Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City is a unique film that blurs the lines between reality and fiction through its framed structure and philosophical message, challenging audiences to ponder the meaning and nature of life.
Asteroid City is a new movie by director Wes Anderson, released in 2023. While watching the movie, I had a number of thoughts about its structure and themes that I wanted to put into writing, which is why I chose it as the subject of my reflection. Anderson’s unique directorial style is always interesting, and his originality shines through in this movie, as his films impress audiences not only with their visual beauty, but also with the way they tell their stories.
First, I’d like to write about my impressions of the structure of Asteroid City. Asteroid City is framed in a frame-like structure. The innermost frame contains the play “Asteroid City,” which tells the story of the strange happenings in the town of Asteroid City, where a meteorite once fell. A documentary about the making of the play is in the next frame, and the host of the documentary is in the final frame. This framing scheme has been utilized in the director’s previous film, The Grand Budapest Hotel. However, unlike The Grand Budapest Hotel, where the story within each frame is clearly separated, in Asteroid City, the frames are broken down multiple times.
Jones Hall, who plays Auggie Steenback in the play, doesn’t understand what the play is about and runs off stage, and the host accidentally breaks into the play and blows his lines. As the movie’s frames come crashing down, the vertical structure of the movie feels horizontal. This change in perception breaks down the fourth wall, the last frame of the movie and the one that separates the audience from the movie, and merges the world of the movie with the real world. The collapse of the structural depth of the movie also collapses the hierarchy between reality and the movie. In this way, Wes Anderson presents the audience with a new perspective on the boundary between cinema and reality through structural experiments.
What is particularly interesting about this movie is that it blurs the lines between reality, cinema, and fiction, making the audience feel like they are part of the events in the movie. This experience of connecting with the world in the movie made me rethink the relationship between movies and the world. Instead of seeing the world in a movie as an artificial simulation of the real world, I see it as an independent world that is connected to the real world through the screen. Wes Anderson’s experimental approach shows that he is expanding the medium of cinema beyond just a means of storytelling to include artistic exploration and expression.
So that’s my take on the structure of Asteroid City. I was able to gain a deep appreciation for the content of the movie as much as the structure. In the play Asteroid City, Auggie Steenback, the protagonist of the play, is heartbroken after losing his wife. But there is more to Auggie Steenback’s heartbreak than the death of his wife. It’s the loss of the meaning of life. After his wife’s death, Auggie Steenback loses the meaning of life and falls into a deep void.
Auggie Steenback’s loss of meaning extends to Jones Hall, the actor who plays him. Jones Hall does not understand the actions of his character, Auggie Steenback, or the meaning of the play Asteroid City. He asks Conrad, the author, the creator of the world in the play, and Schubert, the director, the priest of the world in the play, about the meaning of Auggie’s actions and the play, but neither can answer. Rather, Conrad, the creator, listens to Jones and suddenly understands the behavior of his creature, Auggie. Neither the god who created the world nor the priest who represents the divine will and providence can explain the meaning of the creature’s behavior and the events in the world.
The person who gives Jones, and by extension Auggie, the answers is the actress who plays Auggie’s dead wife in the play. After running offstage because he doesn’t understand the play, Jones meets the actress who played his wife at a window. They then discuss a deleted scene from the play in which Auggie, who has gone to the stars in a dream, meets and talks to his dead wife. The deletion of the scene means that the actress is no longer in the play, so the two actors have virtually no relationship. Nevertheless, their conversation seems like a reunion of two long-lost lovers, and it creates a strange sense of nostalgia.
In this conversation, the two recite lines that didn’t make it into the play. Composed of a conversation between Auggie and his dead wife, they talk about the love of Auggie’s life: his wife, children, and photographs. As Jones listens, he realizes something. There is no meaning to life as an objective truth to begin with, and yet we must live. Jones realizes that there is no meaning to life as an objective truth to begin with, and that we must live it nonetheless. Realizing that life is about believing in and making meaning out of things that don’t exist, Auggie doesn’t stop his young daughters from burying his dead wife’s ashes in Asteroid City. Even if the daughters’ belief that their mother must be buried in Asteroid City is unfounded, Augie is able to leave his wife at peace in their world.
Of course, this is not to say that the movie should stop pondering the meaning of life. Rather, like the line, “You can only wake up if you fall asleep,” the film suggests that even if the meaning of life does not exist, it is through contemplation and anguish that we can live our lives actively. This philosophical message makes the audience think more deeply about their own lives and provides more than just entertainment.
I’ve applied this insight into life to movies. Just as Auggie and Jones don’t have to search for the meaning of the strange things that happen in Asteroid City, we shouldn’t have to trust that a movie has a clear director’s intention and message. Most directors don’t try to convey anything to the audience through their movies. It is up to the audience to create their own interpretation and meaning from the movie, which is a product of the director’s inner expression. So, just because a movie doesn’t clearly convey a message doesn’t mean that it’s esoteric and we should give up trying to understand it. I believe that trying to interpret a movie and create your own meaning can give you a deeper realization of how to live your life.
Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City is not just a movie to watch, but an opportunity to reflect on various aspects of our lives and find our own meaning in them. Through the collapse of the boundaries between reality and fiction in the movie, we feel that we too must accept the complexity and ambiguity of life and find our own way through it.
