Ad Astra: It's Utterly Awe-Inspiring

One night, while out in the boonies playing a game with some friends, a young man stands in an empty Indiana farm field and wonders at the night sky above. He needn't worry about light pollution this far outside of town - it's dark for miles around as if the lights dare not interrupt the glory of the stars. I'd almost forgotten how incredible the stars really were when I lived on the edge of a city that clearly didn't remember at all. That game night is a special night for me. The game we played was alright, but the night sky was truly a sight to be remembered. Outer space has always been captivating to me. Not because I want to go there, mind you. A picture of a wild tiger is also impressive, but I wouldn't want to meet one in real life. But there's such an undeniable beauty to outer space, and in a lot of ways, the pressing and immediate dangers it poses just make it all the more beautiful. This simultaneous sense of incredible beauty and ever-present danger is something that James Gray's Ad Astra captures incredibly well. I'm well aware that this movie was dragged through the mud by an audience that thought it tedious and illogical, and a part of me is saddened by the fact that I can't relate to the audience's consensus as well as I used to be able to, because an entirely different emotion, far from tedium and disbelief as can be, hit home for me while I watched this movie: complete and utter awe.

Brad Pitt's performance as astronaut Roy McBride is likely a career-best and shattered any conceptions I had about an actor I used to view as somewhat pulpy. I didn't know Pitt had such range nor such subtlety as a performer. He doesn't look like an actor acting. Here, he looks like a person reacting. He's assisted by an incredible score from famed composer Max Richter, which sounds somehow both sweeping and understated simultaneously, underscoring a general atmosphere that isn't only breathtaking, but also intelligent, immersive, and diversely colorful, putting something we filmmakers call color theory to incredible use. Ad Astra has been called the most colourful movie you never saw, and it impressed me how devoted cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema and his team were to such an avante-garde approach.

The vision that Ad Astra has of a near-future universe is incredibly well-realized and consistently viscerally gripping, a wild and audacious mix of imaginative fantasy and grounded believability assisted by some unbelievably good sound design, which is probably at its best during a raid by moon-based, rover-riding pirates, who accost our heroes as they ride their own rover toward the moon's far side. The surprising and surprisingly long stretches of absolute silence in this scene aren't just realistic but are also used to wonderful cinematic effect, and this sequence is merely a setpiece highlight in a movie full of them. The top-of-the-line action and suspense sequences, in particular, are used sparingly. And thankfully so, because they always seem to land with maximum impact, striking a fantastic balance between originality and familiarity. They're familiar enough for us to avoid losing our bearings, and yet original enough to keep us uncomfortable and guessing.

The inherently trance-like nature of Ad Astra helps the movie a lot, luring us into an almost dream-like state that occasionally gets snatched away from us before we know what's happening. You don't watch this movie. You experience it. No, more than just that. Ad Astra happens to you. There's a repeated aspect of "psychological evaluations" that Roy undertakes occasionally. How he delivers these evaluations differently over time - though he's saying the same words - effectively and concisely says so much about how his character is changing mentally and emotionally, and gave me something of a handle on the way this movie was changing the way I viewed it.

No one warned me how awe-inspiring Apocalypse Now In Space would be, how captivating. Its vision of the known universe is intensely striking and endlessly meditative, always alluding to the unknown in ways that protect its mystery while also tantalizingly dangling that mystery in front of us, always just barely out of reach. Its creative vision is utterly unique, somehow capturing the fantastic and the familiar in equal measure. Ad Astra is one of the best space movies I've ever seen, evocative of both thrilling science-fiction flicks and unfamiliar arthouse films. It features excellent performances from both Brad Pitt and Ed Tom Bell, as well as some of the most wonderous and ethereal visuals I've ever seen. This movie is grand in scale yet meditative in scope, and never seems to lose its sense of its characters among the stars, though its storytelling approach may have benefited from being less subsequent (and then....and then....and then). McBride's deteriorating mental state is a huge selling point of his character development, and we, the audience, bear witness to the painful toll that his journey takes on him. Lastly, I understand that the slow pace of this movie won't be for everyone, but it became apparent to me very quickly that Ad Astra doesn't just want to be watched. It also wants to be experienced and, most importantly of all, thought about. Some will love this movie, as I did. Others will hate it. But make no mistake - you will think about it.

James Gray breaks a lot of rules here. It's apparent that he learned the rules like a pro so that he could break them like an artist.

Ad Astra - 9/10

Jeremiah 23:23-24