Asteroid City: The Quest for Infinity

Finally, Asteroid City also explores the inevitable role of religion in society. The story wraps us in beautiful, benign, light-filled southwest landscapes, with only a thin membrane, seemingly, between heaven and earth. The film can be considered, in part, a first contact film, or even perhaps a heavenly contact film, in multiple senses. Thus, the title invokes actual contact between the heavens and the earth. The play within the film is said to be about “infinity.” It revolves around “a bewildering and bedazzling celestial mystery.” Much of this suggests a quest for meaning and significance and origin beyond the confines of science. Questions are asked which science cannot answer. Existential questions achieve immanence, fueled by the death and burial of the mother in the play and the death of the playwright. The Episcopalian faith, held by certain characters, is mentioned repeatedly. Atheism, too, is mentioned. Events apparently lead one character to question and lose this faith. Yet arguably it is the pivotal role of ethics and religion in the film, as opposed to science, that makes resistance against unjust power possible. The transcendental, heavenly-contact-aspiring, self-evident human dignity of philosophy and religion seems to play an inevitable role, one worth protecting for inherent human freedom and flourishing.