Space is not a place to be subtle. The vast vacuous areas which lack oxygen are hard to express thought in on the downlow. Mankind often looks to the stars to find answers to the greatest questions, so it’s best to make those reveals loud and clear for all to hear rather than whisper into the empty endless nature of our galaxy. Ad Astra doesn’t quite scream at full volume, but it doesn’t hide its metaphors behind planets or gastial stars. These metaphors are boldly shoved into the face of the audience, but not in a fashion that’s abrasive or annoying. Rather, director/co-writer James Gray seeks to fully entrench the larger than life space imagery into the perspective of our lead character.
Only fitting given the very personal story of this massive space mission. Our film follows Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), an astronaut who opens Ad Astra by falling out of the sky in the near future. While working on the international space station, Roy plummets to Earth after a massive electrical pulse causes the station to explode. After recuperating, Roy is put on a secret mission by US Space Command to communicate with the source of the pulses near Neptune. However, Roy isn’t just chosen because of his record holding calm attitude. The alleged source of the pulses is the base of the long lost Lima Project, an expedition to find intelligent life forms at the end of the solar system lead by Roy’s father Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones) who may still be alive.
This son-searching-for-long-lost-father story is the clothes hanger from which Gray hangs the boldfaced sci-fi imagery in Ad Astra. The near future setting allows for an immersive environment that feels true to a potential future for space travel. The set design remarkably evokes the optimism of 60s era NASA missions with an efficient polished look that’s not too unlikely for our future. Planetary bodies are depicted as gorgeously unfeeling environments that look immaculat yet inhumanly harsh in a realistic fashion. There’s a cold sleek look to all the settings with a few dusty corners to convey a lived in sensibility. It’s the meeting point between the stark sci-fi art deco of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the cold metallic greys of Blade Runner 2049. Ad Astra builds an environment where people have managed to colonize certain areas of our solar system, only to bring crass commercialism and bureaucratic efficiency with them. Beautiful yet cold environments are meant to keep characters at a neutral tempo, but only serve as an unfeeling surface from which dormant emotions burst out.
One may think from the aesthetic that Ad Astra is a more ponderous take on space colonization. Yet, there are many weird genre turns hidden within this package that could easily be divisive. The whiplash of going from a contemplative sci-fi drama to an abrasive horror scenario or a rousing action beat could easily turn some people off. However, each of these genre turns still feels in keeping with the world James Gray establishes from the start. There’s a traditional weight and gravity (or lack thereof) to every movement, grounding these larger than life genre turns in an internal consistency. Ad Astra is full of odd peeks into the various parts of this colonized version of space that flesh things out without too much exposition. There is some overly intrusive voice over from our lead character that can be a bit much, but given how much time he spends on his own its a device I can understand to some degree.
Roy McBride spends so much of Ad Astra in solitude. Contemplating his past, barely surviving his present and hurtling towards his single minded future. The tragedy of Roy is the perceived perfection as a specimen for space travel – given his father’s world renowned explorations and Roy’s own record breaking aplomb – is that he constantly puts less experienced folks around him in danger. In his pursuit to supposedly help humanity by finding other intelligent life like his father attempted to, McBride leaves a sizable amount of his companions in dire straits by accident. He’s almost this immortal figure. Doomed to survive while all those around him are left permanently scarred or worse. The small supporting turns from the likes of Ruth Negga and Donald Sutherland show off an earnest belief in Roy as a character even though his success will inherently lead to so much danger coming their way, which is a weight that compounds on Roy throughout the film.
Brad Pitt depicts all of this with an earnest internal trauma that effectively shows he’s completely closed off from people in his life. Pitt as an actor could potentially be accused of being wooden, particularly early on in his career. Throughout Ad Astra, Roy needs to pass several psychological exams in order to be given access to travel in space. This device gives Pitt the opportunity to show a sense of stoicism that clearly hides so much pain. A measured face that shows off so much anguish, regret and horror as he tries to wrestle with who he is internally while literally struggling with space threats in a calculated fashion. Pitt manages to channel much of the same energy we only get snippets of from Tommy Lee Jones, where both have that same struggle for pursuing the great mysteries of the universe while confronting how far they will potentially go in the face of such a goal. There’s a lot of Apocalypse Now vibes coming from this story, but with a more personal sins of the father spin that gives intimate weight to these large scale moments.
Ad Astra is probably the weirdest $100 million budgeted film to come out in recent memory. It’s one of the lingering weird risky choices from 20th Century Fox made before the recent Disney purchase, with a very clear vision of a non-IP related massive budgeted film that will rarely happen again in our larger scale cinematic landscape. That on it’s own wouldn’t be enough to call Ad Astra one of the best films of the year as much as a noble one. Luckily, James Gray has made a remarkably unique yet universal film that gives human stakes to large scope. Building an extension of the galaxy we know to bizarre heights we wouldn’t expect, but never losing the emotional bedrock that keeps things grounded. James Gray and his co-writer Ethan Gross know how to balance out genre thrills & quiet contemplative visuals. Much in the same way Roy McBride is struggling between his psychological exams and external threats, Ad Astra shakily yet honestly attempts to balance big swings of tone with earnest emotion and succeeds more than not. Hopefully, we can still get more swings like this in Disney’s modern empire… or we’ll just get an Oliver & Company live action movie instead I guess?
Rating: 4 Out of 5 Space Pirate Laser Guns
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Marianiment 