Film Review: Ad Astra

I’m not sure what is more impressive Ad Astra, or the fact that co-writer and director, James Gray, managed to convince a studio to fund and release it. Granted, if you had any familiarity with the works of Gray (of which I am, admittedly, somewhat lacking, having only seen three), then it wouldn’t shock you to learn that Ad Astra is not the thrilling space adventure the marketing would lead you to believe. It is really a meditative character study that just so happens to use space as a backdrop, and it is easily one of my favorite movies of the year.

Taking place in the not too distant future, we meet the cool, calm, and collected Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), an astronaut who recently survived a mysterious power surge event while he was repairing a space antenna. He is the son of the famous Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), who led a mission to the far reaches of the solar system to find some form of alien life, where he and his crew disappeared long ago. Roy meets with some officials who inform him that the power surge came from the project base that Clifford was on, meaning he might still be alive, and Roy is tasked to go to Mars, and try communicating with his father. However, we quickly learn that Roy’s chill and unflinching demeanor is rooted in his bottled up emotions over growing up without his father around, which manifests in ways that prove to complicate Roy’s mission.

Gray hasn’t necessarily made the greatest impression on me as a filmmaker, but not in a way that suggests his work is subpar. I don’t recall much from We Own The Night, which I last saw a decade ago. The Immigrant and The Lost City of Z were both beautifully made and performed, but something about the storytelling made it hard for me to stay engaged with the narrative. Oddly enough, criticisms I have for those films could almost easily apply to Ad Astra as well, especially considering he wrote it alongside his co-writer for The Lost City Of Z, Ethan Gross. But this time, and admittedly it could totally be my soft spot for space movies, especially of the sad astronaut variety, his style totally clicked with me, and I was swept up in his introspective space odyssey.

The film is a story about fathers and sons. It’s about the weight that a legacy can fall on a person, the way it morphs people in their professional and personal lives, and how it can affect them if that legacy is challenged or confronted. It’s about as thorough an exploration of daddy issues that I have seen in recent memory. The film leans hard on this, keeping the perspective squarely from Roy’s point-of-view. Gray does a wonderful job of keeping you in his headspace, and he perfectly utilizes Brad Pitt’s abilities and strengths as an actor, emphasizing his face and aging look to a haunting effect.

The world of Ad Astra is a fascinating one, and I was astonished by the level of detail that went into this. Obviously the costumes and spacecrafts look wonderful, but the first act of the film throws out such rich and meaningful details that blend the wondrous with the banal, especially in one sequence where Roy and his escort, Colonel Pruitt (Donald Sutherland), take a flight to the moon, which plays out like they’re going to any other airport right now. The moon base is filled with recognizable shops and restaurants, and we find out about these moon pirates, taking advantage of the lack of border on the moon, as they launch an attack on Roy’s moon rover in an incredibly tense and inventive sequence.

That’s not to say the film is perfect. Though, I do think it comes close. The big, glaring flaw is the narration, which are often trying to reveal Roy’s innermost thoughts. However, a lot of the time, it’s Roy stating the obvious. It’s odd because the film has plenty of opportunity to explore this through these psychological evaluations that Roy takes part in. They provide plenty of moments where Roy talks about his growing conflicted feelings about the mission and about his father, slowly progressing from one feeling to another. The narration has that theatrical cut of Blade Runner feel to it, which doesn’t work at all. Though, it certainly doesn’t hurt hearing Pitt’s smooth voice all throughout the movie. Then there’s Liv Tyler, who plays Roy’s estranged wife, but is frankly nothing more than a symbol, a manifestation of Roy’s issues with commitment to anything that isn’t a mission, as opposed to a fleshed out character, which could apply to most of the supporting players like Donald Sutherland and Ruth Negga, who appears later in the film as someone with ties to Roy’s father.

If the thought of a slow, quiet, somber two hour science fiction melodrama doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, then Ad Astra is likely not for you. It’s so strange seeing a film of this budget, with these levels of special effects, opening in so many theaters, which is by all accounts an epic space odyssey, could feel so intimate and personal and challenging. I was engrossed from the very beginning, and it held my attention up until its soulful ending. It has Brad Pitt pulling off one of his best performances, holding so many conflicting emotions conveyed through looks alone, and the filmmaking from James Gray is absolutely glorious to behold. There are sequences in this that will undoubtedly stick around in my mind for weeks to come, if not months. It’s a moving, sprawling, beautiful, and haunting tale of finding the humanity within, and I will be thinking about it for a very long time.