Ad Astra (2019) Sci-Fi Saturdays

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More loneliness than any man could bear, rescue me before I fall into despair.

Brad Pitt’s Ad Astra is a hauntingly antiseptic film about isolation and loneliness that fits into the mold of classic hard sci-fi films. As man reaches out beyond the planet, searching for connections with other alien species, the question becomes, are we doing so because we are drawn to the exploration or because we can’t connect to the people who are already on the planet?

First Impressions

The trailer introduces the audience to an astronaut, played by Brad Pitt, who experiences a devastating explosion in space and somehow survives a fall back to Earth. He awakens to his wife telling him about The Surge, some galactic event that has proven extraterrestrial contact. The surprising element of this event is that it somehow seems to involve his father, also an astronaut who went missing years previously. Brad Pitt must take on a new mission that somehow involves a wild west-style space buggy shootout across the surface of the moon. It’s all Ad Astra from here!

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

In the near future, during a time of both hope and conflict, humanity turns to the stars in search of intelligent life. Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) preps for his high altitude repair walk onto the International Space Antenna by taking an automated psych evaluation. His heartbeat never fluctuates, and he always remains calm, even with flashbacks of his wife, Eve (Liv Tyler), walking out on him. While on the miles-high structure in the stratosphere, a burst of energy from outer space hits the antenna, causing explosions and knocking people off. Roy manages to parachute to safety. Space Command calls Roy in and explains The Surge to him. It’s an energy blast coming from Neptune, where they believe the ship from Project Lima is parked. A ship commanded by Roy’s father, Cliff (Tommy Lee Jones).

SpaceCom needs Roy to travel to the moon and then to Mars so he can make a transmission to Lima to see if anyone is still alive. Roy watches a 22-year-old video of his father wishing his family the best as he begins his ill-fated mission. Roy’s mental state is constantly monitored with psych-evals, which he always passes. He takes a commercial shuttle to the Moon with Colonel Pruitt (Donald Sutherland), a friend of his father. They are traveling incognito to avoid further questions. In the years since the first moon landing, the satellite has become a mining hub populated by warring factions and pirates. On the trip to the far side of the lunar surface, Roy, Pruitt, and their military chaperones are attacked. Only Roy and Pruitt make it to the launch pad for the spaceship Cepheus.

Pruitt, who has a heart condition, can no longer continue the trip and provides Roy with a microchip recording about his father. During the 19-day trip to the red planet, Roy watches the video and discovers his father may have sabotaged the Lima, which now must be destroyed, as it is the cause of the dangerous electrical surges threatening Earth and its technology. The Cepheus makes a pit-stop to attend a mayday from the Vesta IX, and discovers the crew all dead. Roy and Captain Tanner (Donnie Keshawarz) board and are attacked by rabid baboons that have escaped from storage during a Surge-related event. Tanner is killed, leaving Stanford (Loren Dean) in charge. During the landing on Mars, another Surge event occurs, forcing Roy to take manual control of the ship from the inexperienced and traumatized Stanford.

Roy is welcomed to the station by Director of Operations Hellen Lantos (Ruth Negga) before being escorted away by SpaceCom advisor Chip (Greg Bryk). Roy is put in an acoustically neutral room and asked to read a bland message to the Lima and his father. In between these sessions, Roy spends his time in a comfort room watching soothing projected images of Earth on the walls. In a later session, Roy breaks from the script and issues a personal message to Cliff. It has apparently worked, judging from the SpaceCom team’s body language, but Roy is told his personal connection now makes him unsuitable for the mission, and he will be returned to Earth. Lantos finds Roy and informs him that the Cepheus is departing for Neptune with a nuclear device on board, with a plan to destroy the remains of Lima and kill Cliff. She feels a personal connection as well, because her parents were also on board and were killed by Cliff during a mutiny.

SpaceCom has been covering up the truth, lauding Cliff as a hero rather than a murderer. Roy, with the help of Lantos, sneaks aboard the Cepheus, planning to learn the truth and set things right. The crew discovers him on lift-off, but they are all killed in their attempts to restrain him. Roy travels solo on the 79-day voyage to Neptune, having a little mental breakdown over what the mission might entail. He takes a shuttle from the Cepheus to the Lima, but is unable to dock due to damage sustained traveling through Neptune’s rings. Roy goes EVA and enters the older ship, finding dead bodies floating lifelessly. Discovering his father, Roy finds that he’s attempting to stop the Surges. He tries to reconnect, but learns that his father, who never really had a connection to Roy or his mother, is obsessed with finding proof of alien life. Unfortunately, all readings point to humanity being alone in the universe, which has pushed Cliff over the edge.

Roy convinces Cliff to leave with him as he sets up the bomb to destroy Lima and stop the Surge. Cliff, seeing no reason for returning to Earth, activates the thrusters on his suit and attempts to pull away from Roy, urging his son to let him go. Seeing no real choice and having limited time before the bomb detonates, Roy lets his father drift into space. Using some out-of-this-world physics, Roy launches himself back to the Cepheus, radioing to Earth his plans. He has saved all the data on the planets that Lima scanned to his hard drive. While his father saw no life, Roy is awed by the beauty of worlds recorded in the logs, something his father was blind to. Using the shockwave from the explosion, Roy takes the long trip back home. The film ends as it began, with Roy taking a psych-eval, using the same words as before. This time, their meaning is more hopeful, rather than cold and emotionless, as he meets his ex-wife to reconnect.

“What happened to my dad? What did he find out there? Did it break him? Or was he always broken?” – Roy McBride

History in the Making

The title of the film, Ad Astra, is Latin and comes from the phrase, “Ad astra per aspera,” which means, “​​To the stars through difficulties.” It is a motto on the Apollo 1 launch site, and the motto for both the state of Kansas and the fictional Starfleet organization. It was chosen by writer/director James Gray as a title that depicts his more realistic vision of space travel. A film that was intended to channel elements of both Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, according to Gray, but ended up drawing parallels to Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar instead. What sets Ad Astra apart from other genre films is its dour atmosphere and apparent lack of hope. Its tone is often terse and unemotional, mirroring the relationship of Roy and his father as it barrels forward to an uncertain ending.

Other parallels aside, some viewers may jokingly see this as a more realistic version of Space Cowboys, due to its casting of three actors from that 2000 Clint Eastwood film. That film was about four aging astronauts who were the only ones with the necessary skills for a dangerous space shot. Ad Astra has Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and Loren Dean once again playing astronauts, who take to space under difficult circumstances. The film even utilized archival imagery of Jones from his time in Space Cowboys to depict a younger version of Cliff. Of course, the biggest draw to the film is Brad Pitt, a monumental film star, known for the Ocean’s Eleven franchise, and gritty films like Seven and Fight Club. This marks Pitt’s third and most recent sci-fi endeavor to date after 12 Monkeys and World War Z (which also had Ruth Negga in a small role). His role shares an intensity in his performance that is not often seen in his films.

Genre-fication

For good or bad, many of the realistic sci-fi films get compared to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ad Astra certainly contains many elements that draw parallels to the film in the viewer’s mind. Both films are set in the near future, with Ad Astra being a bit further along, closer to 100 years from now, rather than 32. The opening sequence of the film creates a world where space-faring is a normal aspect of society, even though Roy is not really in space but only stepping out into the upper atmosphere. There are shuttles to the moon that are run by Virgin Atlantic, similar to the Pan Am flights in 2001. Outside the moon base, near the hotel, is a giant “Vegas Vic” neon cowboy sign, which is an odd touch. But if we’re going to colonize the moon and have tourists visit, then it’s going to have adverts and the like. The scenes of the lunar shuttle chase and other space-faring travel all have that touch of realism that one would expect from 2001 as well. Ad Astra even has a strange event occurring in the outer solar system (it was originally supposed to be Jupiter, again like 2001, but was changed to Neptune so as not to be compared to the more recent Interstellar). This is all expected, as James Gray has often mentioned that 2001 is one of his favorite films.

The other film/story that influenced Gray, which is extremely obvious, is Heart of Darkness, the basis for Apocalypse Now. It’s easy to see how similar the assigned mission, given to Roy, to make contact with his father and determine what Cliff has been up to, is to that film by Francis Ford Coppola. Roy then adopts the second half of the mission by necessity, the one his superiors would never send him on, which is to terminate Cliff with extreme prejudice. His travels are fraught with unexpected dangers. Rather than the horrors of the Vietnam War, Roy instead faces space pirates on the moon and a deranged primate on a stranded spacecraft. Yet, Roy doesn’t face the same obstacles as Willard does in having to assassinate Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. Roy never seems like he was planning to kill his father. Sure, he completes the mission by destroying the Lima and stopping the Surge, but he attempts to save his father and return him to Earth so he can reconnect with the man. Cliff has no such intention of returning and instead chooses to commit suicide in outer space rather than be tried for mutiny, and worse, by returning home. This aspect changes the tone at the end of the film from that particular story, since Roy is able to make peace with his decisions, rather than descend into the same type of madness his father experienced.

Societal Commentary

For better or worse, Ad Astra’s emotional quotient makes Interstellar look like it’s wearing its heart on its sleeve. There’s no doubt that Christopher Nolan’s film has some commitment issues when it comes to McConaughey’s character sharing his feelings for his daughter. But at least in that film, love connects the characters through time to make the connection they could never experience when they were physically together. Ad Astra goes the opposite direction. The entirety of the film feels so cold and lonely, choosing to isolate characters on screen. There are very few shots with multiple characters in them. Two individuals who have a scene together are shot singularly and in isolation, leading to the cold disinterest that Roy’s character communicates in his psych evaluations. His heart rate rarely elevates, the audience is told, as he always remains calm and detached. It’s very much like his father, who admits that he never felt an emotional attachment to his wife or child. Such a harsh thing to tell your son, especially when he’s traveled across the solar system to see you. Roy recognizes his shortfall, and how alike he and his father are, which makes him see the errors of his ways, with the end of the film having him attempt to reconnect with Eve–for whatever his transgression was.

Cliff, on the other hand, represents a man who is looking for connection everywhere, except in the one place where he has one. It’s a very modern story of emotional daddy issues, which many films and TV shows of the early 21st Century seem to deal with. In this case, Cliff has been tasked with discovering the existence of alien life. He is emphatically drawn towards the outer reaches of the universe in a desperate attempt to find some kind of proof. When his crew decides that there’s nothing for them out here and wants to go home, he snaps, killing them. Cliff would prefer to murder the companionship he has in order to continue searching for an elusive alien presence that he believes is out there. It’s a metaphor for many people in the world who are unable to make real and meaningful connections, but tell themselves that it’s not their problem, but everyone else’s. Cliff was only able to see the void of nothingness, the empty chasm between us all, and that drove him mad. While Roy sees the fact that humans are alone in the universe and chooses to focus on the beauty of the planets beyond our solar system. In the end, Roy chooses to find happiness in the connections that already exist, rather than endlessly searching for something perfect.

The Science in The Fiction

In terms of realistic science-fiction films about the search for life beyond our planet, Ad Astra may be the anti-Contact. That film features scientists at SETI discovering the existence of intelligent life outside the universe and making contact in a real human way. Ad Astra takes a much scarier approach, proclaiming that humans are alone and that there is nothing else out there. It’s quite a distinct approach for a film about space exploration. No other recent film comes to mind that takes such an approach. Maybe it’s because Gray wanted to focus on the human element of the film. Roy is unable to connect to others, much like his father, but is eventually turned around by seeing the beauty and wonder of the empty galaxy. This means that he must make his own beauty, or forever be damned like Cliff.

For the most part, Ad Astra does a good job at following some semblance of reality in terms of physics. I was concerned since the trailer seems to show Brad Pitt falling to the planet, unaided, and then awakening in a hospital room with perfect hair. This is actually cut from two different parts of the film, one where he falls but uses a parachute, and the end of the film when his ship crashes back into the planet, and he is admitted to a hospital. The moon chase on the lunar rovers has what appears to be a proper speed and feel for the one-sixth gravity of the moon (never mind the laser pistols). But for everything the film does correctly in space, things start to fall apart midway through the film. Pitt sneaks aboard the Cepheus literally seconds before launch without any sort of problem being unseated in a departing rocketship (even if it’s from Mars’ relatively lower gravity). But the end of the film features him escaping the Lima by hopping onto a revolving radar array, which manages to send him in a perfect line towards his ship, rather than in some convoluted angle. He must traverse back through Neptune’s ring, an amalgamation of frozen rocks, with only the power from this “jump”. He has a piece of metal he uses as shielding against the debris, but loses no momentum during the impact from the rocks. He just floats back to his ship. Why? Probably because he’s Brad Pitt, that’s why.

The Final Frontier

Intellectually, the elements and decisions for the story of Ad Astra make sense. But emotionally, the film is nearly unbearable to watch. The antiseptic nature of the matter-of-fact decisions that get made grates on the viewer. The framing and pacing do nothing to add much excitement, keeping with the isolating theme of the film. The worst part is that many audience members may not even realize why they hate the film, just knowing that it wasn’t much fun to watch. The performances of Pitt, Joes, and Sutherland can’t break out of the quagmire that Ad Astra creates, and that’s such a shame. The film has some interesting things to say, but for many, they’re being shouted into the void–with no one to hear them.

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