A sci-fi version of Heart of Darkness is a fine idea, and the ordinarily somnambulistic Gray allows himself to be awestruck and even a little playful through the first half of Ad Astra. Gray and his production designer Kevin Thompson have effectively constructed a lived-in near future where moon bases look like chintzy airports, where raygun-wielding moon gangs roam free across the lunar landscape in souped up moon buggies, and where therapy has devolved into a series of frequent office-mandated visits to corny meditation rooms replete with relaxing images of butterflies and dreamy Music from the Hearts of Space-style muzak.Indeed, the film's opening sequence – wherein Roy falls from an impossibly high space tower – is a unique and exciting action sequence that might rival anything in Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity for sheer nail-biting thrill. In the film's early scenes, Gray has never been so enervated, bringing a coltish energy (for him) to his sci-fi world that he's rarely employed in any of his previous films (We Own the Night and Two Lovers aren't exactly brisk and sprightly).
It's a pity Gray's sense of sorrowful grandeur eventually eclipses the energy he builds up. After an amazing mid-film sequence involving an abandoned spacecraft and, yes, an attack creature, Gray pumps the brakes pretty hard, and slows his film into a sluggish contemplation of its own navel. “I don't know,” Pitt gravely intones “if I hope to find him, or to be free of him.” The exploration of daddy issues floats right to the surface, as do a series of somewhat-profound metaphors for God (and Godlessness) and meaning (and meaninglessness).
By the time Roy reaches the end of his journey (and I will certainly not reveal where it ends or what he finds there), Ad Astra has been sleepwalking for nearly an hour. I confess I needed a cup of strong tea to stay alert through the back half. And this is coming from a turgid-pessimism-loving cinephile who has seen the 1972 Solaris twice in theaters.
Watch Brad Pitt in action on the moon in this scene from Ad Astra:It's difficult for a filmmaker to look into space and not feel a profound sense of the infinity of the cosmos, and some of the best films of all time have been about that very topic. And, as with all filmmakers who feel equal to the task, I admire James Gray's willingness to dive headlong into the vast inky void, contemplating our own smallness and insignificance and relationship to our absent fathers/Gods. There is, at the very least, an intellectual boldness to asking these types of questions in a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster, one that aims to provoke more than it does to thrill.
I can admire Ad Astra as a smart thriller for grown ups, however, more than I can its ultimate effect as a film. Gray's lack of levity and his own hangdog solemnity undercuts his film's emotional impact, leaving one bummed out and tired rather than moved or intellectually stimulated.
