Good Astra

A review of AD ASTRA (2019)

Directed by James Gray
Written by James Gray and Ethan Gross
Cineamatography by Hoyte van Hoytema
Score by Max Richter and Lorne Balfe

Staring Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, Ruth Negga, and Liv Tyler

I wish that I had seen Ad Astra in the theaters, because it might be my favorite film of 2019 (just barely knocking out another Brad Pitt picture). I also wish that more people had seen it, because not only it is exactly my sort of film, it's the sort of daring genre picture that cinema needs more of. It's a beautiful, well-made, well-acted, and, well, rad as hell. Ad Astra is a classic adventure story masquerading as an arthouse film. It’s Treasure Island as much as it is 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

It ultimately is a transfixing meditation on the failures of masculinity, the limits of obsession, and what you do with your life when you realize how much of your life has been working towards a lie. It also has some of the raddest splashes of action that I’ve seen since the last Brad Pitt movie I saw.

This is all to say: As Astra is a film that is extremely my shit. It's a genre movie that's pulled off with the weight and seriousness that it deserves. It is as much a technical achievement as it is one of good, old-fashioned storytelling. As far as projects that are directly aimed at me, it’s nice when that happens and it actually turns out to be a good movie.

It's also nice to be able to recommend this sort of film. It's nice when I don't have to have caveats or say it with some level of embarrassment. It's just a good film and it's a good film that adheres to my weird set of interests.

Then again, considering size of certain other space-based adventure films, maybe I’m just hungry for something else.

Maybe.

One of the big reasons that I love Ad Astra is that I’m a sucker for the NASA aesthetic. The helmets, the rovers, the jetpacks, the rockets, the color scheme—even zero G toilets! Ad Astra uses all of the wonderful iconography of NASA, but then pushes it further into the future, filling the movie full of the raddest speculative articles from Popular Mechanics. But, beyond having an incredibly good-looking and well-realized art direction, Ad Astra weaves all of those visuals and all of those ideas into a broader picture. It introduces ideas and visuals that expand the story, rather than show it off. It’s a neat little trick and, again, it’s nice to see that big, thrilling science fiction films don’t have to sacrifice story for spectacle.

Beyond the solid supporting cast (hello to Ruth Negga), we have the man: Brad fucking Pitt.

Pitt, at his best, has always played slightly unhinged characters. Men with affectations who maybe aren’t 100% trustworthy and who have very specific physical traits (teeth or hair or no shirt, etc). In Ad Astra he plays very much against type. Roy McBride is a calm, collected, and man who had purposely isolated himself from the world and compartmentalized his emotions. He’s a great astronaut who, like his father, fails at being a good man. It’s a quiet role and it’s one that requires more than just charisma to get through it. It’s a

Pitt is fantastic in this movie. He takes what could have very well been a boring role or one that could have been saved with some histrionics and instead crafts a real human being worthy of empathy.

So, yeah, Brad Pitt is great.

It’s also a lot of fun to see one of America’s most important male icons take on a movie about failure and emotional development. It’s an interesting flip on what most adventure movies are about and it’s made more interesting by the fact that Brad Pitt isn’t just an actor, he’s Brad freaking Pitt. The same goes for Tommy Lee Jones, one of America’s foremost (space) cowboy grandpas, play his wayward father. Again, maybe it’s just me, but in 2020, I’d be hard-pressed to think of a more relevant message than “Watch this old man fail and ruin everything.”

Probably just me. . .

Ad Astra is a hell of a ride. While it does very specifically cater to my weird needs, it's still a spectacular-looking adventure story that manages to also be a powerful meditation on family, failure, and the future. Go check it out. I've said it before and I'll say it again, but this time I know it's true: Cinema needs more films like Ad Astra.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and will see you next time, space cowboy. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.