Back in 2014, I went to see Interstellar (2014) at my local theater. There’s always something exciting about a new Christopher Nolan movie gracing the silver screen. To see what he had to say about outer space made me eager to bask in the visual splendor for three hours. I already knew that Hans Zimmer’s score was arguably one of the greatest I’d ever heard, and I wanted to believe that my life was about to be changed.
For two or so hours, that felt true. I was stuck in a state of awe that he could make this journey through the universe a study of time and humanity. It was nothing new by Nolan’s standards, but the way he handled it was impressive. Everything brought me in… until he reached the black hole.
Without going further into the plot, I will say that what followed was the hardest turn from a film that I’ve otherwise loved. I’ve had debates with friends that what followed was “scientifically accurate,” but it still felt too abstract and outside the world that we’d been living in. I couldn’t connect anymore to the film’s intent. I was disheartened, realizing that this would go down as my least favorite Nolan film despite having two hours of amazing storytelling and cinematography. How?
I’ve contemplated watching the film again in the six years since, but never have been able to prepare myself for the potential disappointment. Why would I go on a journey that I knew ended with me potentially frustrated?
Space has always been an odd place for me. I want to enjoy the world that lies beyond our earthly delights, but the genre feels too rooted in things that turn me off. It isn’t just Interstellar’s fault. Recent takes like The Martian (2015), First Man (2018), and High Life (2019) are films that on the surface sound like they’re made for me. These stories of wandering aimlessly through the ether, far away from humanity, and having this inherent loneliness is something that I find attractive. It’s a chance for character self-reflection and in the right hands a narrative achievement, a showcase for an actor with an internal emotional range capable of making a gaze out of a window into the stars something powerful.
I haven’t really felt that way about a movie until Ad Astra (2019).
As I popped on the movie this past week and dimmed the lights, I figured that I was going to see your average space drama. It would go through the motions and present a story that I had seen dozens of times before.
Then Brad Pitt came out. He was working on fixing the external structure of his space station. Already it’s a sight to behold as director James Gray’s camera climbs up the towering structure. He’s creating a world outside of our world, and it’s this magnificent contraption that can be as tall as the Chrysler Building. Even with weightlessness, it feels daunting as he stumbles, falling from the rafters and down towards Earth. This scene alone is a harrowing moment, and one of the most visually kinetic scenes shot in space since Gravity (2013). There is so much uncertainty about what will happen as he breaks into our atmosphere, falling towards the ground to the point that you fear for his life. This is all so foolish, why would he do that?
Meet Roy McBride, an astronaut who just fell to Earth without raising his heart rate. It’s a mythic decision and one that makes him fit to go on space adventures. There is one that grabs his interest when he discovers that his father (Tommy Lee Jones) is still alive and living on a base out by Jupiter. The quest there will be a lonely one, but it’s one that will provide Roy with a sense of closure that he’s been desperately seeking for most of his life.
That may explain why his heart rate didn’t rise in the face of danger. He has nothing at stake in his current life, and that makes his journey all the more tolerable. Even as he visits the moon, meditating in a room simulating nature settings, he finds himself feeling empty and longing for some part of himself to feel whole. There is a constant drive and desire, doing everything in its power to make him feel alive.
While he had more success with Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019), Ad Astra deserves to be considered one of his best films. He’s never been afraid to play introspective characters, but I’ve rarely seen him push his masculinity into such a vulnerable and emotional place, where we’re stuck with his voice-over commenting on his small change in mental condition. There is something to the way that he walks down a tubular hallway that speaks volumes about his demeanor.
Credit should also go to Gray, who manages to fit this all in under two hours. I feel like with outer space narratives that there’s this goal of running long, expanding like Interstellar into three hours just to allow the audience to bask in the visual effects. I think there’s value in that, but I do think that at the same time those who dislike 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) are tired of films that amount to watching miniatures floating around a backdrop. That has been done. If there was going to be a need to explore realism, why not dive into characters?
I don’t know if that’s why I find this film so refreshing. It reverses the trend where we’re looking from Roy’s perspective at the big world, seeing it all as this vast wasteland. You want to find your answer, and the time to get it is interminable. It allows so much time with your thoughts that self-doubt can come thousands of A.U. into the journey. There’s a form of loneliness that you can’t resolve, save for any communication that you might be able to get from a distant base. The world is sometimes too big, even if your worldview isn’t.
It also makes the exterior shots more majestic, reflecting how small humanity is in the bigger picture, watching spaceships fly around planets and moons in such a way that it puts everything into perspective. These things are wondrous, filling the passengers with awe and curiosity, but without anyone to share the moment with it’s difficult to find any of it meaningful.
This is an insular space journey and one that works as an existential study of grief and longing. What makes us long for closure in the first place? Whereas Interstellar goes for something abstract, Ad Astra goes for something real. Sure there may be more fictional ideas in Gray’s vision that includes an outer space that’s looking to open up their own city very soon, proving that life is expanding. Even among those people, what does it all matter if there’s nobody there to love? It’s just outsourcing the problem somewhere else.
With a story that never outstays its welcome, it manages to become fulfilling by the end. It takes a feeling that can only really be defined by epics where we’ve gone on a journey with Roy and discovered what his self-worth truly is. Why does he feel the need to keep going even as the world around him fades? This is maybe an abstract look of going insular, trying to stare into the void, and coming to terms with something that is only understood at the end.
As Roy meets his father, now grizzled, he begins to show some emotion, eager to let this moment live forever, making up for years and decades of lost time. He finds something valuable at the end of this. The world is gone, unable to interrupt this moment, and we’re left with his thoughts as something formed. It’s beautiful, allowing for a bittersweet closure that we’d all love to have with people in our lives who disappear in a blink of an eye. The thing that makes it sad is that we all know the truth. It can’t last forever. One day we’ll have to move on, return out of this void, and move on in life. If this story is about Roy’s heart learning to react, then it ends with the most substantial conclusion of 2019.
This isn’t to say that I’m not opposed to other outer space dramas, but it always feels like the human soul comes second to something. The other noteworthy film of 2019 (High Life) is a great exercise in why we need human connection. I’d even argue that it has some of the most compelling and strange imagery every put into outer space. The issue is that I’m not a sci-fi kind of guy. As it enters the third act that (surprise, surprise) features black holes, it adds in these scientific ideas that I just don’t care about. While I’m fine having André “3000” Benjamin hold philosophical debates about human connection, I am torn away by the science of it all.
I don’t want science. I want a chance to revel in humanity without being wrapped up in the impersonal technology that surrounds us. While I understand why that’s the significance (especially in an outer space story), it does little but distract from the study of existence, how humanity can keep evolving but at its core still need that human connection. Ad Astra may have moments of malfunctioning space ships and random escapades, but there’s always the knowledge that it’s reflective of a man trying to find the will to continue.
It’s frankly why films like 2001 never ended up on my favorites list. I understand that it’s about proving the mechanical and impersonal nature of space, but it set a precedent that doesn’t appeal to me. It’s why I felt so riveted by something as simple as seeing Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar cry over the years he’s lost with his son. There’s something more interesting in the emotion that I think gets overlooked in favor of awe. I like spectacle as much as the next person, but if we don’t care about our protagonists, why should we even care?
Ad Astra is one of those rare films that manages to feel small even as it’s wandering through the big, expansive space. It’s meditative without needing to pull out and remind us of the wonders outside our control. It’s about finding the pulse inside of us, that makes us long to continue living. Sure Gray manages to make it a visually gorgeous movie anyways, but I’m drawn to Roy because he feels more dimensional, capable of such complex emotional responses that grab you and make you notice the humanity inside. I didn’t get that with 2001, and Interstellar loses that by the end. Ad Astra meanwhile lets it linger long after the credits roll, never outstaying its welcome.
Next to Apollo 13 (1995), it’s one of the few journeys into outer space (fact or fiction) that I personally love because of what it says about humanity. I wasn’t expecting Ad Astra to become such a powerful, jaw-dropping achievement that made me feel foolish for not seeing it in theaters. I wanted to live in this movie, stop every frame, and observe the meticulous way that it was designed. It’s been so long since a movie actually made me want to revisit it within a week, taking in every detail and tell the world “Hey, Ad Astra is a great movie!” As if that needed to be shouted from the rooftops. Come to think of it, maybe it does. It’s a much better Pitt performance than Cliff Booth. With that said, I think both are great enough to explain his lasting charisma and why he’s going down as one of Hollywood’s all-time greats.
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