We All Need A Breath of Fresh Air

Asteroid City’s guidance for the times

After using that picture of Adrien Brody as Schubert Green as an example of impeccable tailoring in last week’s piece, I decided to rewatch Asteroid City. For its 2023 release, I went to an opening screening at Angelika that included a Q&A with Brian Cranston. It was one of my favorites of the year and fell into the category of “films I saw just before going to see one or both of my parents and then forced them to come with me for a second time so that we could discuss it.” You wouldn’t believe the length of that list if I made it on letterboxd… maybe I should.

On this rewatch, I remembered what I liked so much about the movie and what I had been desperate to talk to my mom about that summer. The play, set in the desert, within a documentary television show about the play, within a movie that we’re watching keeps pulling the audience out of levels of consciousness. It reminded me how many truths can run parallel. Who we are in one frame might not be the reality of us and we don’t always have to understand what’s happening to keep going.

The quarantining of the site of an annual youth science convention after a surprise alien sighting was most likely written in reaction to the quarantining the world had been through in 2020. This is a piece of art born out of uncertainty, anxiety and desperation for human connection. Two years after the release of this film, nothing has really changed. Every time I have looked at my phone in the past ~10 days, there are multiple new horrors to digest, atrocities it feels like we can’t possibly live through. My group chats are endless streams of “how can we be expected to keep business as usual?” “I’m not sure I want to have children anytime soon anymore” and “I love you, but I need to turn my phone off.”

Watching this again in my bed, I found myself weeping at the scene below. It’s toward the end of the film so if you haven’t seen it, maybe go watch the whole thing first (streaming on Peacock).

At the climax of the happenings in the desert, Augie (Jason Schwartzman) breaks the fourth wall and tells Midge (Scarlett Johansson) he still doesn’t understand the play. He exits through a stage door into black and white to have a discussion with the director, Green. The audience is pulled out of the stage show and into the television show. Augie passes the man playing the alien (Jeff Goldblum) telling someone that the alien is a metaphor for something. When Augie stops to ask what it’s a metaphor for, Goldblum insists that he hasn’t pinned that down yet. This only builds the anxiety in Augie, or well, the actor playing Augie still played by Schwartzman.

The exchange between Augie and Schubert is where I started to get a lump in my throat. Say nothing of the use of both men’s physicality (Brody on his knees, looking Schwartzman in the eyes as he sits in a chair), there’s a longing they communicate, to be heard and reassured. There have been so many times in my life I have wished to hit pause and ask if I’m doing something right, seeking answers that no one has.

“Do I just keep doing it?” “Yes.”

“Without knowing anything?” “Yes.”

“I still don’t understand the play.” “It doesn’t matter, just keep telling the story.”

I have felt so paralyzed by the political climate, I needed a reminder that this is just the way life goes. No matter if you feel like you can or not, you have to go on, even just to tell the story. I’m currently clamoring for a breath of fresh air I know I won’t find. It doesn’t mean I have to stop breathing altogether.

Stepping out on the balcony, Augie meets a familiar face (Margot Robbie). “You’re the wife who played my actress” struck me the first time I watched this and still scratches something in my brain on a rewatch. I’ve never really decided what I think it means, but I’m really trying not to “figure out” everything that makes me feel something in a piece of art. Their recounting of their cut scene unravels the grief of having to go through life in a way you hadn’t planned. I love when Robbie is talking about the alien and hits the line “I think he’s shy.” The tinkling bells of the score are suddenly overlayed with sorrowful strings as she compares him to her fictional son. She continues reciting the lines she was supposed to say urging Augie to do his best at being a single father. His denial that he could possibly do that is finally met with “Maybe, I think you’ll need to try.” His search for fresh air finally leads him to meaning.

Not much more to say than that. I hope our love and caring for each other keeps us trying to push on, trying to tell the story, no matter how ambiguous and scary it may seem.

I love this movie, I hope you do too.

What I’m Watching This Week

You guys can put me in Substack jail because this is the 3rd piece I’ve promised to watch Emilia Perez in… I still have not done it. Every time I put time aside something else insane about it is in the news, not that that’s what’s stopping me per se. It’s more like I’m not a fan of any part of it: musicals, Selena Gomez, things Netflix buys at festivals…

I am seeing I’m Still Here at Angelika this week and I’m very excited about it. I’m going in like 70% blind so going to leave it that way.

Sue me, The Brutalist round 3 on Saturday. Dedicated readers may remember that I also saw Oppenheimer 3x in theaters. True sicko shit.