AD ASTRA: Sci-fi that Wins You Over, Despite its Flaws

Ad Astra is that high-profile film with a specific director at the helm about an astronaut fighting with space and himself that must appear at least once a year. Nolan, Scott, Cuarón, and Chazelle have been there before, and now it’s time for James Gray – who has several joint projects with Joaquin Phoenix under his belt, is a regular at Cannes and Venice, and recently did well in the adventure The Lost City of Z – tempted by the vastness of the universe.

Earth, near future. A mysterious cosmic energy discharge destroys one of the orbital stations. Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), who survived the catastrophe, learns that the source of the energy is probably Project Lima – a space base sent 26 years ago to the farthest edge of the solar system to search for intelligent life. The commander of the initiative was Roy’s father, renowned astronaut Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), who left his family in pursuit of a dream. Now, his son must journey through space to deactivate the station that threatens the survival of humanity and save his father if he is still alive. Along the way, he will visit, among other places, a colonized moon and a visit in his own head, as the endless prison of space gives him plenty of time to think about his life.

Ad Astra is a very strange conventional chaos, but ultimately fulfilling because with all its juggling, it’s actually quite dynamic – when internal musings combined with nods to Kubrick become too tiresome, we get a brilliantly executed moon chase, almost like Mad Max in a Sundance version, and when the next stage of the journey lasts perhaps just a little too long, we find ourselves in another intriguing place, where the hero must fight for survival like a galactic Indiana Jones. It is clear that Gray has been heavily influenced by recent space productions and wanted to extract what worked from each – here we get attempts to catch up to the technical and sound mastery of Gravity, to tell a big-small science fiction story where science supposedly rules, but the director cannot resist jumping into strange futuristic fiction (like Nolan in Interstellar), a lost man in space and his emotions, like Gosling in First Man, or even some horror, and even adventure elements from The Martian, because the slow action can blockbuster-speed up. This patchwork may not be to everyone’s liking if the viewer expects a specific path, but this constant stimulation swept me away. I like being in the filmic cosmos this way, where I feel the ground under my feet but can’t shake the feeling that I’m really far out there. Gray stumbles with narration here, but the cinematic illusion is enough to dull the viewer’s senses.

The entire team of creators tells the story beautifully through the image, and at the visual level, everything works excellently, enhanced by Brad Pitt’s outstanding physical performance – smirks, little grimaces, the look of a sad dog, melancholy oscillating between admiration for space and fear of isolation mixing with hope. The actor is fully aware of his body and conveys all the necessary information through it to strengthen the story. I can feel his internal emotional struggle, the longing for his absent father, searching for his place beyond Earth – it’s a really solid dissection of character that gets enough space without any obvious fluff. And on top of that, Pitt, with his perfect square jaw, is just Flash Gordon of our times, after some struggles – and it’s simply a pleasure to watch him on screen.

Unfortunately, Gray quickly destroys this visual impression adding tons of exposition in the form of the main character’s thoughts, where every small feeling, clearly visible on screen, has to be pushed forward by Pitt’s weary voice, as if he himself doesn’t see the point of such a device. This is a story submerged in great matters, overwhelmed by the enormity of infinity, but its backbone is the life relationship between father and son and a disquisition on loneliness, and such a blunt presentation of the character’s emotions, serving them on a platter, clearly dilutes the mysticism of the entire otherworldly situation. Seriously, it feels like the director made a great meditative film, a calming feeling piece with minimal use of words, but then suddenly something snapped, or someone higher up decided that it wouldn’t sell, and “let’s explain things, let Pitt talk because people will fall asleep, they won’t understand.” It’s a bit like the Blade Runner version with Deckard’s narration, which breaks the rhythm of the entire work. Sometimes, it’s really better to let the image remain silent because, paradoxically, it can often say much more. And here, the main interlocutors are the music and the silence of space.

Because the sound side is the primary hero here – Max Richter creates true magic from musical space, excellently emphasizing both the grandeur, beauty, and horror of traversing the vastness of space, as well as the intimacy of what is happening in the hero’s mind. And this, combined with the tireless Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography – inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey, clinically polished, playing with the geometry of shots, and leaving a lasting impression (during one of the first sequences with a fall from orbit, I had a lump in my throat – it had been a long time since I experienced such intense identification with the character in a theater) – gives the viewer a truly brilliant space opera, where I want to be in this cosmos, even if death is lurking around the corner.

Despite a few flaws, clear narrative simplifications, some bizarre character reactions, and not-so-original mixing of various cosmic fascinations, Ad Astra ultimately won me over, and I can forgive it a lot. It does lose a bit in the third act and is not a film for everyone, as it can become painfully slow at times and does not ask any fancy questions, but it doesn’t have to – because at its core, it’s really a heartwarming story about a journey more important than the goal, one that, despite otherworldly conditions, teaches the hero (and the viewer) some basic things about what is here and now. About the craving for closeness, about the need to maintain relationships, about placing personal happiness above paranoid professional burnout. It’s a cosmos of a cosmos, with Pitt’s acting showcase, proving it’s his year – and at the same time, an interesting fusion of Heart of Darkness with 2001 and the victory of that optimistic side of love for the unknown, which must be seen on the big screen because this medium was made for such visually delightful escapism.