FILM
2019: A Filial Odyssey
A taciturn drop-out searching the universe for his dad
BY STEVE ERICKSON
For science fi ction, James Gray’s “Ad Astra”
has little interest in “world-building”
as it’s usually thought about. It
takes place in a nebulous “near-future”
whose details are faintly sketched in. CNN and
the BBC are still broadcasting despite cosmic
rays leading to a surge that kills 43,000 people,
and there’s a Subway sandwich shop in space.
The moon is as banal and lacking in cosmic
wonder as a typical airport. And as every review
is obliged to mention, man-eating baboons
make a cameo appearance.
But in a different sense, “Ad Astra” is all
about world-building. Like the horror fi lms of
Jennifer Kent and Ari Aster, “Ad Astra” is more
concerned with creating an elaborate metaphor
for the emotions of family life than ticking off
genre bona fi des.
Let’s face reality: 20th Century Fox would
never give James Gray $80 million to make a
fi lm in which Brad Pitt drives from New York to
Oregon in search of the father who went missing
when he was as a child. The sci-fi elements
make this palatable to a mainstream audience
— at least in theory.
Major Roy McBride (Pitt) long believed that
his father Cliff (Tommy Lee Jones) died on a
mission to the solar system’s outer reaches.
Early in “Ad Astra,” he learns from his bosses
at the government agency SpaceCom that Cliff
is still alive. They believe Cliff is coordinating
the cosmic ray attacks damaging the Earth
from Neptune and send Roy on a mission, fi rst
to the Moon and then to Mars. A few odd incidents
of violence happen along the way. After
that point, Roy decides to cut off contact with
Earth and becomes obsessed with the idea of
re-connecting with his father.
Roy is the only person in “Ad Astra” who
seems real. The whole fi lm is born from his subjectivity.
We get to hear him relate his thoughts
in voice-over constantly. Unfortunately, this
means it shares Roy’s taciturn machismo, becoming
another fi lm where “the wife” is the
main female character. Actors as talented as
Donald Sutherland and Natasha Lyonne get little
to do, with Ruth Negga faring best with her
small role as a woman who lives on Mars. But
even his father, who is the only other person
to get more than a few minutes of screen time,
feels like a construct drawn from Gray’s love
of “Apocalypse Now.” Tommy Lee Jones’ performance
delivers Kurtz’s craziness but doesn’t
sell his menace. The two are literally tethered
together in one scene.
Gray’s fi rst three fi lms lingered in the shadow
of New Hollywood, especially Scorsese and
Brad Pitt in James Gray’s “Ad Astra,” which opens September 20.
Coppola, even if their inspiration came from
the real experiences of himself and his family.
In a recent New Yorker profi le by Nathan Heller,
he said that he turned from the autobiographical
to the personal with his fourth fi lm, “Two
Lovers,” and I’d pick that as the point where
he became a major director. The tormented
relationship to fatherhood in the narrative of
“Ad Astra” is mirrored by the fi lm’s own use
of “Apocalypse Now” as a model. Ironically, if
the ‘70s fi lms Gray admires were once meant
as gestures of rebellion, he now comes across
a dutiful son drawing from them when mainstream
American cinema suffers from an amnesia
about its past.
It’s hard to make a “thinking person’s science
fi ction fi lm” outside the long shadows
of “2001:A Space Odyssey” and Andrei Tarkovksy’s
“Solaris.” While Gray has touted “Ad
Astra” as the most realistic depiction of space
travel ever made, he doesn’t completely get out
from under these precursors. Whether or not
this imagery’s implications were intentional,
Roy’s journey through the solar system — and
even through tunnels on the Moon and Mars
— back to his father places him in spaces that
resemble wombs.
As he fl oats in space, the fi lm creates a montage
in which he remembers his father and
wife, mixing fl ashbacks with video footage and
placing a heavy emphasis on sound design.
His childhood memories melt together with the
20TH CENTURY FOX
“historical” images of Cliff and the present-day
videos of his wife (Liv Tyler) telling him how distant
he’s grown.
The experimental quality of this editing is
more Malick than Kubrick or Tarkovsky. Hoyte
von Hoytema’s beautiful cinematography turns
entirely blue or red for certain scenes, but it
also captures the inky void just beyond the
safe refuge of the planets and spaceships. Max
Richter’s score, built on austere strings and
electronics, adds to the somber mood, as do the
constant, subtle rumblings of Gary Rydstrom’s
sound design.
Pitt plays Roy with so much deadpan brooding
that he’s never seemed more distant from
his days as a “pretty boy” leading man. Now 55,
the actor looks his age here. Rather than his
performance earlier this year in “Once Upon
a Time in Hollywood,” Roy made me think of
a far more alienated cousin of FBI agent Bill
Tench in the TV series “Mindhunter.” Roy’s actions
lead to the death of other characters and
he’s repeated his father’s mistakes by pissing
off his wife. Yet “Ad Astra” has no desire to pass
judgment on him. His arc turns upbeat and
redemptive. But the laser-pointed focus and
beautiful style bring true emotion and poetry
to a simple, well-worn story. At least here, going
to space is better than years of therapy.
AD ASTRA | Directed by James Gray | 20th-
Century Fox | Open citywide
September 26 - October 9 36 , 2019 | GayCityNews.com
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