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How ASTEROID CITY Grapples With Grief and Eternal Life
By Movieguide® Contributor
ASTEROID CITY attempts to address some questions about the after life as the characters wrestle with grief after a family matriarch dies.
ASTEROID CITY is about a father, his teenage son, and his young daughters traveling to a desert city for a science competition that goes wrong. Throughout the movie, the family grapples with the recent death of the mother and ensuing questions about grief and the existence of the afterlife. The movie considers several worldviews but ultimately does not settle on a specific answer.
In a press conference for the new movie ASTEROID CITY the director, Wes Anderson, and the cast discussed grief and the afterlife.
Jason Schwartzman, the actor playing the role of the father, commented, “I think with grief, forgive me if this sounds… my experience is, there’s no wrong way to feel if you’re grieving. If you don’t feel sad when everyone else is sad that’s okay.”
“I would say… we have these milestones in our lives, and particularly as you get older, the dead begin to pile up,” Wes Anderson responded when asked about the role of grief in the movie. “How often do you say, ‘The person who I would actually like to hear his or her point of view is this one and… I’m never going to get the answer to this question I want to ask.’”
While ASTEROID CITY doesn’t provide an answer to questions about eternity, Christians know that there is an afterlife. The Bible communicates urgently the reality of the afterlife throughout its pages. In Matthew 25:46 it is written, “[The unrighteous] will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
While discerning viewers may be able to see spiritual lessons in the movie, Movieguide® found it to be excessive overall.
According to our review, “ASTEROID CITY has beautiful art direction, but the script is convoluted. The characters discuss grief and question if there’s an afterlife. Some believe in God, some don’t, and some make jokes about being witches. ASTEROID CITY has scenes of praying to God and forgiveness, but it leaves the meaning of life up in the air. The movie is marred by an excessive scene of nudity, a homosexual kiss and implied extra-marital affairs.”
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