Wes Anderson’s movies usually play with a disconnect between their cheerful storybook visible model and their extra somber subject material and themes. Asteroid Metropolis is probably the starkest instance of this trademark. Following a dizzying framing narrative that situates the story as a play inside a documentary inside a tv program, an upbeat and immaculately-composed title sequence follows a practice via a vivid desert whereas Johnny Duncan and the Bluegrass Boy’s “Final Prepare to San Fernando” performs.
The descent of the alien on the movie’s midpoint is a type of divine revelation, an indication from the heavens to these desperately in want of 1.
The upbeat jazz/bluegrass warble suits the painted desert completely, however its repeated chorus (“If you happen to miss this one, you’ll by no means get one other one”) lends the track a deeply melancholy tone; the track, just like the movie, is about final probabilities.
Asteroid Metropolis is a movie about grief, although that goes with out saying in a Wes Anderson film. Particularly, although, it’s a movie about two individuals—Jason Schwartzman’s Augie Steenbeck and Scarlett Johansson’s Midge Campbell—left directionless by their grief and in peril of doing irreparable hurt to themselves (Midge speaks calmly of suicide as a purposeful inevitability, whereas Augie admits very current ideas of abandoning his household). The titular Asteroid Metropolis and the otherworldly encounter they expertise, the movie’s music and script counsel, is their final alternative to keep away from destruction. An indication from the heavens descends; as Johnny Duncan sang initially of the movie, “If you happen to miss this one, you’ll by no means get one other one.”
The descent of the alien on the movie’s midpoint is a type of divine revelation, an indication from the heavens to these desperately in want of 1 (it descends out of a light-weight within the sky, down among the many individuals, earlier than ascending once more; a baby later writes a track concerning the expertise known as, “Expensive Alien, Who Artwork in Heaven”). The characters who see the alien know they witnessed one thing paradigm-changing, one thing so cosmically important that it has to matter for their very own lives.
However how, precisely? The creature descends, takes the city’s titular asteroid, poses briefly for Augie’s image, then leaves. What does any of this imply? The characters are left to stew on this query, on their private points, and on the intersections between this stuff, whereas beneath the speedy authorities quarantine that follows.
Watching these characters wrestle to make sense of a divine revelation with unclear that means, I considered Martin Luther, and his distinction between “God hidden” (Deus absconditus) and “God revealed” (Deus revelatus). For Luther, God’s infinite greatness over humanity implies that even when God reveals himself, He stays hidden from us; God’s revelation is each illuminating and complicated. We place confidence in God as a result of God has revealed himself to be good and loving via Christ, however we additionally know that God is working in fearsome, horrible ways in which we don’t perceive and that appear to contradict the goodness revealed in Christ.
“Doesn’t matter [what the play means]. Simply maintain telling the story.”
What will we make of a God who so loves the world that he offers it his only-begotten son, who wishes that none ought to perish, however who additionally predestines numerous to everlasting damnation, who sends plagues and earthquakes and wars into the world he supposedly loves? The reply, for Luther, is past human comprehension. We will solely cling to that which God has revealed to us, all of the whereas quaking at that which God has not. Christ is nice; is that the top of the story? For Luther, we will’t say; we will solely hope. God is meaningless, and for that cause, His revelation is barely partially comprehensible at finest.
Luther, I believe, can be at residence in Asteroid Metropolis. He can be at residence among the many junior stargazers excitedly conspiring to share this miracle with the remainder of the world, and he can be at residence with the dour navy males who worry the hazard the alien may portend. He can be most at residence, although, with Augie, who close to the top of the movie stops enjoying his character, leaves the play’s set, and confronts the director, asking for an analysis of his efficiency and begging him to clarify what all of it means.
Luther can be at residence too, I believe, within the director’s sneakers, as he tells Augie that his understanding of the play is much less essential than his willingness to have interaction in it: “Doesn’t matter [what the play means]. Simply maintain telling the story.” This acceptance of insecurity and continuation in religion regardless of itself jogs my memory of a sermon Luther gave on the Canaanite girl in Mark 7, the place he states:
After we really feel in our conscience that God rebukes us as sinners and judges us unworthy of the dominion of heaven, then we expertise hell, and we expect we’re misplaced perpetually. Now whoever understands right here the actions of this poor girl and catches God in his personal judgment, and says: Lord, it’s true, I’m a sinner and never worthy of thy grace; however nonetheless thou hast promised sinners forgiveness, and thou artwork come to not name the righteous, however, as St. Paul says, “to save lots of sinners.”
God’s revelation in Christ, for Luther, is one thing that should be grasped and proclaimed in opposition to all else, even in opposition to seemingly contradictory revelation from God. The Cannanite girl is an exemplar of religion as a result of she will be able to assert God’s guarantees to God himself; Augie, equally, finds the energy to return to the play even when its director refuses to clarify the that means to him. Within the play, Augie begins a reconciliation along with his spouse’s household, and Midge leaves him her deal with, seemingly pausing her overdose plans in the interim.
Johnny Duncan and the Bluegrass Boy’s warning is heeded, it appears; Augie and Midge might not have understood the message, however they had been modified by it nonetheless.
God speaks, and God says “sure” to humanity, “sure” to relationship with us, “sure” to our salvation regardless of our unworthiness.
I didn’t discover this ending satisfying on my first viewing, to be sincere. I don’t discover Luther’s bifurcated understanding of revelation satisfying both. I can’t consider it with out additionally pondering of Karl Barth’s rejection of it within the second quantity of Church Dogmatics. In brief, although God is certainly infinitely better than humanity, God’s totality is revealed in Christ, not merely in a single a part of God; there isn’t any “hidden God” aside from the one made recognized in Christ.
The film received me over on second viewing after I realized that Augie’s perspective on the occasions, his confusion main right into a begrudging existential acceptance, shouldn’t be the one one current. The movie even jokes about this early on, when he lastly tells his kids of their mom’s demise, and suggests, “Let’s say she’s in heaven, which doesn’t exist for me, in fact, however you’re Episcopalian.”
Certainly, Augie’s son and the opposite junior stargazers instantly really feel an nearly apostolic conviction to share their alien encounter with the world. The youthful “area cadets” are likewise enthralled, and Tex and the opposite locals are more than pleased to hitch the youngsters of their celebrations. For each character left confounded by the extraterrestrial encounter, one other receives it instantly with pleasure.
The alien, this signal from heaven, is complicated, positive; however the play’s director encourages Augie to “inform the story anyway.” For as darkish and unusual as Asteroid Metropolis is, it’s thematic core is optimistic: God’s goodness doesn’t depend on our potential to grasp or anticipate it, and our confusion offers but extra alternatives for God to indicate us benevolence (“You’ll be able to’t get up in case you don’t go to sleep!” the actors chant within the movie’s climax).
Asteroid Metropolis as a movie expresses a conviction that God speaks, however questions whether or not that speech is intelligible. Nonetheless, the very fact of God’s talking in any respect, clear or not, is a outstanding sufficient factor that it should be repeated and regarded again and again.
As Christians, religion permits us to take this conviction and transfer it a step ahead: God speaks, and God says “sure” to humanity, “sure” to relationship with us, “sure” to our salvation regardless of our unworthiness. God loves Augie and Midge, and each profit from the alien’s unusual descent effectively earlier than they perceive it.
Nonetheless, although, the very best type of individual to be in Asteroid Metropolis is a baby, who sees the alien and experiences it with easy pleasure. Via religion, we reply the query from the kid’s track, “Are you pal or foe?” with the reply, “Good friend!”
However even once we can’t do this, even when, like Augie and Midge, doubt and confusion crowd out all room for pleasure, God nonetheless works for our good. Johnny Duncan was flawed in any case; there isn’t any “final probability” to expertise God’s mercy, no pit of despair so deep God is not going to descend into it with us like an alien right into a crater.
In spite of everything, you possibly can’t get up in case you don’t go to sleep.