A 20th Century Fox Picture, Written and Directed by James Gray.
Brad Pitt battles internal demons, daddy issues, and the void of space in James Gray’s stunning astronaut drama.
This movie has often been pitched as “2001 meets Apocalypse Now” due to the grandeur and scale of the film, as well as its focus on the huge isolation you would feel in the inconceivable vastness of space. These themes are all certainly present, but I also feel it draws great comparison with First Man, the Ryan Gosling film from last year, where Gosling played Neil Armstrong, a man who very rarely showed his emotions and remained remarkably calm under the most extreme of pressure, similar to Pitt’s Roy McBride in Ad Astra.
From start to finish, Brad Pitt appears in almost every scene of the film and his character is one who struggles to show his emotions (his emotions are only brought to the surface later on in the film when his mission to reach his father becomes increasingly intense). Pitt delivers a very complex and layered performance that only a few actors would be able to do to the level that he does, and this is a credit to the man who himself has said that he is probably a “character actor trapped in the body of a leading man”. He will very likely find himself in the nominations as a supporting actor for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but Pitt truly deserves double recognition and I would not be surprised to see him nominated in the leading actor category too for this film.
Gray uses the visuals of space to explore the terrifying possibility that we are truly alone in the universe, and the lengths at which some people will go to escape the realities of their existence on earth. The film also focuses heavily on Pitt’s admiration and fear of his long lost father, and the very same father’s toxic traits that Pitt’s character fears he may have inherited. Ad Astra provides more questions than answers, and in this case, this approach actually works. It is incredibly intellectual and thought provoking in a way that most blockbuster films rarely are anymore, and that is why it stands out from the crowd, and I hope that it is still in the conversation during this year’s awards season.
Word Count = 390
Rating = 4.5/5
Howe's World of Film and TV 