ACTOR/ALIEN
I don’t play him as an alien, actually. I play him as a metaphor. That’s my interpretation.
ACTRESS/SHELLY
Metaphor for what?
ACTOR/ALIEN
I don’t know yet.
It soon becomes clear in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City that there’s a link between Augie Steenbeck’s late wife and the Arid Plains Meteorite. Just as Augie’s wife was dearly loved by her husband, children and father, the asteroid is cherished by everyone at the stargazers convention. Just as Augie’s wife gave an identity to a loving family, the asteroid is commemorated every year and literally gave its name to the city in which it landed.
Therefore, when the alien appears and takes away this asteroid, an object that has been on earth since it arrived in 3007 BC, the visitors are left in a state of shock and distress. Suddenly, they must confront the abrupt absence of something that has been a constant throughout their lives. Without the asteroid, the site loses its meaning, all that’s left is an empty crater. In this sense, the alien, as the taker of the asteroid, can be thought of as a metaphor for death; an unstoppable force that deprives us of our loved ones and leaves us with a heart-wrenching reminder of their absence.
Everyone reacts to this loss in different ways, but generally we can see the convention attendees go through five stages of grief:
First there is denial:
GENERAL GIBSON
“…Secure the site; cease the dissemination of information; collect and transport the totality of evidence to a hermetically-enclosed/deep-underground secret storage facility; and publicly deny all aspects of the event including its existence for a period of no less than 100 years.”
Then there’s Anger:
DETECTIVE #1
Let’s take it from the top.
RICKY
I told you fifty times. The alien picked up the asteroid —
DETECTIVE #2
Alleged alien.
RICKY
I know what I saw!
Bargaining
JUNE
…I’m not trying to evade your questions. I want to emphasize: you’re safe. We all are. (Here on earth.) Your parents have been notified of, at least, something. America remains at peace.
Depression
MIDGE
I mean, I think I know now what I realize we are: two catastrophically wounded people who don’t express the depths of their pain — because we don’t want to.
And finally, acceptance…except there is no acceptance, at least for Augie. He deliberately avoids coming to terms with the taking of the asteroid, and by proxy, his own personal loss.
AUGIE
Uh-huh. Let’s change the subject.
Instead of confronting and ultimately trying to overcome his grief, Augie is resigned to the fact that he will always be depressed. In his mind, there is nothing that can make him feel better:
AUGIE
When my father died, my mother told me, “He’s in the stars.” I told her, “The closest star other than that one –” (pointing to the sun) “– is four and half light years away with a surface temperature over 5000 degrees centigrade. He’s not in the stars,” I said. “He’s in the ground.” She thought it would comfort me. (She was an atheist.) The other thing she said which is incorrect: “Time heals all wounds.” No. Maybe it can be a Band-Aid.
This scene happens relatively early, so you might think that Augie will find healing later in the play. After all, the subplot of the alien seems to be mirroring his grieving process. When it comes back to earth and returns the beloved asteroid, it feels like a significant moment of closure.
GENERAL GIBSON
It’s been inventoried.
After we lose someone, it’s not like every trace of them is wiped off the earth. Instead, they come back to us through memories, they are, in a sense, inventoried. Over time, experiences of these memories stop being sad, and start to become happier, a sign that the process of grieving is drawing towards the final stage of acceptance.
Yet, rather than reaching the stage, the actor playing Augie, Jones Hall, walks off set. At the very moment that we would expect Augie to end his character arc and finally accept the death of his wife, Hall doesn’t buy it. As a result his character seems to be perpetually stuck at the depression stage of grief.
ACTOR/AUGIE
I feel lost.
DIRECTOR
Good!
ACTOR/AUGIE
I still don’t understand the play.
DIRECTOR
Good!
ACTOR/AUGIE
He’s such a wounded guy. He had everything he wanted — then lost it. Before he even noticed! I feel like my heart is getting broken. My own, personal heart. Every night.
It soon becomes clear why Hall is having such a hard time playing Augie. We learn that the playwright Conrad Earp, died shortly after Asteroid City started its run, forcing the company to go on alone.
HOST
Six months into the run, the company received the news: a catastrophic automobile accident. Conrad Earp, American playwright unequalled in passion and imagination, dead at fifty.
This has a special significance for Hall, as we know from an earlier documentary scene that he shared an intimate relationship with the playwright. Unlike the unproductive conversations he has with director Schubert Green, talking with Earp allowed Hall to truly connect with his character.
PLAYWRIGHT
Normally, I’d offer my advice and suggestions, but your interpretation is so perceptive and precise — anything you do is bound to be dramatically true. You’re perfect. I don’t think there’s anything else to say.
Without Earp as a muse, Hall starts to doubt his portrayal of Augie, all the while being stricken by grief, as we see during one of the play’s rehearsal scenes:
MIDGE
Use your grief.
AUGIE
“Such a sickening waste. Think of the people. Think of the places. Think of the world you could’ve seen, Dolores.”
The grief that Augie’s actor is using here is not the imagined despair over his imaginary late wife, but rather his real-life pain for the loss of his lover, Conrad Earp. He even seems to continue channelling this grief after the rehearsal:
MIDGE
What’d you just do?
AUGIE
I burned my hand on the Quicky-Griddle.
MIDGE
Why?
AUGIE
It’s not clear.
MIDGE
Show me.
MIDGE
You really did it! That actually happened.
Hall was only supposed to act as if he’d burnt his hand, but he actually does it, an action that seems to shock the actress playing Midge into breaking character. At this moment, It’s almost as if he is overcome by pain. If we rewind to the earlier documentary scene, we start to understand why. This part of the play is a direct reminder of his first intimate conversation with Earp.
ACTOR/AUGIE
Why does Augie burn his hand on the Quicky-Griddle?
PLAYWRIGHT
Well, I don’t even know, myself, to tell you the truth. I hadn’t planned it that way — he just sort of did it while I was typing. Is it too extraordinary?
ACTOR/AUGIE
I guess the way I read it: he was looking for an excuse why his heart was beating so fast.
When Earp was alive, Hall understood that Augie burning his hand showed he was getting feelings for Midge, a sign that he may have finally been moving on from his grief-stricken state of depression. In fact, he seemed to have such a good grasp on his character and his journey towards acceptance, that he could improvise this whole speech:
ACTOR AUGIE
“It’s a fact: we’re not alone. The alien stole the asteroid. ‘Long-thought to be a lunar splinter fragmented from the lesser moon of the hypothetical planet Magnavox27; now considered a rogue pygmy cometette.’ (According to the encyclopedia.) Obviously, she would’ve said something to him. I’m certain of it. Your mother, I mean. She would’ve gotten him to tell us the secrets of the universe or yelled at him or made him laugh. She would’ve had a hypothesis. You remind me of her more than ever. She wasn’t shy. You’ll grow out of that. (I think your sisters might be aliens, too, by the way.) When I met your mother she was only nineteen. She was smoking a cigarette/reading a paperback/taking a bath in a swimsuit on a rusty fire escape a flight and a half below my camera position. Sometimes I sometimes —
I sometimes — I sometimes still think I still hear her — here — breathing — in the dark.
Who knows, Woodrow? Maybe she is in the stars.”
Yet, after Earp dies, Hall loses this interpretation. He simply can’t understand his character’s actions anymore.
AUGIE
Why does Augie burn his hand on the Quicky-Griddle? I still don’t understand the play.
It’s clear that Hall’s grief over the death of the playwright is directly linked to Augie’s grief over the death of his wife. If he can’t accept his own loss, how could he ever accept his character’s?
This question is answered by what is perhaps the most absurd part in the entire film:
PLAYWRIGHT
Well, the thing is, Saltzie: I’d like to make a scene where all my characters are each gently/privately seduced into the deepest, dreamiest slumber of their lives as a result of their shared experience of a bewildering and bedazzling celestial mystery
This documentary scene is placed right after the end of act two and, once all the actors are asleep, leads us directly into the next act:
TEACHER (CONT’D)
Where are we, Connie? And when. Talk to us!
PLAYWRIGHT
All right. One week later. Our cast of characters’ already tenuous grasp of reality has further slipped in quarantine, and the group begins to occupy a space of the most peculiar emotional dimensions.
This suggests that the entire third act of the play is in fact a dream sequence designed to allow the characters’ to come to terms with their grief. Sleep, as Keitel notes, is where these important things happen.
TEACHER
Sleep: is not death. The body keeps busy (breathing air, pumping blood, thinking). Maybe you pay a visit to your dead mother. Maybe you go to bed with your ex-wife. Or husband! Maybe you climb the Matterhorn. Connie: you wake up with a new scene three quarters written in the head already. Schubert: you wake up with a hangover. Important things happen.
Much of the third act is suitably absurd for a dream sequence. Take, for example, the song that is prepared by the schoolchildren.
Yet, Hall walking off set in disbelief right at the end of third act shows that he’s forgotten what he’s learned from the dream workshop with Keitel. Instead of surrendering himself to the absurdity of the subconscious, he tries to rationalise everything.
ACTOR/AUGIE
Isn’t there supposed to be some kind of answer? Out there in the cosmic wilderness. Woodrow’s line about the meaning of life?
Eventually though, Hall is reminded of the workshop through a chance encounter with his old co-star, whose speaking role was cut from the play.
ACTRESS/WIFE
We meet in a dream on the alien’s planet.
ACTOR/AUGIE
Magnavox-27. Actually, it’s one of the moons of it.
ACTRESS/WIFE
…I think you’ll need to replace me.” You say: “What? Why? How? I can’t.” I say: “Maybe, I think, you’ll need to try. I’m not coming back, Augie.” Then you take a picture of me and start crying, and I say: “I hope it comes out.”
He is reminded that we don’t need to be hyper-rational to process traumatic events. In fact, we need to be the opposite. In the words of Earp, we must “occupy a space of the most peculiar emotional dimensions.”, i.e. a dream. This leads Hall to the realisation that:
ACTOR/AUGIE
You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep.
The actor finally sees that he will never be able to find acceptance or “wake up” if he doesn’t first allow himself to embrace absurdity or “fall asleep”. He doesn’t need to understand the play, or the meaning of life to come to terms with Earp’s death, he just needs to be in touch with his feelings. The same is true for the alien. The convention never finds an answer for why the alien came to earth and stole the asteroid, but the president still ends up lifting the quarantine. The play is telling us that science and rationality can only get us so far. At some point we must rely on our subconscious to deal with abstract phenomena.
Dreaming can be thought of in the very literal sense, but it’s also a proxy for the creative process. Great writers, artists and actors often remove themselves from the constraints of reality so they can provide emotive reflections on the world from a new perspective. In turn, these perspectives are able to help viewers reckon with their own emotions. Wes Anderson’s film is a symbolic reflection on the grieving process, as told through Conrad Earp’s play of Asteroid City, through which actor Jones Hall comes to terms with his personal loss through the fictional character of Augie Steenbeck.
Each person, fictional or real is an artist, able to use their work to elicit much-needed catharsis in their audience. Asteroid City is a testament to the transcendent power of art.
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