Movie Review : Ad Astra (2019)
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It’s difficult to watch a movie without being influenced by the discourse around it. Whether it’s critically discussed, super popular or controversial, there’s always pre-existing factors outside of your own experience that shape your expectations. The only way to escape this conundrum is to watch a movie that a) no one gave a fuck about and b) no one understood what they should think of it. James Gray’s 2019 science fiction epic Ad Astra ticks these two boxes.
Ad Astra tells the story of Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), alpha male astronaut and son of astronaut legend Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) who disappeared during a space exploration mission. When a series of electrical storms hit Earth and almost kill him, the army summons him to an ultra secret briefing where they reveal that his old man might still be alive and might be shooting electric surges at Earth from Neptune. So they send him out there to figure it out.
I shit you not. This movie is bonkers.
EVERYTHING. BUT IN SPACE!
Here’s the thing about Ad Astra. It takes itself pretty fucking seriously, but it’s a lot better if you don’t. Co-writer and director James Gray claimed he wanted it to be "the most realistic depiction of space travel that's been put in a movie” and it’s very much not that. Here are some crazy things you can find in Ad Astra: space pirates, killer space monkeys, a rocket ship hijacking WHILE IT’S BEING LAUNCHED, a father-son argument on Neptune and a lot more.
It works a lot better if you let go of the wheel and pretend you’re trapped in a two hours long psychedelic rock song because bruh… it gets wild and Ad Astra keeps a straight face through and through like it was delivering a mind expanding message until the very end. The movie would’ve been a lot more popular had it been a lot more colorful and stripped of its somber, subdued tone. You can’t be doing something extra important if you’re fighting space pirates.
I kind of got somewhat of a major kick out of it anyway? I love movies that have no shame and that spend money liberally like Vince Neil on a cocaine binge in Vegas, circa 1985. I understand why people didn’t understand what they should do with it because comic book science fiction retelling of Heart of Darkness is confusing as hell, but it flies past by most clichés of the genre at light speed and goes straight for the weird and the incongruous, so that’s cool.
MIDLIFE CRISIS. BUT IN SPACE!
So yeah, Heart of Darkness retelling, right? One thing that’s unironically smart about Ad Astra is that it reflects on why we’re trying to answer the great questions of the universe while we could be spending all this energy living together and loving each other. It puts in opposition truth and happiness. Not that it claims that happiness is accepting lies or anything, but it is (to a certain degree) the acceptance that truth doesn’t matter. What exists just exists and that’s it.
That’s kind of a high minded premise for such a crazy movie, but it’s solely explored through Roy McBride’s existential crisis while he’s literally going to the other end of the galaxy to get answers. Is all that life-altering trouble worth it? Were there satisfying reasons why his old man ditched his mom and him for a spaceship? It sounds silly when I’m telling it like this, but it’s also a metaphor for men emancipating themselves from God and THAT’S cool.
I mean, it’s ultimately the story of a man wondering if the decisions that have shaped his life were worth taking. If this isn’t a crisis of faith, I don’t know what it is. Back in the days when we didn’t what caused what, everyone put their faith in God. Today, we know better but we still put our faith in everything and nothing. Other values like family, love, sciences are becoming what we believe in and it’s kind of liberating to watch a movie about a guy challenging this?
I’m telling you, this movie is fucking loaded. You should definitely watch it after smoking a big, fat doobie.
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So, I really liked this movie. But I’m not sure that I’ve enjoyed it in the way James Gray intended me to enjoy it. I was not awed by his thinking man’s Interstellar shtick. I didn’t even like Interstellar that much. But I was amused by Ad Astra and sometimes even a little impressed. It’s definitely not going to please anyone and I won’t begrudge anybody who believes this is a self-serious tonal mess because it’s also kind of that too.
But aren’t accidental good movies the fucking best?
