The first thing I felt myself noticing about the film Asteroid City was how orange everything was.
The orange was gorgeous, and a device of course, and part of what makes it a poem.
The movie is a poem.
The movie is a poem because it is not a full and complete story as much as it is a full and complete poem about grief.
The mother who has died in the color part of the movie is just an actress, and the story of her surviving family is just part of the script of the play, and in the black and white part of the movie, she is still alive and well, and it is actually the playwright who has died. Which, in the narrative, makes sense as the color part of the movie, the play, remains unfinished.
Some people. might mildly enjoy the film’s “story” and leave feeling unsatisfied, because they do not understand poetry, and they do not understand that it is a poem.
If there is a central theme to the black and white section of the film, it is creative people doubting their creativity, and struggling to manage their “art” while they live, or not, their lives.
If there is a central theme to the color part of the movie I would say it is people trying to manage the relationships in their lives, and struggling to be open about their struggles and emotions, because they are too concerned about the affect they will have on those around them, who they love.
But the overall theme of the film is just the feeling, the feeling of wanting something special to happen, the feeling of wanting lives that end to go on indefinitely, the feelings of wanting to be accepted in the full splendor of our own weirdness, the feelings of how hot and uncomfortable and trapped life can feel, and then, in a whiff, all the circumstances and all the people you were worrying about are gone when you wake up. And maybe you weren’t ready. And the world is so orange, and the world is so grey, and can we connect more than superficially, and do we know what to do when everyone has gotten up and gone, and we’re still working things out?
If you need a thread… if you need a frame around your story… if you need a linear: “…and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened…,” sort of story that you can successfully sum-up for another human, this might not be your movie. But that is no reason to slam it. It is a lush, and sparse, and warm, and disconnected, and full-of-feeling poem. And like life, the end moves into the current space and time, and you probably were not ready for it. But that doesn’t mean we slam it based on our own short-comings, and our own reluctance to let go of the handrail, and float in a poem masquerading as a film. One very interesting thing about my daughter, which may be, in part, a reflection of her coming up as a consumer of reels, she is not so bound to the linear in story-telling, and she went with it. She liked it; she got it enough to be entertained, and she didn’t ask too much more of it.
And it seems like many people didn’t get it, and were none too pleased that it looked and felt like
Moonrise Kingdom, but didn’t wrap up in a nice bow.
The family in Moonrise Kingdom has four children, one female teen in crisis, and three small hellions for sons. Asteroid City has the same: one male teen in crisis, and three small hellions for daughters. But no neat ending. Grief is not neat.
Asteroid City is a poem. If you like poetry, you might like seeing a movie that is only masquerading as a film, and is, in truth, a poem. I loved it.
Dianne Pearce Writes 