Personal spectacle that is driven by emotion and a career best performance from Brad Pitt. A must-see film.
Ad Astra is one of 20th Century Fox’s last films produced exclusively under their umbrella, and after a concerning, late delay to mid-September (chock full with those pesky reshoot reports), James Gray’s personal space quest is an exquisite space odyssey unlike any we’ve seen before. Starring Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, and Liv Tyler, this recent entry into Gray’s filmography also boasts the talents of cinematographer Hoyt Van Hoytema and composers Max Richter and Lorne Balfe.
Set in the near future, after an electrical surge kills thousands, Roy McBride (Pitt) embarks on a journey to uncover the mystery behind the surges, along with uncovering his own emotions along the way. Brad Pitt, for all of the hype off of the backburner of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has never been better. Calculated, patient, and doing more with less, Pitt’s personal struggle leaps off the screen in multiple dimensions. Framed exquisitely by Hoyt Van Hoytema, every emotion and intended emotion for us to feel, is felt. It carefully whispers it’s longing, desire, heart, and pain into the back of our mind.
What separates great science-fiction films from not-so-great science-fiction, is their prioritization of purpose over action. Rather than giving it’s characters, story, and world a justified reason to exist as it is, it bloats it’s story with pieces that simply don’t fit, nor compliment the whole. Ad Astra is one of those great ones. Each scene serves a purpose in elevating the next, and each line of dialogue fills in the canvas. Becoming a sun-soaked piece of material that is splashed with the sprinkling of rain, or maybe tears instead. You can’t really tell the difference. A piece of work that is so resolutely confident, it comes across more calming than it does boisterous. Exchanging bombastic dynamism, for tranquility. A movie that patiently frames masculinity in a way that carefully intertwines the wiring of that stature and rather than exuding that, it seeks to look inward on what it means to be masculine.
Astra sweeps up the fragility of it’s shattered masculinity with a deeply personal level of sadness. It works as a figure that looks down at it’s failures, short-comings, and pain as the scars try and heal in a way that makes itself yearn for self-forgiveness. It takes on it’s own burdens of existence and capitalizes on existentialism by forging a level of crisis that is wholly organic, nurtured, and self-sustaining. Fueling its own fire by feeding itself off of the restraints that the government and legacy of our names put upon us. How we never stray from what we are, although we exclaim that change will be different. Who are we if we’re just voices of validation for whatever the market feeds us? Did we really change, or are we just destined to repeat history? How do we absolve ourselves as a collective unit in a way that allows us to connect on a universal spectrum?
Ad Astra asks these questions amongst many others. Questions that are presented with a level of maturity and formality that a movie hasn’t given me since 2016’s Arrival. Putting me in a state of emotional unrest, warranted by every second of it’s run-time as it cradles me as if I were a glass marble. As something so miniscule in the grand scheme of things, my existence may feel pointless, but it’s meaningful in ways I may never understand until I do. It’s difficult to connect emotionally to people so distant from our perception of them, but there’s something about that distance that still feels near and dear. Something inexplicable, but tangible on a multitude of levels that can only be described as cathartic and joyful when we finally feel them.
Space, for all of it’s promise of life-changing opportunity, is really just an indescribable, dangerous void that swallows its identity and sunlight whole. Maybe it would take a 2.7 billion mile journey to have it all make sense, maybe living with it already feels like it takes that long to put the pieces back into place. There’s always a reason to wake up in this universe the next morning, don’t hide from what you’re dealing with, go on that journey with other people, and don’t be afraid to cry. It’ll be okay. Always.
Ad Astra gets a 100/100