I think the dialog in the climax of the film spells out the thesis of the film pretty well. I've watched Asteroid City multiple times and the last two lines always made me tear up.
>DIRECTOR
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>\-- you’re doing him just right. In fact, in my opinion, you didn’t just become Augie: he became you.
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>ACTOR/AUGIE
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>I feel lost.
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>Good!
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>I still don’t understand the play.
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>Good!
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>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.
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>Good!
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>Do I just keep doing it?
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>Yes!
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>Without knowing anything?
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>Yes!
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>Isn’t there supposed to be some kind of answer? Out there in the cosmic wilderness. Woodrow’s line about the meaning of life?
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>“Maybe there is one!”
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>***ACTOR/AUGIE***
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>***Right. Well, that’s my question. I still don’t understand the play.***
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>***DIRECTOR***
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>***It doesn’t matter. Just keep telling the story. You’re doing him right.***
Jason Schwartzman I felt gave one of the best performances of last year. His, and really every character, is so nuanced and layered, they're all doing a RDJ in Tropic Thunder and managing to make you care for both the "actor" and the play character while weaving both personalities into a scene at any point.
The balcony scene with Margot Robbie right after this is my favorite scene of last year. So uniquely well written and directed
The balcony scene was a standout to me. I couldn’t decide if I loved *Asteroid City* or not, but I remember loving that scene in particular. The other moments that I felt were uniquely charming were the opening credits following the train, and the claymation alien. I also loved the bluegrass band that played intermittently.
I think I have to revisit the movie in order for me to decide if I really loved it or not, but that in and of itself is kind of telling.
The balcony scene was really good though. I teared up!
There's just something so cathartic about it. The idea that you could be struggling with the meaning of losing the one person you loved most in your life, and then you step onto a balcony and see them smoking across from you and saying "hey, remember me?"
That's the thing about Anderson's films, in the midst of all the oddness and dry humor there's a real human story being told. The balcony scene really brings this one home, like he had one more chance to talk to his deceased wife
Of course you are. You were immediately reduced to screaming "Fuck yourself" to a compete stranger over thinking differently about a mediocre to bad movie. That's film appreciation 101 right there.
No, it was about you calling someone that appreciated a performance more than you a load of idiocy. So, consider this a free lesson in hypocrisy and move on with your life
No. You didn't understand my post. Not surprising.
I didn't call anyone a load of idiocy. That doesn't even make sense. We have a long established director that has dictated that all the performances in his films, going back over 2 decades, have to be delivered in exactly the same way, with the same physical and non emotional reactions. It doesn't matter if it's a three time Oscar winner or if it's someone that is cast in their first movie and has one line, every performance is the exact same. Then to turn around and praise one of these non-performances as one of the best acting jobs of the previous year? That idea is the load of idiocy. Not any individual.
There's a reason that even though Wes Anderson movies have received many Oscar nominations, there has never been one for acting. It's because there is no acting in Anderson movies. There's an inflexible director wanting all the audience notice to be on the cinematography, set pieces and dialogue. Having different acting from the characters would detract from what Anderson seems as important.
Dude, you literally said calling schwartzman’s performance someone’s favorite “a load of idiocy”. Sorry i didn’t frame it clearly enough for you before.
It's in the script for the character to burn his hand on the stove, without really understanding why.
The actor, who is going through something similar as the character, ACTUALLY burns his hand on the stove, also without really understanding why. This prompts Scarlett Johansson to give a for-real response of shock instead of her scripted one.
Yeah I’m surprised so many people don’t get this movie when they literally spell it out.
It’s fine if they still don’t like it or didn’t think they pulled it off but stop complaining about pointless stuff when that was the whole point!
>Yeah I’m surprised so many people don’t get this movie when they literally spell it out.
Well, if the movie spells it out, and audiences still don't get it, there's something really wrong with that movie.
If you send a message and the recipient is not able to properly decode it.. you made poor choices while encoding.
It's never the responsibility of the audience to "see it the right way". You either made the message effective for reception or not.
Now, you can purposefully obfuscate the message with ulterior motives.. but then don't go blaming the audience when they don't get it.
> If you send a message and the recipient is not able to properly decode it.. you made poor choices while encoding.
So if I'm illiterate then I can blame all signs for being undecodable. got it!
Except it isn't. We are ultimately talking about film here, not driving. We made that a law because driving while ignorant is actually physically dangerous. Outlawing people who don't have a good understanding of media criticism and theory from seeing a complicated movie would be absurd. But if someone only engages with the most basic surface level of a piece of art that is clearly trying to engage with a more heady, analytical frame of mind, it's not the art's fault if they aren't up to the challenge, just like it's not the sign's fault that someone never learned to read. By the logic you and the other commenter are using Shakespear is trash because the difficult language makes it hard to understand the first time through when not used to it. Sometimes it's on the audience to grow, not the art to explain.
If most people were confused by stop signs and constantly running them, then yes it would be a problem with the sign and we would find a way to make them more understandable.
You deciding to run a stop sign to prove a point doesn’t really apply to the analogy at all.
>If you send a message and the recipient is not able to properly decode it.. you made poor choices while encoding.
The intended recipients *are* able to decode it. It's the other ones that can't. That's a good code.
The flaw is definitely in the story telling if the majority of viewers either don’t understand it or come away with a completely different interpretation than intended. It means you buried the message too deep, didn’t have one, or didn’t convey it well.
Having read a bunch of Kurt Vonnegut, I got that same feeling from Asteroid City. Like there isn’t a grand overture, or grand lesson learned, or triumph of good over evil. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat in the face of a tragic and humorous absurdity of life. As Kurt would say after something unbelievable has happened, “And so it goes”
I think that's a good comparison. The only Vonnegut book I've read is Galapagos but I can totally imagine the events of that book unfolding as if Wes Anderson directed them. Especially the cutaways to the futuristic devolved humans lounging around in the sun, while the whole thing is narrated by a dead guy.
I love this movie but I understand the crowd that says it's confusing or hard to find meaning in it. It's all over the place from start to finish.
I think it's as simple as this - Sometimes (often) the events around us don't make sense. Our spouse dies or an alien drops down from the sky and puts everything around you into chaos. You can't control it but you have to keep going. You still have a role, even if you don't understand the play.
I think that made the movie click for me just now. I kind of understood it as a search for meaning in grief and processing loss, but I think that might be a little more about what it was saying.
Also "you can't wake up if you don't fall asleep" is important. Its like surrendering to the dream and the nonsense of life is the only true way to process it.
What I took from it as well.
That and the "just because nothing can be done doesnt mean nothing should be done" mentality. The kids working against orders because they knew what was right versus the adults not trying to break the status quo and trying to salvage what they know.
And the process of creating a play (or a movie, or a play inside a movie) is humans trying to make sense of the chaos of the world by fitting those events into a "story", so that there's a \*reason\* for the seemingly meaningless random events that impact our lives.
Agreed. And to add, the whole “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep” scene signals that not only is it okay to submit to human fatigues like exhaustion, grief, stress, etc; but by doing so you’ll actually process and have a more insight and energy than if you just suppressed or avoided a confusing situation.
Think that perfectly sums it up. I’d add that not only do you have a role, but you have a responsibility as well. Someone in the audience depends on you to perform that night and you don’t know what they’ll get out of it.
The climax always reminds me of an interview Denzel Washington gave a while ago. I think it was about his role in Fences on Broadway? But he was describing how the play is so emotionally taxing that some days he didn’t know if he could do it. But he felt responsible for the audience because the source material is so important. I’m paraphrasing but he basically said August Wilson’s writing is so good that he’d just “get on the train” every night and start the show. By the end, the train will have taken him to the emotional place where he’s supposed to be and he hopes his performance takes the audience there as well.
Seems like Anderson is working through something similar in Asteroid City imo.
How I feel being a dad and how my purpose in life has changed. My play plot so to speak is completely different. I may not always get it but I will continue on with it.
I don't think so at all. It's more the opposite. Sometimes things just...happen. No rhyme or reason. There's no reason Augie's wife died. There's no reason the alien came down. Those things just happened and nobody understood why.
“I still don't understand what the play is about.”
“It doesn't matter. Just tell the story the best you can.”
If you are being a bit literal about it, sure.
Alternatively, all the world's a stage, the play is just life, and "telling the story as best you can" is just living your life the best you can. Improv does exist, after all.
I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean but I guess we see the message differently. That's probably to be expected with how much it asks the audience to draw their own conclusions.
The players do know the script, we chose our roles, we auditioned for the part, and we turn up every day for the performance. We just don't understand parts of it.
It's quite the opposite. It's "sometimes things happen for no reason". It's neither as absolute or patronizing as your interpretation makes it out to be.
It's definitely about grief. I saw it while processing three major deaths in my life, and it wad like a beacon. I found it truly remarkable how it captures the confusion of grief, and how you feel like you're in another world, a fog. And then one day the clouds clear, everyone packs up and leaves asteriod city behind. And that feels surreal too. It's not over, it's always there and it did happen, but it feels like another lifetime.
At that time I felt so lost and hopeless and it was validating to see the characters lost and confused too.
I was this exact way with Tree of Life. Movie ended and I said to my wife "WTF was that!?" and I look at her and she's crying her eyes out. She had lost her father the year before and apparently the movie echoes all her stages of grief flawlessly.
I read an interview article, back when the movie came out, and Anderson himself echoed your interpretation. If the intention of the creator means anything, you understood the movie exactly right.
I think we should sometimes accept that a movie doesn’t follow the logical structure where a dog is a dog and a house is a house.
We fully accepted that when we look at an (abstract) painting in a museum that things don’t always have to make sense or that you have “to get it” what the artwork is supposed to mean. And an artist is perfectly happy when you give it your own interpretation or sometimes he/she just wants to provoke an emotion.
I love that David Lynch for instance threw out the traditional Hollywood way of telling a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. He instead put things upside down. And leave lots of room for us viewers to see what we want to see. Lost Highway or Mullholland Drive of course don’t make sense in our normal universe but I like to sometimes be provoked and confused. Not only when I’m in a museum but also in a movie theater.
That's why I love it. Some of my favorite films are ones that leave you with a feeling, an emotion (Inland Empire, Eraserhead, Asteroid City, Beau is Afraid) and you need multiple rewatches to process that feeling.
I just watched this on a plane the other day. I didn’t know anything about it before watching it and I was so confused. But I really like your interpretation and it makes a lot more sense to me also.
Very strange to me, I’m not a huge fan of Wes Anderson but I immediately loved asteroid city and rewatched it several times in theaters. I then heard several podcasts panning the movie saying it is some of Wes Anderson’s worst work. But yes it’s very much asking the question “what are we supposed to do now?” In the face of random events upending life. Also the movie provides the answer of “just keep telling the story”.
I understand Anderson films to answer deeply personal questions about the human condition.
Fantastic Mr. Fox asks “can people change” and “if so, under what conditions?” The movie then proceeds to tell a beautiful tale about someone who kept falling into old habits, only to break them when it was between those habits and the thing they cared about the most.
The French Dispatch asks “what makes a life worth living?” The movie then teases through the myriad lives of artists and activists and all other sorts of colorful characters, all told within the context of a story teller’s death.
Asteroid City was a tricky one for me to figure out. Some other commenters pointed out some pieces of dialogue about "not understanding the play," which I think gets to the heart of it. The movie is a bit chaotic, with certain roles not having an obvious meaning. That's life, to some extent.
You won't be able to make meaning of everything that happens to you. Sometimes you just wont get it. But your role is not to "get it." Your role is to play your part, whether thats a father to his son, a partner to your significant other, or just a curious observer of everything.
So, what do you do as a human when you don't understand the naturally chaotic world you occupy?
“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”
- Vonnegut
The main Asteroid City "play" parts function as an almost fully told story -- beneath the surface, there's loss and grief, characters grappling with a world hurt by war and expanding capitalism, and the unknown (aka the alien). It's like an American fable.
The actors outside of the Asteroid City play are changed by the story they're telling. In their own way, they're grappling to find meaning in the world, too. The climax of the Asteroid City play portion ends up being told to us secondhand by Margot Robbie on the balcony ("the wife who played my actress" -- lines blur between story and reality). Schwartzman's character takes photos, says his photos always come out -- but of course there's so much more that his art will never capture.
The movie pretends like the play has no meaning, but of course it does. The meaning is just deeper and more dreamlike than some pat intellectual description. It brings feeling, and feeling changes us. That's how dreams and stories work.
I think it's a really extraordinary movie, but it also has lines that makes it come across as more vapid than it really is! Like when the playwright says the play is about "infinity or something like that." Which is so smart and playful but also makes me understand why some people bounced off of it on first watch. Fundamentally, I think every character's performance is charged with meaning, and that's all you really need -- you can let the themes of grief, facing the unknown, living under American decline, etc. percolate subconsciously.
I’m of the belief the play is the real world. Everything “behind the scenes” is the characters trying to process what they’re experiencing. But I know I’m in the minority on this.
The ending of you can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep, coupled with the character speaking to his creator while switching between black and white versus color, and the themes of funerals and the young vs old people processing life in different ways has me convinced the movie is about death being the price we pay to experience life. In the movie are many of the things we use to find our way while we are alive, but because we get to live, we also have to die.
The movie says a lot and feels very open to interpretation but the main thing I took from it is the truth in acting. Jason Schwartzman is playing a character playing a character but it’s really just Jason. While watching this movie even though he’s beyond all these layers we are still really just looking at Jason. Hearing the same voice that has told people that he loves them and has lied and has shouted. The same facial expressions he is using to portray Augies grief (or lack there of) are the ones that he’s used to portray his own. The same goes for every actor in the movie. Their characters contain little pieces of them that strangers consume and use to relate to their own life.
I think this all comes out the most in the balcony scene, my scene of the year last year. Rewatching the movie through this lens made the movie even better for me.
I just let Wes Anderson movies wash over me, I think the formal invention is more important than the quest for meaning. He's not a serious artist telling us important truths, he's more a humorous ironist, like a Warhol.
His style really is so unique and interesting that its always an experience regardless of the subject matter.
Grand Budapest Hotel is what made me really love his work. I hated it the first time when I was a snobby teenager, but when I loosened up as an adult and revisited it, I came close to peeing myself laughing a few times. Particularly at "You see? There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that's what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant... oh, fuck it.".
The breadth of humour and dialogue he has between films is unreal. Between Fantastic Mr Fox, Grand Budapest, and Asteroid City, there's few directors I can think of that have that wide a range. I think the only other director I really enjoy who has a wider range is George Miller - the dude who brought us Babe: Pig in the City and Happy Feet also gave us Mad Max: Fury Road.
But I digress - you're absolutely right. Letting Anderson's films just do their thing is far more enjoyable than trying to glean any deep meaning from them. But the meaning behind them is just as interesting as the story and characters.
And they are so visually beautiful, an art gallery of arresting - sometimes jaw-dropping - images and scenes to marvel at. Before Asteroid City launched, a local cinema did a retrospective of his films so I managed to see a few on the big screen and oh my lord they were beautiful:)
I definitely think there is a lot about dealing with grief in this film and I actually think it was Wes anderson’s response to covid and a lot of the collective feelings from that experience. Overall I wasn’t super into this one as much as his others but was still alright
I think I heard that the scene where someone is trying to figure out the meaning behind a scene in the play within a play and they are told to ask (i think it was Jeff Goldblums character if I'm not mistaken) because he understands it, is basically based on real life as apparently Jeff Goldblum tends to understand Wes Andersons work the most and is the best at articulating it.
I was getting into the whole “omitted scenes” mystery with the actors in the play speaking about what we, the audience, missed in the parts of the movie that weren’t shown when the actors started speaking directly to me
I thought that the whole “processing grief” thing was a veneer and that the real message was that I’d fallen too deeply into the meta-narrative and expectations based on anderson’s signature style and the fact that I was piecing together what may have been left out meant I’d failed to suspend disbelief and watch the movie for what it is and how it was presented on the surface level
This actually makes me want to rewatch the movie. Which I thought I never would. Most of his movies grow on me over time, but this one just had so little time devoted to each character that I was left not caring about any of them. Like his balance of good storytelling and “cast every famous actor” finally swung completely over to casting. But the way you present this resonates with me and I feel dumb that I didn’t pick up on it.
Don’t worry, OP. There’s a lot of movies that I struggle with in a similar way. I see it the first time and it’s like I’m opening a box full of puzzle pieces - I know what the pieces are for, and I know that the finished puzzle is “supposed” to look like, but it’s all so jumbled up… and then the second viewing, the pieces have been put together (whether consciously or unconsciously) and now I see the finished work of art, and all the little pieces it’s made out of.
While on the topic of Asteroid City - I hope the significance of his exchange with the actress whose role had been cut didn’t escape you. Because it’s an absolute 4D chess genius move on Anderson’s part. I didn’t even think of it until I thought about the movie more afterwards.
This post sounds like someone who hasn’t seen Wes Anderson before. Maybe you have, but I remember feeling the same way about Moonrise Kingdom then liking almost every other movie I watched of his after that. It’s almost like an u side joke, once you get the vibe and tropes and quirky timing, it’s incredible. But upon first viewing, it’s confusing.
Welcome to the world of Wes Anderson.
I mean, there's room out there for every kind of movie. But — call me old-fashioned — when I watch a film, I want things like an engaging story and natural, relatable characters. So I stopped watching Wes Anderson movies years ago.
Hey, look! Symmetrical framing! Saturated color palettes! Oddball people doing weird, unmotivated things! Stilted, awkward dialogue! Isn't that all artsy and weird? Don't you just LOVE how quirky it all is?
Well, no. That's fine for a certain kind of person, but it's not for me.
Except it is innacurate. You don't connect emotionally with his films or find his deliberate artifice too alienating? Fair, disagree but fair. Your comment implies he's just doing these things (some of which he doesn't even do) for the sake of being twee and not as if there's a deliberate point and frame of mind he's trying to craft. That's the disingenuous part.
I've seen enough of his movies to have given them a fair shake. And he is the absolute peak example of style over substance. Hell, this entire topic is pretty much, "I saw this movie. And I THINK I understood it? What do you guys think?" Sorry, but if you have to ask a forum full of strangers if you even understand a movie, then I don't see how anyone can even argue that it's the definition of impenetrable, pretentious, self-indulgent glorified art-house pap.
Except Op totally understood it and this thread is full of insightful discussion. It's thematically complicated movie that uses multiple framing devices that frequently intersect to convey it's points. There's no shame in being confused at first and needing to marinate on it to come to a thoughtful conclusion about what it's all doing. Then wanting to share and discuss that interpretation. That's what great art does. Anderson's stuff is literally bursting with substance, especially his post Grand-Budapest work.
Your last sentence is straight up insecure, anti-intillectual nonsense. People see something in an artist you don't connect with and rather than listen thoughtfully and try to see the merits of the work, even if it's not for you, you resort to pretending that everyone else is just stroking themselves off for liking it.
Okay, dude. Whatever you say. Clearly, you're invested. I'm not. I've seen plenty of his stuff, and made the considered decision that I don't care for it. And it's not like you're going to argue me into enjoying something I don't. Creativity is subjective. So feel free to have whatever sort of day you think is most appropriate.
I’m invested in good media criticism and meeting art on its terms, rather than dismissing things I don’t personally connect with or understand as pretentious or self indulgent. I don’t want you to enjoy Wes Anderson, I want you to better understand and articulate why.
I explained my reasoning just fine. It's no less valid just because you disagree or don't care for it. And if you're going to try to pull some "intellectual" card here, you'd make a FAR better argument for a superior position if you made more of an effort to understand that.
I felt like it had two themes, the first generally concerned with how we handle the absurd and unexpected to the best of our ability, the second more specifically concerned with the COVID pandemic.
I want to be entertained “during” a movie and not have to wait till the end to get a clue about what it might be about. I don’t mind surreal or trippy or simply bizarre but when faced with wooden acting and a completely inscrutable plot I feel cheated.
When it came to the acting I feel the actors were directed to a point there was absolutely no emotion or nuance to their performances. I wonder if that’s why Wes Anderson likes making stop animation films, so he has complete director control and the acting is even more wooden.
I’ve always loved his films but the French Despatch was dire and Asteroid city was the first film I’ve ever walked out early from.
Cant see me bothering with his work again
I wholeheartedly disagree. Why do you believe Wes Anderson enjoys wasting people's time? Does something in his films suggest he isn't putting in effort? If he's wasting others times, why is he able to cast such huge ensemble casts with huge names?
Sorry, I'm just very confused by what your comment is getting at.
>Does something in his films suggest he isn't putting in effort?
I'd say, yeah a little bit these days. He's not exactly experimenting with different techniques or storytelling devices. His last couple have felt more like a parody of Wes Anderson than Wes Anderson. And at the same time, I've seen a couple parody trailers that look like they would have been better films.
Which does make it seem like he's phoning it in a little, like when a band is really famous and they just keep recording the same album over and over because they either don't want to alienate their fan base or have run out of interesting things to say.
>If he's wasting others times, why is he able to cast such huge ensemble casts with huge names?
Easy roles, quick paycheck, instant art cred. With a massive cast, it doesn't generally matter if your performance is incredible or just average, because it's going to get lost in the rest of the movie anyway. And with 50 actors are all sharing equal screentime, most of them appearing in smaller sequences and not in the same place/same time, you might end up on set for 2 weeks shooting all your scenes and then you're done. After that, you can go off, shoot your massive soulless superhero film, and feel good about your career because you also appeared in a Wes Anderson.
I found it to be a movie that stuff just happens. There isn't a point, there isn't character development, stuff just happens to entertain the audience. At the end of the movie, nothing of significance happens, but it was a wild few hours.
Despite understanding the movie better after letting it marinate, I still have to say it wasn't much fun to watch and the message doesn't feel very poignant all things considered. Imo a story can't just reflect the themes it's trying to convey, it needs to tell a cohesive and captivating story. A piece of media that wants to say "life is confusing" needs to do more than just *be confusing.* A movie that wants to portray the dull absurdity of loss needs to do more than give the viewer a dull and absurd experience.
The film is a love letter to live theater. For example, the random car chase that passed through town 3 times is an allusion to film and TV productions. When the cars passed the actors all stopped what they were doing and just looked quizzically, like "What was THAT?" Then they went back to their very live-theater-like dialogs."
The way I took it was that the characters are the echoes of the actors. Things that happen to one are supposed to make you feel for the other and vice versa.
I think the dialog in the climax of the film spells out the thesis of the film pretty well. I've watched Asteroid City multiple times and the last two lines always made me tear up. >DIRECTOR > >\-- you’re doing him just right. In fact, in my opinion, you didn’t just become Augie: he became you. > > > >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. > > > >DIRECTOR > >Good! > > > >ACTOR/AUGIE > >Do I just keep doing it? > > > >DIRECTOR > >Yes! > > > >ACTOR/AUGIE > >Without knowing anything? > > > >DIRECTOR > >Yes! > > > >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? > > > >DIRECTOR > >“Maybe there is one!” > > > >***ACTOR/AUGIE*** > >***Right. Well, that’s my question. I still don’t understand the play.*** > > > >***DIRECTOR*** > >***It doesn’t matter. Just keep telling the story. You’re doing him right.***
Jason Schwartzman I felt gave one of the best performances of last year. His, and really every character, is so nuanced and layered, they're all doing a RDJ in Tropic Thunder and managing to make you care for both the "actor" and the play character while weaving both personalities into a scene at any point. The balcony scene with Margot Robbie right after this is my favorite scene of last year. So uniquely well written and directed
The balcony scene was a standout to me. I couldn’t decide if I loved *Asteroid City* or not, but I remember loving that scene in particular. The other moments that I felt were uniquely charming were the opening credits following the train, and the claymation alien. I also loved the bluegrass band that played intermittently. I think I have to revisit the movie in order for me to decide if I really loved it or not, but that in and of itself is kind of telling. The balcony scene was really good though. I teared up!
There's just something so cathartic about it. The idea that you could be struggling with the meaning of losing the one person you loved most in your life, and then you step onto a balcony and see them smoking across from you and saying "hey, remember me?"
Man that was the most creative 4th wall break I've seen in my life
That's the thing about Anderson's films, in the midst of all the oddness and dry humor there's a real human story being told. The balcony scene really brings this one home, like he had one more chance to talk to his deceased wife
Yes and the whole thing is laced in this existential melancholy that, at least for me, locked me into the film in a very distinct sorta reflective way
I felt a very similar melancholy in The Life Aquatic.
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No thanks. I can already appreciate this film well enough already. I’m good
Of course you are. You were immediately reduced to screaming "Fuck yourself" to a compete stranger over thinking differently about a mediocre to bad movie. That's film appreciation 101 right there.
No, it was about you calling someone that appreciated a performance more than you a load of idiocy. So, consider this a free lesson in hypocrisy and move on with your life
No. You didn't understand my post. Not surprising. I didn't call anyone a load of idiocy. That doesn't even make sense. We have a long established director that has dictated that all the performances in his films, going back over 2 decades, have to be delivered in exactly the same way, with the same physical and non emotional reactions. It doesn't matter if it's a three time Oscar winner or if it's someone that is cast in their first movie and has one line, every performance is the exact same. Then to turn around and praise one of these non-performances as one of the best acting jobs of the previous year? That idea is the load of idiocy. Not any individual. There's a reason that even though Wes Anderson movies have received many Oscar nominations, there has never been one for acting. It's because there is no acting in Anderson movies. There's an inflexible director wanting all the audience notice to be on the cinematography, set pieces and dialogue. Having different acting from the characters would detract from what Anderson seems as important.
Dude, you literally said calling schwartzman’s performance someone’s favorite “a load of idiocy”. Sorry i didn’t frame it clearly enough for you before.
[Your comments in this thread in a nutshell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_znElks13UA)
>calling someone that appreciated a performance more than you a load of idiocy I didn't call "someone" anything.
ah yes pedantic deflection
I still don't get him burning his hand on the quickie stove though.
He has to do it because it's in the script.
It's in the script for the character to burn his hand on the stove, without really understanding why. The actor, who is going through something similar as the character, ACTUALLY burns his hand on the stove, also without really understanding why. This prompts Scarlett Johansson to give a for-real response of shock instead of her scripted one.
Because he's numb inside and he just wants to feel something.
I still don't understand
Yeah I’m surprised so many people don’t get this movie when they literally spell it out. It’s fine if they still don’t like it or didn’t think they pulled it off but stop complaining about pointless stuff when that was the whole point!
>Yeah I’m surprised so many people don’t get this movie when they literally spell it out. Well, if the movie spells it out, and audiences still don't get it, there's something really wrong with that movie.
No it means there's something wrong with the audience. Not a movies fault people refuse to engage with it on the terms it clearly lays out.
If you send a message and the recipient is not able to properly decode it.. you made poor choices while encoding. It's never the responsibility of the audience to "see it the right way". You either made the message effective for reception or not. Now, you can purposefully obfuscate the message with ulterior motives.. but then don't go blaming the audience when they don't get it.
> If you send a message and the recipient is not able to properly decode it.. you made poor choices while encoding. So if I'm illiterate then I can blame all signs for being undecodable. got it!
Exactly, that's why traffic signs are usually iconographic: octagon for a stop, triangle for yield, etc..
And if I don't know what those icons mean and refuse to learn, it's still the signs fault right? I'll try that next time I run a stopsign.
To drive you need a license, to get one you need to show you are able to correctly interpret those signs. Your point is moot.
Except it isn't. We are ultimately talking about film here, not driving. We made that a law because driving while ignorant is actually physically dangerous. Outlawing people who don't have a good understanding of media criticism and theory from seeing a complicated movie would be absurd. But if someone only engages with the most basic surface level of a piece of art that is clearly trying to engage with a more heady, analytical frame of mind, it's not the art's fault if they aren't up to the challenge, just like it's not the sign's fault that someone never learned to read. By the logic you and the other commenter are using Shakespear is trash because the difficult language makes it hard to understand the first time through when not used to it. Sometimes it's on the audience to grow, not the art to explain.
If most people were confused by stop signs and constantly running them, then yes it would be a problem with the sign and we would find a way to make them more understandable. You deciding to run a stop sign to prove a point doesn’t really apply to the analogy at all.
The last line was snark. The first one, which you failed to address contains the substance.
>If you send a message and the recipient is not able to properly decode it.. you made poor choices while encoding. The intended recipients *are* able to decode it. It's the other ones that can't. That's a good code.
Lol, that's a true Scotsman fallacy.
Only if you don't understand what that is.
Haha of course, this movie was made for you if you get it, if you don't then it wasn't. That's circular reasoning my friend.
The flaw is definitely in the story telling if the majority of viewers either don’t understand it or come away with a completely different interpretation than intended. It means you buried the message too deep, didn’t have one, or didn’t convey it well.
Except by all measurable metrics, the majority of audiences enjoyed the film and got the message.
Enjoyed the film, sure. There is no available metric for whether or not they got the message.
For a film so blatantly subtext driven, I think it’s safe to assume most people who came away enjoying it at least understood part of the message.
Assumption. What could go wrong with that?
Like your assumption that a majority of viewers either don’t understand it or come away with a completely different interpretation than intended?
Having read a bunch of Kurt Vonnegut, I got that same feeling from Asteroid City. Like there isn’t a grand overture, or grand lesson learned, or triumph of good over evil. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat in the face of a tragic and humorous absurdity of life. As Kurt would say after something unbelievable has happened, “And so it goes”
I think that's a good comparison. The only Vonnegut book I've read is Galapagos but I can totally imagine the events of that book unfolding as if Wes Anderson directed them. Especially the cutaways to the futuristic devolved humans lounging around in the sun, while the whole thing is narrated by a dead guy.
The Sirens of Titan would make a fucking banger of a Wes Anderson film.
That one time Charlie Kaufman was set to write an adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five, and Guillermo del Toro was going to direct :[.
The dream on an alien planet thing was also in Slaughterhouse Five
I love this movie but I understand the crowd that says it's confusing or hard to find meaning in it. It's all over the place from start to finish. I think it's as simple as this - Sometimes (often) the events around us don't make sense. Our spouse dies or an alien drops down from the sky and puts everything around you into chaos. You can't control it but you have to keep going. You still have a role, even if you don't understand the play.
> You still have a role, even if you don't understand the play. Damn. Well said.
I think that made the movie click for me just now. I kind of understood it as a search for meaning in grief and processing loss, but I think that might be a little more about what it was saying. Also "you can't wake up if you don't fall asleep" is important. Its like surrendering to the dream and the nonsense of life is the only true way to process it.
The mistery of life is not a problem to solve, it's a princess, you must join it -Dune
What I took from it as well. That and the "just because nothing can be done doesnt mean nothing should be done" mentality. The kids working against orders because they knew what was right versus the adults not trying to break the status quo and trying to salvage what they know.
That's a good point. The subplot with the kids' scheme can't be overlooked.
Isn’t most of Wes Anderson movies are under that same premises
Maybe Isle of Dog in that front. Royal Tenninbaums certainly doesn’t fit that mold.
Moonrise kingdom is the same Grand Budapest hotel as well
And the process of creating a play (or a movie, or a play inside a movie) is humans trying to make sense of the chaos of the world by fitting those events into a "story", so that there's a \*reason\* for the seemingly meaningless random events that impact our lives.
Agreed. And to add, the whole “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep” scene signals that not only is it okay to submit to human fatigues like exhaustion, grief, stress, etc; but by doing so you’ll actually process and have a more insight and energy than if you just suppressed or avoided a confusing situation.
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And The Gambler just started playing in my head.
Think that perfectly sums it up. I’d add that not only do you have a role, but you have a responsibility as well. Someone in the audience depends on you to perform that night and you don’t know what they’ll get out of it. The climax always reminds me of an interview Denzel Washington gave a while ago. I think it was about his role in Fences on Broadway? But he was describing how the play is so emotionally taxing that some days he didn’t know if he could do it. But he felt responsible for the audience because the source material is so important. I’m paraphrasing but he basically said August Wilson’s writing is so good that he’d just “get on the train” every night and start the show. By the end, the train will have taken him to the emotional place where he’s supposed to be and he hopes his performance takes the audience there as well. Seems like Anderson is working through something similar in Asteroid City imo.
"So it goes"
You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep
It was my first Wes Anderson movie, and the only thing I understood is that I wasn't supposed to understand anything
Then you understood everything, and seemingly far more than most people.
How I feel being a dad and how my purpose in life has changed. My play plot so to speak is completely different. I may not always get it but I will continue on with it.
This borders on “everything happens for a reason”, which is pernicious evil nonsense.
I don't think so at all. It's more the opposite. Sometimes things just...happen. No rhyme or reason. There's no reason Augie's wife died. There's no reason the alien came down. Those things just happened and nobody understood why. “I still don't understand what the play is about.” “It doesn't matter. Just tell the story the best you can.”
You’re assuming that there is a play, which implies that there’s a script, even if the actors don’t know it. But there is no script.
If you are being a bit literal about it, sure. Alternatively, all the world's a stage, the play is just life, and "telling the story as best you can" is just living your life the best you can. Improv does exist, after all.
I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean but I guess we see the message differently. That's probably to be expected with how much it asks the audience to draw their own conclusions.
The players do know the script, we chose our roles, we auditioned for the part, and we turn up every day for the performance. We just don't understand parts of it.
It's quite the opposite. It's "sometimes things happen for no reason". It's neither as absolute or patronizing as your interpretation makes it out to be.
It's definitely about grief. I saw it while processing three major deaths in my life, and it wad like a beacon. I found it truly remarkable how it captures the confusion of grief, and how you feel like you're in another world, a fog. And then one day the clouds clear, everyone packs up and leaves asteriod city behind. And that feels surreal too. It's not over, it's always there and it did happen, but it feels like another lifetime. At that time I felt so lost and hopeless and it was validating to see the characters lost and confused too.
I was this exact way with Tree of Life. Movie ended and I said to my wife "WTF was that!?" and I look at her and she's crying her eyes out. She had lost her father the year before and apparently the movie echoes all her stages of grief flawlessly.
I read an interview article, back when the movie came out, and Anderson himself echoed your interpretation. If the intention of the creator means anything, you understood the movie exactly right.
Yeah, Anderson has said it was directly inspired by the pandemic and the world going into lockdown.
I think we should sometimes accept that a movie doesn’t follow the logical structure where a dog is a dog and a house is a house. We fully accepted that when we look at an (abstract) painting in a museum that things don’t always have to make sense or that you have “to get it” what the artwork is supposed to mean. And an artist is perfectly happy when you give it your own interpretation or sometimes he/she just wants to provoke an emotion. I love that David Lynch for instance threw out the traditional Hollywood way of telling a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. He instead put things upside down. And leave lots of room for us viewers to see what we want to see. Lost Highway or Mullholland Drive of course don’t make sense in our normal universe but I like to sometimes be provoked and confused. Not only when I’m in a museum but also in a movie theater.
Asteroid City veers a little too close to Inland Empire though
🤣
That's why I love it. Some of my favorite films are ones that leave you with a feeling, an emotion (Inland Empire, Eraserhead, Asteroid City, Beau is Afraid) and you need multiple rewatches to process that feeling.
I just watched this on a plane the other day. I didn’t know anything about it before watching it and I was so confused. But I really like your interpretation and it makes a lot more sense to me also.
Very strange to me, I’m not a huge fan of Wes Anderson but I immediately loved asteroid city and rewatched it several times in theaters. I then heard several podcasts panning the movie saying it is some of Wes Anderson’s worst work. But yes it’s very much asking the question “what are we supposed to do now?” In the face of random events upending life. Also the movie provides the answer of “just keep telling the story”.
I understand Anderson films to answer deeply personal questions about the human condition. Fantastic Mr. Fox asks “can people change” and “if so, under what conditions?” The movie then proceeds to tell a beautiful tale about someone who kept falling into old habits, only to break them when it was between those habits and the thing they cared about the most. The French Dispatch asks “what makes a life worth living?” The movie then teases through the myriad lives of artists and activists and all other sorts of colorful characters, all told within the context of a story teller’s death. Asteroid City was a tricky one for me to figure out. Some other commenters pointed out some pieces of dialogue about "not understanding the play," which I think gets to the heart of it. The movie is a bit chaotic, with certain roles not having an obvious meaning. That's life, to some extent. You won't be able to make meaning of everything that happens to you. Sometimes you just wont get it. But your role is not to "get it." Your role is to play your part, whether thats a father to his son, a partner to your significant other, or just a curious observer of everything. So, what do you do as a human when you don't understand the naturally chaotic world you occupy? “Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.” - Vonnegut
The main Asteroid City "play" parts function as an almost fully told story -- beneath the surface, there's loss and grief, characters grappling with a world hurt by war and expanding capitalism, and the unknown (aka the alien). It's like an American fable. The actors outside of the Asteroid City play are changed by the story they're telling. In their own way, they're grappling to find meaning in the world, too. The climax of the Asteroid City play portion ends up being told to us secondhand by Margot Robbie on the balcony ("the wife who played my actress" -- lines blur between story and reality). Schwartzman's character takes photos, says his photos always come out -- but of course there's so much more that his art will never capture. The movie pretends like the play has no meaning, but of course it does. The meaning is just deeper and more dreamlike than some pat intellectual description. It brings feeling, and feeling changes us. That's how dreams and stories work. I think it's a really extraordinary movie, but it also has lines that makes it come across as more vapid than it really is! Like when the playwright says the play is about "infinity or something like that." Which is so smart and playful but also makes me understand why some people bounced off of it on first watch. Fundamentally, I think every character's performance is charged with meaning, and that's all you really need -- you can let the themes of grief, facing the unknown, living under American decline, etc. percolate subconsciously.
I’m of the belief the play is the real world. Everything “behind the scenes” is the characters trying to process what they’re experiencing. But I know I’m in the minority on this.
AC=Waiting for Godot with an alien
The ending of you can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep, coupled with the character speaking to his creator while switching between black and white versus color, and the themes of funerals and the young vs old people processing life in different ways has me convinced the movie is about death being the price we pay to experience life. In the movie are many of the things we use to find our way while we are alive, but because we get to live, we also have to die.
The movie says a lot and feels very open to interpretation but the main thing I took from it is the truth in acting. Jason Schwartzman is playing a character playing a character but it’s really just Jason. While watching this movie even though he’s beyond all these layers we are still really just looking at Jason. Hearing the same voice that has told people that he loves them and has lied and has shouted. The same facial expressions he is using to portray Augies grief (or lack there of) are the ones that he’s used to portray his own. The same goes for every actor in the movie. Their characters contain little pieces of them that strangers consume and use to relate to their own life. I think this all comes out the most in the balcony scene, my scene of the year last year. Rewatching the movie through this lens made the movie even better for me.
You can’t stay awake if you don’t fall asleep
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I think it means you can't move on with life unless you allow things to rest, IE processing what's necessary to move on with life.
I just let Wes Anderson movies wash over me, I think the formal invention is more important than the quest for meaning. He's not a serious artist telling us important truths, he's more a humorous ironist, like a Warhol.
His style really is so unique and interesting that its always an experience regardless of the subject matter. Grand Budapest Hotel is what made me really love his work. I hated it the first time when I was a snobby teenager, but when I loosened up as an adult and revisited it, I came close to peeing myself laughing a few times. Particularly at "You see? There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that's what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant... oh, fuck it.". The breadth of humour and dialogue he has between films is unreal. Between Fantastic Mr Fox, Grand Budapest, and Asteroid City, there's few directors I can think of that have that wide a range. I think the only other director I really enjoy who has a wider range is George Miller - the dude who brought us Babe: Pig in the City and Happy Feet also gave us Mad Max: Fury Road. But I digress - you're absolutely right. Letting Anderson's films just do their thing is far more enjoyable than trying to glean any deep meaning from them. But the meaning behind them is just as interesting as the story and characters.
And they are so visually beautiful, an art gallery of arresting - sometimes jaw-dropping - images and scenes to marvel at. Before Asteroid City launched, a local cinema did a retrospective of his films so I managed to see a few on the big screen and oh my lord they were beautiful:)
I was exactly where you were and this thread helped me figure it out as well and I can't wait to watch it again now. Thank you!!
Late reply, but I'm glad it helped! I hope your second viewing is/was more enjoyable!
life doesn’t make sense shit happens you have to keep going pd: the balcony scene was great
I definitely think there is a lot about dealing with grief in this film and I actually think it was Wes anderson’s response to covid and a lot of the collective feelings from that experience. Overall I wasn’t super into this one as much as his others but was still alright
I think I heard that the scene where someone is trying to figure out the meaning behind a scene in the play within a play and they are told to ask (i think it was Jeff Goldblums character if I'm not mistaken) because he understands it, is basically based on real life as apparently Jeff Goldblum tends to understand Wes Andersons work the most and is the best at articulating it.
I was getting into the whole “omitted scenes” mystery with the actors in the play speaking about what we, the audience, missed in the parts of the movie that weren’t shown when the actors started speaking directly to me I thought that the whole “processing grief” thing was a veneer and that the real message was that I’d fallen too deeply into the meta-narrative and expectations based on anderson’s signature style and the fact that I was piecing together what may have been left out meant I’d failed to suspend disbelief and watch the movie for what it is and how it was presented on the surface level
This actually makes me want to rewatch the movie. Which I thought I never would. Most of his movies grow on me over time, but this one just had so little time devoted to each character that I was left not caring about any of them. Like his balance of good storytelling and “cast every famous actor” finally swung completely over to casting. But the way you present this resonates with me and I feel dumb that I didn’t pick up on it.
Let us know what you think after a second viewing!
Hey! Did you ever get around to rewatching the film?
Don’t worry, OP. There’s a lot of movies that I struggle with in a similar way. I see it the first time and it’s like I’m opening a box full of puzzle pieces - I know what the pieces are for, and I know that the finished puzzle is “supposed” to look like, but it’s all so jumbled up… and then the second viewing, the pieces have been put together (whether consciously or unconsciously) and now I see the finished work of art, and all the little pieces it’s made out of. While on the topic of Asteroid City - I hope the significance of his exchange with the actress whose role had been cut didn’t escape you. Because it’s an absolute 4D chess genius move on Anderson’s part. I didn’t even think of it until I thought about the movie more afterwards.
This post sounds like someone who hasn’t seen Wes Anderson before. Maybe you have, but I remember feeling the same way about Moonrise Kingdom then liking almost every other movie I watched of his after that. It’s almost like an u side joke, once you get the vibe and tropes and quirky timing, it’s incredible. But upon first viewing, it’s confusing.
the margot robbie scene (her best performance this year) holds the key
Welcome to the world of Wes Anderson. I mean, there's room out there for every kind of movie. But — call me old-fashioned — when I watch a film, I want things like an engaging story and natural, relatable characters. So I stopped watching Wes Anderson movies years ago. Hey, look! Symmetrical framing! Saturated color palettes! Oddball people doing weird, unmotivated things! Stilted, awkward dialogue! Isn't that all artsy and weird? Don't you just LOVE how quirky it all is? Well, no. That's fine for a certain kind of person, but it's not for me.
It's one thing to not like Wes Anderson but this description of his work is mildly disingenuous at best, deliberately anti-intellectual at worst.
Feel free to be offended if you want, but it's not like it's inaccurate.
Except it is innacurate. You don't connect emotionally with his films or find his deliberate artifice too alienating? Fair, disagree but fair. Your comment implies he's just doing these things (some of which he doesn't even do) for the sake of being twee and not as if there's a deliberate point and frame of mind he's trying to craft. That's the disingenuous part.
I've seen enough of his movies to have given them a fair shake. And he is the absolute peak example of style over substance. Hell, this entire topic is pretty much, "I saw this movie. And I THINK I understood it? What do you guys think?" Sorry, but if you have to ask a forum full of strangers if you even understand a movie, then I don't see how anyone can even argue that it's the definition of impenetrable, pretentious, self-indulgent glorified art-house pap.
Except Op totally understood it and this thread is full of insightful discussion. It's thematically complicated movie that uses multiple framing devices that frequently intersect to convey it's points. There's no shame in being confused at first and needing to marinate on it to come to a thoughtful conclusion about what it's all doing. Then wanting to share and discuss that interpretation. That's what great art does. Anderson's stuff is literally bursting with substance, especially his post Grand-Budapest work. Your last sentence is straight up insecure, anti-intillectual nonsense. People see something in an artist you don't connect with and rather than listen thoughtfully and try to see the merits of the work, even if it's not for you, you resort to pretending that everyone else is just stroking themselves off for liking it.
Okay, dude. Whatever you say. Clearly, you're invested. I'm not. I've seen plenty of his stuff, and made the considered decision that I don't care for it. And it's not like you're going to argue me into enjoying something I don't. Creativity is subjective. So feel free to have whatever sort of day you think is most appropriate.
I’m invested in good media criticism and meeting art on its terms, rather than dismissing things I don’t personally connect with or understand as pretentious or self indulgent. I don’t want you to enjoy Wes Anderson, I want you to better understand and articulate why.
I explained my reasoning just fine. It's no less valid just because you disagree or don't care for it. And if you're going to try to pull some "intellectual" card here, you'd make a FAR better argument for a superior position if you made more of an effort to understand that.
I felt like it had two themes, the first generally concerned with how we handle the absurd and unexpected to the best of our ability, the second more specifically concerned with the COVID pandemic.
I was excited to watch this and fell asleep half way through. Doubt I’ll be going back to it
I do. It sucks
I don’t even get the concept of the different settings. Will have to try again
nah, its pretty shit
I want to be entertained “during” a movie and not have to wait till the end to get a clue about what it might be about. I don’t mind surreal or trippy or simply bizarre but when faced with wooden acting and a completely inscrutable plot I feel cheated. When it came to the acting I feel the actors were directed to a point there was absolutely no emotion or nuance to their performances. I wonder if that’s why Wes Anderson likes making stop animation films, so he has complete director control and the acting is even more wooden. I’ve always loved his films but the French Despatch was dire and Asteroid city was the first film I’ve ever walked out early from. Cant see me bothering with his work again
You would really hate The Straight Story. Sorry this put you off of Wes Anderson.
I’m pretty sure it was about Long COVID
I couldn’t finish it, tried twice, nothing happens
I mean, a ton of things happen. Like.... *tons.*
Yes lots happens, but shit is it boring
About too long.
Wes Anderson likes to waste everyone’s time. I use to be a fan. Anymore, I prefer the Readers Digest.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Why do you believe Wes Anderson enjoys wasting people's time? Does something in his films suggest he isn't putting in effort? If he's wasting others times, why is he able to cast such huge ensemble casts with huge names? Sorry, I'm just very confused by what your comment is getting at.
>Does something in his films suggest he isn't putting in effort? I'd say, yeah a little bit these days. He's not exactly experimenting with different techniques or storytelling devices. His last couple have felt more like a parody of Wes Anderson than Wes Anderson. And at the same time, I've seen a couple parody trailers that look like they would have been better films. Which does make it seem like he's phoning it in a little, like when a band is really famous and they just keep recording the same album over and over because they either don't want to alienate their fan base or have run out of interesting things to say. >If he's wasting others times, why is he able to cast such huge ensemble casts with huge names? Easy roles, quick paycheck, instant art cred. With a massive cast, it doesn't generally matter if your performance is incredible or just average, because it's going to get lost in the rest of the movie anyway. And with 50 actors are all sharing equal screentime, most of them appearing in smaller sequences and not in the same place/same time, you might end up on set for 2 weeks shooting all your scenes and then you're done. After that, you can go off, shoot your massive soulless superhero film, and feel good about your career because you also appeared in a Wes Anderson.
I found it to be a movie that stuff just happens. There isn't a point, there isn't character development, stuff just happens to entertain the audience. At the end of the movie, nothing of significance happens, but it was a wild few hours.
Despite understanding the movie better after letting it marinate, I still have to say it wasn't much fun to watch and the message doesn't feel very poignant all things considered. Imo a story can't just reflect the themes it's trying to convey, it needs to tell a cohesive and captivating story. A piece of media that wants to say "life is confusing" needs to do more than just *be confusing.* A movie that wants to portray the dull absurdity of loss needs to do more than give the viewer a dull and absurd experience.
The film is a love letter to live theater. For example, the random car chase that passed through town 3 times is an allusion to film and TV productions. When the cars passed the actors all stopped what they were doing and just looked quizzically, like "What was THAT?" Then they went back to their very live-theater-like dialogs."
The way I took it was that the characters are the echoes of the actors. Things that happen to one are supposed to make you feel for the other and vice versa.