Ad Astra (2019)

Review

122min

Genre:     Adventure, Drama, Mystery, Sci-fi

Director:  James Gray

Cast:       Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga…and more

Writers:   James Gray and Ethan Gross

-Synopsis-

Tasked with discovering the fate of his vanished space pioneer father while on top secret exploration mission with implications for the survival of humanity, an unflappable US Army major and astronaut is sent his own perilous mission to the edge of our solar system, on a journey which will test his loyalties and bring him face-to-face with the very thing he’s avoided for most of his life.

After partnering through Plan B and producers Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner to take a biographical period journey through the unexplored Amazon in 2016’s ‘The Lost City of Z’, director James Gray reunites with star and producer Brad Pitt in a more intimate capacity, for a fictional near future journey to the uncharted corners of the cosmos—on a quest to unravel a very personal human mystery and find that most elusive of treasures . . . ourselves.

Pitt stars as dependable US astronaut ‘Major Roy McBride’, a cool customer with an unflappable demeanour which hides some inner turmoil, sent on a mission across our solar system to track down his long disappeared father ‘Clifford McBride’ (Tommy Lee Jones)—a celebrated pioneer of space exploration—when dangerous electrical anomalies linked to his work begin to wreak havoc on humanity. But his epic journey will be anything but smooth sailing, with the trek from Earth to Moon to Mars and its outpost leader ‘Helen Lantos’ (Ruth Negga) proving fraught with peril, as he faces danger and learns uncomfortable truths about his mission and the father he barely knew, on his way to protecting humanity and freeing himself from decades-old personal shackles.

At times ‘Ad Astra’ boasts the spectacular visuals and nail-biting tension of ‘Gravity’, at others the sense of a perilous journey of unknowns as seen in films like Danny Boyle’s ‘Sunshine’, with bit of ‘Blade Runner 2049’ thrown in the mix, even shooting for a dash of the discovery and profundity of Kubrick’s 1968 game-changer ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’—all of which was so spectacularly taken on by Christopher Nolan of course in 2014’s ‘Interstellar’ . . . but when there’s this much nuance and ambition involved, there’s always room for more in our book.

The story unfolds in an unspecified technologically advanced near future of moon colonisation, commercial space travel and high frequency space exploration, where humanity has exported its world-consuming nature beyond our blue planet, not to mention its bureaucracy and some conflict too.

With the involvement of the since acquired 20th Century Fox—a development we fear may signal the last of these types of films from them for a while if it doesn’t trouble the box office— Gray and the producers get the stuffed coffers they need to deliver a vision of the future so impressive yet plausible that it feels more like science prophecy than science fiction, sticking as close to the current realities of space exploration as you could expect, but of course taking plenty of artistic license for the story. The results are stunning visuals, production designs and mesmerising cinematic movement—including marvellous zero-G action sequences—all vividly captured by nu-master cinematographer and regular Christopher Nolan collaborator Hoyte Van Hoytema  (Interstellar, Dunkirk).

The film’s mood and palpable atmosphere, which range from tense and claustrophobic to foreboding and awe-striking, are further established by its impressive soundscape, made up of evocative and experimental sound designs, and an epic score from composer Max Richter (Miss Sloane, Mary Queen of Scots)—who blends melodic establishing elements which wouldn’t be out of place in a video game series like ‘Mass Effect’, with dramatic epic flourishes which seem inspired by the sci-fi work of his fellow German composer Hans Zimmer.

Despite the technical achievements and the sheer spectacle of the piece, ‘Ad Astra’ is almost as much an inner journey as it is a outward one, and about conquering psychological obstacles as much as physical ones, and boy is it a long journey with a lot of obstacles to overcome—all of which Gray and his co-writer Ethan Gross manage to fit into a fairly compact two hour runtime.

As a result this is really a character piece at heart, and despite an accomplished supporting cast, it revolves largely around one man’s journey. Brad Pitt pulls double duty by providing a constant narration which serves as the inner thoughts of his otherwise largely stoic character, who incrementally begins to break along the way, while turning in as nuanced and complete a performance as we’ve seen from him for a while, unravelling an outwardly composed figure who hides a compartmentalised persona masking a deeply conflicted and disconnected personality, bearing the buried scars of childhood abandonment—for which he travels across the solar system to heal.

Much like James Gray’s cinematic Amazon journey was a more nuanced exploration of the human spirit than you might expect from an adventure film, ‘Ad Astra’ plays like a space journey to find the human soul, with a father-son story at its core which dramatically changes the shape of the third act, leading to a slightly underwhelming full-closure conclusion, and perhaps proving a tad anticlimactic. As a result it might prove a disappointment to those looking for more traditional space journey or survival fare, or indeed if you expect a more intricate mystery element or want something more wholly profound, abstract or ambiguous by the end.

For us though Gray and Pitt have struck a winning balance of spectacle, story and character, delivering a truly memorable, epic yet personal voyage which befits its title . . . to the stars. Ultimately the inspiration for ‘Ad Astra’, like virtually every space voyage drama since 1968, begins and ends with one film, and so its greatest triumph is to remind us of what a monumental cinematic achievement Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ remains over five decades on.

The Bottom Line…

A winning blend of epic space survival spectacle and introspective character drama, James Gray & co. create an extraordinarily vivid but plausible vision of the future while placing a simple plot and timeless human story at its heart, combining it with a nuanced and key central performance from Brad Pitt to deliver a measured and mesmerising space voyage drama . . . which owes much to the many which came before it.

Similar films you may like (Home Video)

Interstellar (2014)

Planet earth has become a dust-bowl with humanity struggling to grow enough food to survive and where farmers are valued above others, Cooper a former space-pilot engineer joins a group of scientists on humanity’s greatest voyage of discovery though a mysteriously appeared wormhole to another galaxy, to find a new home for mankind and save our species from extinction.

Directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway among others.

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