The Voice-Over From Space

"Ad Astra"(2019)

Directed by James Gray

"Ad Astra" is a film that is both an internal and external journey into the space between planets and the emotional distance between people.

It is an exploration of a strained father son relationship as much as it is about personal depression and saving the solar system from anti-matter.

Brad Pitt plays an astronaught whose heartrate never goes above 80 even when he's falling to earth or figthting moon pirates. Other actors like Donald Southerland and Ruth Negga assist him along his journey but vanish just as quickly as they appear.

Outside of Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones none of the characters are half as important as the various locales which truly tell the story.

Each location in "Ad Astra" represents an aspect of the main character's psyche (spoiler alert). The fall to Earth represents the disruption in his life caused by the reappearance of his absent father and the dissolution of his own relationship with Liv Tyler.

The journey to the moon represents the things he hates about Earth culture and people in general namely capitalism (his disdain for the adverts in the moon base, and the pirates fighting over resources).

The rescue mission to the science lab represents our main characters anger at his father and at the world, it is also foreshadowing of the violence we will come to find at the Neptune base, but here its just animal rage (a berserk reaction to living in a place not meant for living beings).

The underground base on Mars represents the emotions which Pitt has buried. It is here Pitt first shows visible anger and lies for the first time to the machine running the automatic psychological checks he has to do after each encounter, before he is allowed to continue. Here he is surrounded by simulations of life on earth projected as moving screens built into the walls. This "comfort room" of hopeful reminders transforms into a literal prison of memories. As soon as he emotes he is literally arrested by the authorities as a danger to the mission.

The underwater lake sequence finds him pulling a line surrounded by darkness (more foreshadowing of his fathers fate) but also emblematic of how single minded he has become (just me and the line and the void).

During the ship battle he literally becomes his father wiping out his crew for the "greater good". 

The journey to Neptune is Pitt's confrontation with himself.  He has finally gotten what he wants which is to be alone with his career, only to come to the conclusion he isn't made for space, as the zero g begins wearing on his body as much as his mind.

His confrontation with his father, who tells him in no uncertain terms how little he cares about him, gives Pitt a physical mirror of who he will become if he continues on his lonely path. When he says he loves his father, he is as much saying he loves himself, and recognizing how all human beings need for other human beings even if they say they don't. 

When he and his father are finally in space his father attempts to pull them both suicidally into the abyss. This is price of love paid instantly, as Pitt now has to let go of the only thing he has admitted to caring about. Love is never a guarantee, and sometimes will never be returned. 

The anti-matter/nothing matters engine is a metaphor for the nihilism or state of depression that arises after the absence of a "higher being"(like a God or a parent) is lost. 

Pitt finds resolve to carry on because the absence of alien-life confirms "were' all we've got", and uses his father's death and the nuclear blast of the neptune base to propel him back to earth where his new priorities are to engage with his estranged spouse. The film ends with him completing another psych eval (suggesting he's still in the space-coprse) but perhaps now doing it for himself and finally outside of his famous father's shadow. 

For all its emphasis on psychology the film never forgets to be visually appealing. We are treated to multiple beautiful pov tracking shots of Pitt moving through futuristic environments inspired as much by "2001: A Space Odyssey" as "THX1138" or "Blade Runner: 2049"(and that's the sort of pedigree this film is aiming for). Set design and color go to great lengths emobdying the emotional aspects of the film in physical terms. Every shot in this movie is purposeful and reinforces what comes next and no frames are wasted. 

The score composed by Max Richter and melodic and fills up the silence that almost all sci-fi films feel oblidged to fill with machine noises. "Ad Astra" allows space to actually be silent, and its made all the more haunting for it. 

My only complaint about the film is that because we are dealing with human beings prone to long periods of isolation, their performances can appear stiff and wooden, but I'm willing to overlook this as it is in keeping with their character. It is a serious and humorless film which isn't helped by the only real human interactions Pitt has being multiple mission updates we receive from emotionless military personel across the run-time. The plot is the story's weakest link.

There is some hard-sci fi futurism that I find interesting enough (mention of artic wars, the moon pirates, the baboons), but other aspects like the anti-matter engine that can destroy the solar system fall flat. Why are we building things that can blow up the entire solar system? This too falls to metaphor, as the search for intelligent life beyond humanity, is here framed in almost religious terms, and certainly anti-humanist ones.

The drive to find something beyond human has caused Tommy Lee Johns to forsake humanity entirely, just as his desire for something more than a normal life, leads him to abandon his family. The bomb is not the threat, is the quest for something beyond.

The film works better on its metaphorical and visual levels, and in doing so almost veers into Terrance Malick cosmic poetry jam like "The Tree Of Life" (which Pitt also stared in). but stops short of going off the deep end. The film manages to strike a balance between outer action and inner-monologue capturing the best of both worlds, even as its characters often fail to appreciate the world around them.

The mingling of inner sates and genre forms reminded me most of Alejandro Jodorowsky in his prime, but with a modern glossier aesthetic. Like "Gravity", "Interstellar", "Contact", "Passengers", "The Whispering Star", "High Life", "Lucy In The Sky", "Moon", and "The Martian" this is a movie that uses space as a metaphor for human connection and lack thereof.

These are the sad astronaughts, for whom space itself is an existential void. "Ad Astra" is sci-fi naturalism where instead of the old man and the sea, we have the middle aged man and the shuttle. The big fish can be represented by any number of space related survival challenges.

As we approach a time when commercial space flight is becoming a possibility, the vast unknown of the universe seems smaller and more inevitable. Despite the navy releasing official UFO footage, aliens increasingly are absent from sci-fi narratives, as we come to think more about  the immediate human cost of life outside of Earth. "Ad Astra" does not find space exciting or triumphant, it is a dirty, difficult business which reduces life to survival.

It reminds us to appreciate the little things like air, landscapes, and human contact. My favorite aspect of the film is the psych evals which demands Pitt to be completely honesty with himself, and will not let you continue your work if it senses any deception. It's the things we cant say, won't say, and gloss over, which keep us from growing and which like faulty anti-matter engines always end up leaking out in the end.