Ad Astra (2019)

Directed by: James Gray | 123 minutes | science fiction thriller | Actors: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland, Kimberly Elise, Loren Dean, Donnie Keshawarz, Sean Blakemore, Bobby Nish, LisaGay Hamilton, John Finn, John Ortiz, Freda Foh Shen, Kayla Adams

The space film has been on the rise in recent years. Alfonso Cuarón’s Oscar-winning ‘Gravity’ wowed movie viewers with its graceful visual spectacle and set the bar extremely high for fellow genre members with similar ambitions. Christopher Nolan’s equally impressive ‘Interstellar’ (2014) stands out mainly thanks to a brilliant screenplay, Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Arrival’ (2016) brilliantly tackled existential issues and the (im)possibility of communication with extraterrestrial life and Damian Chazelle’s Neil Armstrong biography ‘First Man’ (2018) felt so oppressive that the viewer had the feeling of being in the spaceship with lead actor Ryan Gosling. Each and every one of the films looks fantastic, each in their own way. See in that list come up with a new angle, tone or style. James Gray, the man behind films like ‘We Own the Night’ (2007), ‘The Immigrant’ and ‘The Lost City of Z’ (2016), takes up that ambition with the introspective ‘Ad Astra’ (2019). Star of the film is Brad Pitt, who also acts as producer and whom we have rarely seen as subdued and thoughtful as in this film. Pitt seems to have started his second acting childhood and, after ‘Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood’ (2019), is making an impression again.

According to the introductory text, ‘Ad Astra’, which means ‘to the stars’, is set in the ‘near future’, at a time when space travel is the most normal thing in the world and the rest of our solar system is no longer uncharted territory. is. The moon has become a tourist attraction, although we only discover it after some time. It also turns out that there are quite a few natural resources in the soil, which has lured the necessary cowboys and bandits to the moon. But planets like Mars have also been colonized by Earthlings. Gray has attempted to paint the “most realistic portrayal of space travel and space travel ever” and he has largely succeeded; ‘Ad Astra’ feels truthful, despite the high (and literal) ‘far-from-my-bed-show’ level. Pitt plays Roy McBride, a brilliant astronaut who is so devoted to his job that his personal life is severely affected (his wife played by Liv Tyler felt so neglected that she left him). In addition, Roy is quite introverted, does not talk easily about his feelings and has to deal with the necessary demons from his past. Roy’s father Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones) was an equally genius astronaut who was so obsessed with the search for extraterrestrial life that he left the family when Roy was 16 to join the first manned flight to planets like Neptune and Jupiter. . After years in the periphery of our solar system, he was never heard from again. Within the space world, Clifford is considered a hero, but Roy has ambivalent feelings about this: he feels abandoned by his father.

At the beginning of ‘Ad Astra’, Roy is tasked with repairing the towering space antenna when it becomes the target of mysterious, devastating electric shock waves that are fired from space at Earth. Roy barely survives the dizzying fall he takes next. In a strictly confidential meeting, Roy is told that SPACECOM has a suspicion where they come from: from the spaceship that his father left decades ago, which is located near Neptune. Would Clifford still be alive? Has he himself come to disappear and has he decided to make the earth pay for his tireless expansionism? To answer those questions, the intrepid Roy, whose heart rate never exceeds 80 beats per minute, is sent on the road. He’s not exactly there to cheer, but the choice has already been made for him, nor is it in his dutiful nature to ignore or reject such an order. What follows is an exciting space journey along various planets. Roy becomes involved in a spectacular chase by opportunistic but dangerous pirates on Mars, quarrels with mutated animals in an abandoned spaceship and is thanked for services rendered on Mars after a failed attempt to contact his father. But Roy doesn’t just let himself be pushed aside; now that he’s finally tracked down his father, he’ll track him down too. Alone if necessary.

‘Ad Astra’ offers a sober. quite dejected look at space, with Pitts Roy McBride as our melancholy, thoughtful guide. As cold and indifferent as he may appear on the outside, his eyes betray that events do affect him, especially the many unanswered questions he has for his father and the complex relationship between the two of them. James Gray and co-writer Ethan Gross thought it necessary to also have Pitt record a voice-over, which shows McBride’s personal frustrations, apathy and cynicism. His thoughts are often also philosophical in nature. Sometimes it is disturbing that everything is explained and explained in this way; thanks to Pitt’s great performance, with eyes that speak volumes, that is not always necessary. The images speak for themselves. Dutch cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, who already has an impressive resume including ‘Interstellar’ and ‘Dunkirk’ (2017), once again shows why the great Hollywood filmmakers are so eager to work with him. With a relatively limited budget of about eighty million dollars, he creates a stylish universe that looks as wonderful as it is believable and where the visual effects are seamlessly incorporated into a truthful whole.

Of course ‘Ad Astra’ stirs memories of other films (thematically, for example, ‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979), but James Gray knows how to give it his own twist. the film loses some of its credibility towards the end, but thanks to a fascinating Brad Pitt, the stunning cinematography of Hoyte van Hoytema and the oppressive, introspective atmosphere ‘Ad Astra’ manages to earn a place in the list of impressive recent space movies.