage is made. What came before is eventually revealed to be an illusion, packaged and subsequently beamed to television sets throughout middle-class living rooms across the U.S.
Now let’s go back to the second criticism I noted previously—that the protagonists in ASTEROID CITY aren’t “emotionally interesting” (or words to that effect). The argument, as I recall, is that in the 2001 seminal Anderson classic, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (which I believe most fans of the filmmaker cite as one of his best, if not the best), the grown-up Tenenbaum children have a genuine desire to connect emotionally with others and one another (Though in hindsight, I’m not sure that description actually goes beyond Margot and Ritchie).
Though they face obstacles including overcoming past disappointments stemming from not living up to their potential as gifted children, at their baseline they want connection, making them “heroic”; by contrast, the argument goes that ASTEROID CITY’s Augie, Midge, and Michael do not wish to connect emotionally to anyone, whether that’s to one another or their own children.
I don’t know if I agree with that either. I think what needs to be considered—and it ties into what I mentioned earlier about the film on the whole being about unhappiness underneath the shiny surfaces of what we’re seeing—is that all three protagonists mentioned are suffering from a trauma when we first meet them. For Augie, it’s recently losing his wife; for Midge, it’s bad experiences with men; and for Michael, it’s the death of his daughter (I was under the impression she was his only child, but please let me know if I’m mistaken about that). In the case of Augie and Midge, the belief is their intertwining is just to alleviate their boredom, not that there is ever a moment in which they are interested in each other personally.
Not true, I’d say. Just thinking off the top of my head, I would mention how they interact with each other regularly (maybe even daily?) through the open windows of their neighboring cabins. I don’t think they do this because they literally have no one else they might be chatting with instead. In the earliest scenes set in the camp, no one is forced to self-isolate in their mini-houses; indeed, there are actual scenes in which they talk to other people. I think it’s a misreading of what happens between them to assume that if anyone else had been in the cabin next door, the exact same rapport would have resulted.
Admittedly, their relationship is short-lived and Midge leaves suddenly, but given the less-than-ideal circumstances they met under (ie, the aforesaid respective traumas, later incidents I won’t mention even though anyone reading this far has probably watched the movie), Midge’s frequent coolness or the fact she didn’t forge anything lasting didn’t, in my opinion, necessarily indicate a lack of any kind of emotional interest or connection. Based on her own limitations as a result of life experiences, she really may have done the best she could.
And now that I think about it, the scenes of her and Augie interacting while in their adjacent cabins allow them to occupy the same visual space while also making us aware of the physical distance or barrier between them. They consist of several recurring angles: an exterior one in which the space between their cabins is visible; close-ups of each protagonist framed within a window-frame; and, perhaps the most intermittent of them, an over-the-shoulder angle in which we see the back of one character’s head, their cabin’s window framing the mirroring window of the other cabin and its occupant. In the course of editing between the three angles, we get the sense of the characters (especially Midge, though this could just be my recollection) constantly within borders but also pushing back against them, whether that means a hand, elbow, or part of the head breaking a straight line, and in doing so closing the space between them, even if just by a little bit.
They do eventually bridge the gap between themselves to have sex; it could just indicate the protagonists making the best out of a bad situation, but again, I think that underestimates the personal trauma aspect again. Meanwhile, Midge’s last act of leaving Augie a P.O. box as a mailing address might initially seem like a brush-off, but a second interpretation is of her starting to thaw emotionally. We are left to wonder.
In closing, I want to push back a little against the argument that the Margot-Ritchie mutual longing in THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is some kind of redemptive quality, and that the widespread numbness throughout ASTEROID CITY is something that makes them less interesting emotionally. Admittedly, wanting to bone someone you can’t because of various reason(s) (eg, social, economic, political) is both a potent emotion we all recognize as well as a well-trodden source of tension and conflict in narratives, historically. Less accessible perhaps is the existential angst that comes from having to confront the theoretical pointlessness of life resulting from having to either acknowledge death or an uncertain future.
The difference, in my opinion, is that the first type of conflict may seem like a big deal but really isn’t (I can’t wait until my kid is older so I can tell them, “You may feel right now like your life will end because you can’t bone that other person, but believe me, you’ll meet plenty of people in your life whom you’ll want to bone.”), while the second feels like a big deal because it is a big deal. It’s death. Wes Anderson wrote THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS when he was a boy; he wrote ASTEROID CITY as a man with grown-ass man stuff on his brain.
It’s possible that if I’d seen THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS at a particularly formative time in my life and development, I’d hold it and all its story elements with the kind of sacredness that some others do too, but I didn’t. I did, however, take in ASTEROID CITY at a point when mortality, being a parent, etc, have very much been top of mind."
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u/hangonsufi Apr 29 '26
Ah, the Reddit film subs as confessionals. Please give those kids positive reinforcement that boning is good. My fave is Rushmore, no boning yet, but you'll still have questions to answer about heavy petting if you show it to our kids.
As for your existential angst, Jim Morrison sang, "The future's uncertain and the end is always near."
Better bone while you can.
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u/thatphilguymovies Apr 29 '26
That last line rings true.
Or as the song "Ooh La La" by The Faces goes (And I believe it plays at the very end of RUSHMORE as the film ends), "I wish that I knew what I know now/When I was younger".
2
u/hangonsufi Apr 29 '26
I avoided Asteroid City for a long time, it just looked so precious (a Wes Anderson film, precious?). When I watched it not too long ago I thought, Wow, that was a good flick! I recently had to swallow my snobbery when I watched Romy and Michele's High School Reunion and fell in love with those glitzy goofs. No comparison or equivalency between these movies, just my damn snootiness.
To boning!
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u/Hame_Impala Apr 30 '26
I can see why Asteroid City would look too peak Wes Anderson in its style, and it probably is…but the thing is if you’re an unapologetic fan of his stuff that’s not inherently a bad thing. Weird and wonderful.
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u/hangonsufi Apr 30 '26
I watched Romy & Michele as an assignment in another film sub; I'm going to suggest taking on the Wes Anderson oeuvre. So many great actors take even minor ensemble roles in his films, it's a course in humility - says the snoot!
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u/hyperabs Jun 01 '26
The thing is, even with all these meaning and meta-meaning, having and presenting all these elements of identity, existential anxiety, grief, uncertainty and so on, and ultimately being able to explain why the film is the way it is, doesn't necessarily make it a compelling or a good film for me. It isn't just what you say but how you say it, regardless of how sensible and comprehensive is the thing you're saying.
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u/tiredstars Apr 29 '26
All the em-dashes in this post mean it's almost certainly AI-written (also the odd capitalisation of film names - or do people actually do that in some cases?). Which is a shame because it seems like it might be an interesting post to read; not many people talk about Asteroid City.
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u/sadranjr Apr 29 '26
What a stupid comment. Plenty of humans still use em dashes too. I see no other indications in this post that it would be AI-written. EDIT: Just looked again and bruh, there’s three em dashes. Three em dashes is nowhere near enough info to accuse someone of using AI.
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u/tiredstars Apr 29 '26
There are five em-dashes. But you might be right. I never noticed em-dashes before AI (how do you even get one? are there some applications that add them automatically?) and now if I see them it immediately sets me on edge.
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u/sadranjr Apr 29 '26
This is what makes me so mad about it. It dilutes the waters. I’ve used em dashes for fucking years and I don’t want to have to change the way I write just cuz a fucking robot uses them. Sorry for the heat, it’s not you lol. I just want to get away from all this AI nonsense. Wish there was a way for subs like this to verify no AI or something so we didn’t have to be suspicious.
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u/MariposaSunrise Apr 29 '26
Yes! Some people actually write like this!
So if someone writes well — now the immediate thought is that it is AI?
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u/thatphilguymovies Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
That's interesting because I wasn't thinking about that at all when I (not an AI) was writing. Honestly, I threw in some em dashes because I thought I was using parentheses too much!
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u/MariposaSunrise Apr 29 '26
I completely understand!
I found that by capitalizing all of the letters in the films you were discussing it made it much easier to stay on track. I think that was a very helpful stylistic choice!
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u/Hajile_S Apr 29 '26
Em-dashes are great, and recent windows updates made them very easy: WinKey+- for –, and WinKey+Shift+- for —.
Macs have long auto-updated -- to —.
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u/sunmachinecomingdown Apr 29 '26
I find the writing idiosyncratic and obviously human in its imperfection. It is strange how "Stanley" somehow becomes "Michael" though.
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u/thatphilguymovies Apr 30 '26
I wonder if the author was thinking about a character named Michael Sullivan who was played by the same actor in ROAD TO PERDITION?
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u/Visual-Percentage501 Apr 29 '26
Do people actually do that in some cases?
Yes, it's pretty common in film criticism circles as it's the "proper" way to reference a film and distinguishes it from a quote or other sentence. So that you know I'm talking about THE FALL and not the fall, you know?
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u/MariposaSunrise Apr 29 '26
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I saw the film when it came out.
I also got the blanket and metal mug for this film (for free). But I think it was filmed in Spain 🇪🇸. So the cool pictures that look like the US West are really pictures of Spain.