Asteroid City

Really got to feel everything a lot more this time around, and it absolutely still works for me. Setting this in '50s American--and emphasizing the Post War nature of that time period (direct references from Zak and General Gibson, but also almost every adult male carrying a gun)--allows Wes to focus on so many themes that are relevant to today. Mass grief, rapidly changing culture, questions about authority, humanity, existence itself. The layered storytelling--a play within a tv show within a movie; sometimes a movie within a play within a tv show within a movie--only heightens that feeling of constantly searching for answers that don't exist. As the play goes on, it starts to break. Dialogue becomes stilted, actors flub their lines and break character, the rhythm completely falls apart. In the TV show layer we see Schwartzman's Jones Hall breaking down, pleading to his director, partly to understand his character's motivations, but more so for reassurance that he, as an actor--and maybe as a person--is doing it right. That need for affirmation rings especially familiar in todays world. I'm not a middle-aged parent, but I can imagine how 40-something parents must feel trying to navigate public health, disinformation, a technological landscape they weren't raised in but that their kids are native to. How do you parent them? Even for a 30-something like me, how do I parent myself? How do I navigate my relationships, my creative and professional ambitions? My health? Who can we look to to tell us we're doing it right? Unfortunately, for many, I don't think anyone is able to satisfy that need for affirmation. The best that Schubert Green is able to offer Jones Hall is telling him to keep doing what he's doing--keep reading the lines and forget about trying to know what the play is about. Wes manages to pose these questions and luxuriate in the frustrations and dreads and awes and excitements they create while also being consistently laugh-out-loud funny. Not to mention the virtuosity of his staging and production design. This thing is an absolute feat! I suspect I will continue to get more and more out of it each time I watch.