IN SPACE, NO-ONE CAN HEAR YOU GRIMACE MANFULLY
Pleasingly cerebral, this latest interstellar odyssey is one satisfying leap for the genre,
For over half a century, those who have written and made films about the people who go into space have been fascinated by the question of what would make you want to sit on top of a giant rocket and be blasted off into the stratosphere, and what the experience might do to your head. From Tom Wolfe looking for The Right Stuff to Norman Mailer’s search for the psychology of the astronauts to Stanley Kubrick’s vision of space as the ultimate frontier for the testing of the limits of the mind in 2001 A Space Odyssey and Andrei Tarkovsky’s intimate study of the deep traumas brought out by the loneliness of his hero in Solaris, space and those who journey to it has provided a rich canvas for introspective storytelling.
Enter director James Gray (Little Odessa, The Lost City of Z), who takes his most ambitious step into the great beyond.
Ad Astra is set in a near future when commercial travel to the moon is part of life (though the blanket and pillow pack on the flight will set you back $125), the surface of the moon is a wild-west desolate landscape full of pirates and fights over natural resources and humans have established a settlement on Mars. The organisation of this interplanetary empire is Space Corp and one of its most respected heroes is Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) whose stoically solid chin and empty cold blue eyes give little to anyone or anything except his job.
McBride solidly meets the requirements of regular psychological evaluations and his deadpan voiceover tells us that while the isolation of his life has destroyed his personal relationship with his exasperated partner Eve (Liv Tyler), he lives for the solitude and single-minded focus that his work affords him. McBride is also not just any member of the future’s “space force” — he’s royalty, the son of Earth’s most successful and respected space explorer, Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), who disappeared almost 30 years ago as the leader of an expedition believed to have made it as far as Neptune.
Problem is that Earth is being beset by a plague of electrical storms that are killing thousands, caused, Roy’s bosses believe, by surges of anti-matter coming from his father’s last known location. In an effort to end these, they recruit him for a top-secret mission: go up the cosmic river, take a nuke and try and reason with your dad before his tinkering kills us all.
It’s Apocalypse Now but instead of Pitt’s Willard being pitted against an unknown Kurtz, this time its personal and biblical. To save himself and the world, the son must confront and reckon with his father, a man who he thinks he knows but will find out he never really did.
Gray’s vision of the galaxy is surreal, breathtaking and visually spectacular, thanks to visionary cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema and a searing emotional score by composer Max Richter. There are also plenty of set-pieces to blow you away, particularly a silent gunfight on the surface of the moon between pirates and astronauts and a “never get off the goddamn boat” moment involving psychotic baboons.
There’s plenty of technical wizardry on show in a film that is essentially a strippedto-the-bone chamber piece without any of the sentimentality or winking humour of other recent space films like Interstellar, Gravity or The Martian.
When Pitt goes to space he does it quietly and clench-jawed — channelling Gary Cooper rather than the cocky Steve
McQueen swagger adopted for his last outing in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.
By the time he gets to Neptune, McBride’s journey has changed him and us immeasurably and raised new questions for audiences not only about humans and the great beyond but also about the age-old bonds between fathers and sons.
Ad Astra is a complex, emotional and awesomely executed addition to the genre that stands out because of its insistence on focussing on the personal story at its core rather than being distracted by the awesomeness of the canvas on which the story unfolds. It’s not going to be for everyone and in a world obsessed with spectacle it will probably not make more than a small step at the box office. But for those who like their entertainment to pack more cerebral punch, it’s a satisfying genre leap that’s worth making for the long shadow of its probingly human questions.
Ad Astra is currently on circuit
By the time he gets to Neptune, McBride’s journey has changed him