A search for stars and for a human connection
A common theme in science fiction is humanity’s search for intelligent life beyond our own. Beyond simple curiosity, I’ve never been quite sure we’d want to find it. Humans, as a group, are awful.
We treat each other terribly, cause mass extinctions for natural flora and fauna, work diligently at making our only home uninhabitable, and vastly overestimate our importance to the universe.
Were we to find it, wouldn’t it immediately threaten our special place in the universe? And when we’re threatened, do we tend to lash out and destroy the thing we find threatening? Are we looking for intelligent life so that we can pick a fight?
Ad Astra, the newest science fiction film starring Brad Pitt, doesn’t seem to think so. The entire thesis of the film is that humans are lonely. To exist, the film posits, is to be alone. There’s a certain amount of truth to the idea—we exist within the private spaces of our own minds and our connections are simply extensions of our senses, which we’ve learned can be misleading.
Our search for life outside ourselves mirrors our search for individual life outside our own. We want proof of intelligent life so that we know someone else might share in our experiences. Which, to be honest, is just as selfish as my own theory. Misery loves company after all. Themes aside, Ad Astra is a well-made film with solid performances all around. Just don’t expect it to make you feel good.
Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is a legacy astronaut who is exceedingly good at his job. He works on a giant space antenna manned by U.S. Space Command, regularly performing dangerous space walks in a calm, determined manner. After a disaster linked to mysterious power surges across the solar system (in which Roy calmly falls hundreds of miles—his heart rate never rises above 80 BPM), SpaceCom calls Roy in for a top secret mission.
It appears the power surges, which somehow threaten all life in the solar system, are linked to the famed “Lima Project,” a lost mission to Neptune to search for life, which was led by H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), Roy’s father. The “Lima Project” was experimenting with antimatter, and the power surges appear to have traces of the experiment and originate somewhere in the vicinity of Neptune.
SpaceCom wants Roy to travel to Mars, where he will send a message to his father, who appears to be still be alive, in hopes of stopping the surges.
Ad Astra owes much to previous films in the genre. Film fans will recognize a slow, deliberate pacing that was a hallmark for films like 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is, of course, intentional. Director James Gray has been quoted as saying that he “wanted the most realistic depiction of space travel that’s been put in a movie.”
2001 had similar goals and is known for its long, static scenes of the realities of space travel. Those who are fans of science fiction, particularly character-based science fiction, will revel in the drawn-out scenes and detailed procedures depicted in the film. Audience members who are more used to action packed space fantasy will likely find them tedious, however.
Ad Astra is a significant improvement over Gray’s previous film The Lost City of Z, which was somewhat unfocused in its narrative structure and unsure of its overall thesis. Ad Astra knows what it’s trying to say. Additionally, as beautiful as the more dramatic scenes are, Gray knows how to show the claustrophobic nature of space travel and living on other planets.
The tight hallways and small rooms contrast with the vast vistas, highlighting how little is survivable outside of our own planet. The relative smallness of our existence adds to the isolation the film places at the forefront.
Of course it does. This is a space movie, after all. Insignificance is really its whole bag. There are other ideas ingrained in the narrative. Love and abandonment. Fathers and sons. But they all fit under the umbrella of how inherently unknowable another person is, and by extension, how inscrutable the universe is itself.
It’s all too big, too incomprehensible, too complicated. The best we can do is try to connect with each other.
There’s nothing in Ad Astra that’s new for a genre built on awe and insignificance. So long as the audience is comfortable with these ideas, the film is worthwhile. For audiences looking for something more concrete, Ad Astra is more likely to elicit boredom.