Though Ad Astra was released in September 2019, it unfortunately was not released in India — no matter how many times I looked longingly at the ‘coming soon’ poster outside IMAX. Now that it has come to Disney+ Hotstar, it is makes for the perfect lockdown watch featuring vast reaches of space where no one can hear you scream, think or hope.
A beautifully ruminative film, Ad Astra is set in the near future, “a time of both hope and conflict.” That sure sounds familiar. Calm, collected Roy McBride (his heartbeat does not go above 80 bpm), a Major in the U.S. Space Command is tasked with finding his father, the famous astronaut H. Clifford McBride. The head of the Lima project, Clifford left earth 29 years ago looking for intelligent life in space. There has been silence from the Lima Project after it reached Neptune 16 years later. Space Com figures Clifford must be responsible for the mysterious power surges that threaten the earth and the solar system and recruit Roy to communicate with his father.
As Roy travels into space, he uses the time and isolation to think about his relationships, his anger, and sense of abandonment. Lest you think the movie is all meandering meditations on the meaning of life, Ad Astra is punctuated with space pirates and baboons running amok and eating people alive (the primates not the pirates).
- Director: James Gray
- Cast: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, Donald Sutherland
- Storyline: An astronaut goes into deep space in search of his father, who might have gone rogue
- Runtime: 124 minutes
While director James Gray ( The Lost City of Z ) has been quoted as saying he wanted to make “the most realistic depiction of space travel that has been put in a movie", Tushna Commissariat of Physics World shoots holes in the science of Ad Astra —it is impossible to cover 2.714 billion miles from Mars to Neptune in five and a half months. Over 40 days in lockdown, however, makes five and a half months seem like eternity and an hour.
For a science fiction movie, Ad Astra is oddly religious. The pilot of a spaceship calls on Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travellers, to watch over them and the religious undertones to the space funeral come to mind. Gray wears his inspirations — Heart of Darkness (in space you cannot hear The Doors either) and Arthur C. Clarke (“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying”) on his sleeve.
As far as the cast goes, we spend most of our time with Brad Pitt’s Roy. It is time well spent as Pitt is so subtle, that it looks effortless. Tommy Lee Jones plays Clifford as the man who fearlessly stands by his convictions however unpalatable they might be. Liv Tyler plays Eve, Roy’s wife, while Donald Sutherland is twinkly-eyed Colonel Thomas Pruitt, who worked with Clifford and is now shepherding Roy on his journey into the heart of anti-matter.
Giving a Latin title, Ad Astra means ‘to the stars’, might seem just that wee bit pretentious, but the movie works as a thrilling beacon of hope, which is very much the need of the hour.
Ad Astra is streaming on Disney+ Hotstar
Published - May 08, 2020 02:28 pm IST
