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| Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox. |
At its center is Brad Pitt's portrayal of Roy McBride, an astronaut in the somewhat nearish future who is called upon to take part in a top secret mission involving his missing father (Tommy Lee Jones), who's also an astronaut, and an energy surge originating from outer space that has killed thousands on Earth. Pitt gives a quietly intense performance, which coupled with his terrific work in Quentin Tarantino's recent "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood" makes for a year that ranks among the actor's best.
H. Clifford McBride (Jones) is a decorated astronaut who was sent years ago to the outer reaches of the galaxy with the mission of discovering extraterrestrial life. He's spoken of as a hero, so his son is a bit miffed when the U.S. space program insinuates that Clifford wasn't on the up-and-up, and that part of Roy's mission is to help locate his father, so that the man's mission can be halted and he can possibly be killed. Donald Sutherland plays an old friend of Clifford, who warns Roy that there's more to his father than meets the eye.
Clifford abandoned his son and wife 29 years prior to take part in the mission, so Roy feels as if he hardly knows the man, despite his having passed along his work ethic and penchant for exploring the stars to his son. Roy - who we often see taking psychological exams that barely cause him to bat an eye and hear him spoken of as rarely having an accelerated heartbeat, no matter the situation - is a man who shows little emotion. Much like his father, he has broken off a relationship with a woman (Liv Tyler), and appears to regret it.
Roy's mission first takes him to the moon, where he and his crew are attacked by space pirates, and then to Mars, where that planet's station manager (Ruth Negga), whose parents were onboard Clifford's mission, is able to sneak him onto the ship that will search for his father, even after Roy's supervisors come to believe that he's not suited to the mission. And sure enough, Negga's character provides a piece of the puzzle regarding his father's existence that causes him some disturbance.
That long-awaited reunion between father and son eventually occurs, but it's not one of reconciliation. Instead, Roy is somewhat horrified that he has become Clifford and that the sins of the father are not only passed on to, but occasionally emulated by, the son. In its final moments, "Ad Astra" provides an emotional arc for Roy that is somewhat unexpected.
Filled with gorgeous imagery and anchored by Pitt's nuanced performance, "Ad Astra" is a hypnotically engaging film that bears more resemblance to a Terrence Malick movie than your typical sci-fi picture. Its progenitors are, as I'd mentioned before, the two great masterpieces of the genre by Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky. It's also, on occasion, acerbically funny - especially when we come to realize that futuristic space exploration's purpose has been primarily to set up a mall on the moon and an outer space highway system.
Gray's best films are often ones that focus on intense personal relationships - "The Immigrant" and "Two Lovers" - while his previous picture was also a movie about the tolls on an explorer (the hypnotic "The Lost City of Z"). To an extent, his latest film combines those elements - Roy is an explorer whose years adrift have left him disassociated from other human beings, but the film is also about a relationship, albeit one that doesn't actually divulge its true nature until two characters meet after years of absence. "Ad Astra" is a haunting and hopeful space saga that suggests the most worthwhile exploration in which one can engage is that of one's relationships with others.
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