Ad Astra. To the Stars. We as a species have always chased the unattainable and strived to make it attainable, but our greatest Everest has always been space. The limitless and elusive mysteries of the universe is a powerfully compelling drive, and one we’ve only just begun to explore. And it’s by far the most noble of our explorations, being almost entirely for knowledge’s sake rather than material gain as has been the course of the history of our own planet. We’re desperate to know what’s out there, how vast the universe is and consequently how small we are, and whether or not we’re alone. But what if that knowledge isn’t what we want it to be? What do we do and how do we live with it?
These are just some of the questions posed by James Gray’s cerebral science-fiction film, which follows an astronauts’ journey to find his long-disappeared father, a pioneering space explorer in his own right, in the deep end of the solar system. I’ve admired Gray since The Immigrant and championed him after The Lost City of Z, which I still consider to be one of the best films of 2017. In fact Ad Astra has a lot in common with Gray’s previous explorer movie, including a focus on the relationship between distant fathers and sons and a potent theme on the obsessiveness of pursuing and proving a deeply held belief. They’re very good companion pieces, both Heart of Darkness adjacent narratives with an interest in inner turmoil, complimented by rich aesthetics refurbished from icons. In The Lost City of Z it was Herzog and Lean, and in Ad Astra it’s Kubrick and Tarkovsky.
Any science-fiction movie that dares to be about big ideas, especially if set in space, will inevitably be compared (usually unfavourably) to 2001: A Space Odyssey, the king of space epics if not the science-fiction genre on film itself. Ad Astra, like every sci-fi movie since, owes a great debt to 2001 and is certainly more conscious in its imitation of it (particularly with regards to one commercial space flight sequence), but it has as much if not more in common with Solaris, which is comparatively more plot-driven than its fellow 1968 genre classic, and more avidly introspective and psychoanalytical. Ad Astra is very openly introspective, with a dominating voiceover conveying the thoughts and musings of lead character Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), which alongside a meditative pace and occasionally abstract digressions gives it distinct impressions of Terrence Malick, no doubt Gray’s other great influence. But the film is more than a confluence of stylistic inspiration, and it’s how Gray uses his sources that’s important and ultimately what makes his picture enrapturing.
Ad Astra is a slow burn, quiet and graceful; every scene, even in action sequences, has a contemplative patience to it, allowing the moments to envelop the audience in their sense of place and time. You’re transported through breathtaking imagery and visual effects to a society on the moon, and Mars, and the remote reaches of space. Gray set out to make “the most realistic depiction of space travel that’s been put in a movie”, and whether or not he actually achieved that, you can tell there was an immense dedication to accuracy that went into the CGI and production design; heavy consultation on what habitations off-world would look and feel like, enhancing the films’ already not inconsiderable vividness.
But it’s a mysterious and somewhat barren vividness, a near future characterized by a sparsity of people. There are no crowd scenes, even conferences are limited to a minimum. This is less a prophetic statement as it is an illustration of isolation, for humanity in these alien spaces, though more immediately for Roy himself. Despite their billing, most of Pitt’s co-stars have minor roles. John Ortiz appears for one scene, Liv Tyler once again as the lover left behind by a space-faring partner is given a handful of brief stream of consciousness references –a symbol for Roy’s regrets more than a person. Ruth Negga and Donald Sutherland get less than a half hours’ screen-time between them; even Tommy Lee Jones, great as the father, appears largely through archival media -remaining the films’ persistently looming enigma. His presence though permeates the film through Roy, desolate and withdrawn, competent yet emotionally compromised at the notion of meeting the father he hasn’t seen in over thirty years. Pitt delivers an excellent, soulful performance that is both muted and deep as a man torn between insecurity and curiosity, plagued by complex feelings of love, loss, and identity. Driven by a profound need for human connection, his intimate solitude unnerves and resonates with us, heightened by the wholly extra-terrestrial atmosphere of his situation. This movie, like space itself, is both frighteningly claustrophobic and eerily agoraphobic. That latter point is essential.
Ad Astra, futuristic though it may be and overwhelmingly encouraging of postulation and speculation, is almost anti-science-fiction. It rejects the fantastical, the anomalous, in favour of the authentically theoretical and concrete. Like Kubrick and Tarkovsky, even like Nolan (this film being what Interstellar could have been), Gray takes to the stars to discover internal truths rather than external; but unlike any of those filmmakers, the external doesn’t factor into his story at all and that’s the key. Religion comes up a couple times, an acknowledgement or belief in a god common to a few characters; but to Clifford McBride, intelligent life is his god, belief in its’ existence his faith, and as Roy journeys towards him, ruminating on what finding his father and the discoveries he’s made will mean in his poetic dictations, it becomes a mission of faith for him as well.
As stirringly metaphorical and sharply philosophical as Ad Astra is, it never neglects to be beautiful. It’s shot by Hoyte van Hoytema, the cinematographer of Interstellar, who captures the imagery and effects as crisply as in that space epic, but with more wonder and depth. This is a film that’s in awe of the galaxy, despite its anxieties, mesmerized by its grandness in spite of its infinite dangers, and these dichotomies are illustrated impeccably by van Hoytema and Gray and the multitude of VFX technicians who worked on the film, including Moving Picture Company and Weta Digital. Ad Astra compels you to space, while keeping its unpredictability and magnitude always relevant; emphasizes that age old quest for knowledge, allowing us to feel that yearning again, without forgetting about Earth, ourselves, and the nature of humanity’s place in the universe. And for that it stands among giants.
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