Ad Astra

Isn’t it a won­der­ful feel­ing when a direc­tor whose work you have been typ­i­cal­ly apa­thet­ic towards in the past pro­duces some­thing that comes dan­ger­ous­ly close to a mas­ter­piece? The spec­u­la­tive idea of A James Gray Movie has always man­aged to whip up a sense of antic­i­pa­tion and intrigue. Yet James Gray in real­i­ty has always, for me, land­ed on a bust. We Own the Night. The Immi­grant. The Lost City of Z. Thanks, but no thanks.

And that’s not to dis­count the vault­ing ambi­tion and earnest­ly clas­si­cal approach he takes to his work, it’s more that the indi­vid­ual frag­ments nev­er seem to coa­lesce into a sat­is­fy­ing, round­ed whole. Until now, that is. Ad Astra, his rich, con­tem­pla­tive sci­ence fic­tion opus, begins on a recre­ation of the final shot of Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – a float­ing face in a bub­ble and plan­et earth, each pro­trud­ing from oppo­site sides of the frame – and heads up, up and away from from there.

Come on down for all the eccen­tric detail he and co-writer Ethan Gross vac­u­um pack into this inter­galac­tic escapade set in a near future where deep space endeav­our is on the cusp of unearthing some­thing pro­found about our sta­tus in the galaxy. Stay for the real­i­sa­tion that this is an extra­or­di­nary and elab­o­rate film about the emo­tion­al dev­as­ta­tion of los­ing a parent.

With a hint of com­ic irony, Brad Pitt is intro­duced as the lanter-jawed hero Roy McBride who, even when in the midst of extreme per­il, is able to retain an almost super­nat­ur­al cool. We see him fall from a space anten­na and down to earth, and the nabobs in mis­sion con­trol are fas­ci­nat­ed by the fact that his heart-rate nev­er once went above 80.

He is immune to fear, or maybe jad­ed by the prospect of pain, and so the ide­al can­di­date to ven­ture to a Mars comms base and coax his miss­ing-believed-dead father, Clif­ford (Tom­my Lee Jones), back from the rings of Nep­tune and a long-term research mis­sion named The Lima Project. Ener­gy surges are ema­nat­ing from Clifford’s ship and radi­at­ing across the solar sys­tem. They need to be stopped to pre­vent the whole­sale dev­as­ta­tion of the known world.

If you want­ed to reach for a crass log­line, then Apoc­a­lypse Now in space is not far off. Pitt even seems to chan­nel the list­less, seen-every­thing (though secret­ly pet­ri­fied and con­fused) com­port­ment of Char­lie Sheen’s Cap­tain Ben­jamin Willard. Yet Gray man­ages to sig­nal his rev­er­ence towards the canon­i­cal mas­ters of cin­e­ma, and the clas­sics of the sci-fi genre, while also mak­ing a film that’s very much its own thing, one which is per­haps his most flu­ent expres­sion of the idea that blind, some might say crazed ambi­tion is in itself an end which jus­ti­fies a means. Answers can sup­ply peace of mind, but some­times, just dar­ing to ask the ques­tion is a feat in itself.

The episod­ic nar­ra­tive sees Roy march across the galaxy with a view to recon­nect­ing with his estranged father. The visu­al rav­ish­ments are plen­ti­ful, and Gray draws new aes­thet­ic life from the extreme­ly well-worn iconog­ra­phy of space suits, satel­lites and star-dap­pled vis­tas of the sub­lime infi­nite. Max Richter’s score works won­ders as a emo­tive mood enhancer, and even when there’s an action or a sus­pense sequence (and there are many very good ones), it always loops you back to the essen­tial poignan­cy of this even­tu­al father-son showdown.

In terms of the act­ing, it’s pret­ty much a one-man show, as Pitt is in vir­tu­al­ly every shot of the film. The man is on a seri­ous roll at the moment, here repur­pos­ing the mel­low charm of his Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood to mask wells of intense sad­ness just wait­ing to burst forth. The ques­tion of whether Pitt will be pit­ted against Pitt at the 2020 Oscars is not at all a stu­pid one. Else­where, Ruth Neg­ga shines in a small but impor­tant sup­port­ing part as a par­tial vic­tim of Clifford’s human­i­ty-threat­en­ing flame out. Her eyes alone should be insured for billions.

We won’t say what it is, but Gray lands the big finale with visu­al and emo­tion­al ele­gance. Ad Astra is a lament to the things we won’t see or the ideas we won’t under­stand in our rel­a­tive­ly mea­gre life­times. These astro­nauts pray to God before their ves­sels blast off, and it’s both strange an excit­ing to see a film where human­i­ty retains its spir­i­tu­al belief in a future dom­i­nat­ed by sci­ence, dis­cov­ery and cold rationality.

The film sug­gests that maybe we don’t need to risk life and limb in the des­o­late out­land of space to achieve per­son­al con­tent­ment – to feel as if we’ve con­tributed some­thing valu­able to the future of mankind. Because what does it even mean to such com­plex beings as humans, who can bare­ly sus­tain a sim­ple rela­tion­ship, or under­stand the impuls­es of a friend, a lover of a par­ent. Some­times, a mono­lith appears in front of us, and it is just a mono­lith – noth­ing more. Accept it, move on and achieve your ulti­mate bliss.