Ad Astra reviewed by Mark Kermode

you have seen posters for ad astra everywhere you also know that it has had some absolutely rapturous reviews people are talking in terms of Oscar nominations not least in terms of Brad Pitt and so basically this is a science-fiction space epic from James Gray recently did lost city of Z and it's written by grey anything gross it's set it says the beginning it's set in the near future and the film begins with Brad Pitt's character roy mcbride working on this absolutely terrifyingly tall antenna which is designed to you know make contact with the furthest possible reaches and he's working on it and there is a surge a surge which is kind of like an electrical blast and there is a vertiginous fall from this serger which is a real kind of like it's a it's a great sort of starting point for the film it's kind of grabs your attention and it you know it tells you that we're in this world it's in the near future so the technology that we haven't seen before but it's not a million miles away and then there is this really sort of very very tense opening sequence he is the son of a scientist astronaut who was part of the lemur project which was a project to go into space and find evidence of other life to find whether we are indeed alone in the universe but the lemur project disappeared out by Neptune and now Brad Pitt who is the son of Tommy Lee Jones who was the head of the lemur project is called in in relation to both the surges and bizarrely enough the lemur project here's a clip Roy the surge seems to be the result of some kind of antimatter reaction now the Lima project was powered by that and your father was charging we're talking about a potentially unstoppable chain reaction here uncontrolled release of antimatter could ultimately threaten the stability of our entire solar system all life could be destroyed major we would like you to send a personal message on Mars by secure laser to what we hope is the Lima project what is happening out there is a crisis of unknown magnitude now we're counting on you to help us find him are you with us yes I am sir you hear from just that very brief alignment yes I am sir complete deadpan so the story is that Brad Pitt's character is somebody who has very buttoned up emotions he's somebody who is you know your pulse rate never goes above a certain level you know he's very much like in fact you know Neil Armstrong in first man and he has that that kind of in absolutely locked down quality and what they're asking him to do is to go in search of the Lima project on which his father disappeared but which there is some suggestion that his father may not have completely disappeared and they want him to go to Mars so that he can send a personal message out to this sort of far outpost which just seems you know possibly to have gone rogue you don't have to be a you know scholar of literature to know okay fine so what we're basically doing is hearts of darkness in space and essentially the kind of the set up pitch for ad astra is that it's 2001 meets apocalypse now it in which you have the character of Brad Pitt plays going out and a further and further up River to the outer reaches of the solar system in search of a previous expedition which appears to have you know gone off the grid with which he has a very very personal connection this is all explained for anyone who wasn't getting it obviously through these internal monologues in which we hear Pitt's character saying to himself you know well how what did he find out there did whatever he find out there break him or was he broken already so there's a lot of internal monologue which is also in to cut with these constant psych evaluation tests which he has to do in order to get to the next stage of each mission he has to pass a psych evaluation test which basically proves that he's stone-cold that he's you know he's not somebody who's becoming emotionally involved although what they're asking to do is become emotionally involved now on the one hand that is a you know that's a kind of something that looks like an upmarket cerebral science-fiction picture and from the very beginning you could tell it looks brilliant it's shot by - hoytsman it has this really terrific visual Sensibility Brad Pitt is doing this performance which is in which it's it's all to do with what he's not doing in terms of being emotional and yet what we're actually getting is we're hearing the emotional constantly through this narration which is very very much like the narration that Martin Sheen delivers in Apocalypse Now you know Saigon and you can almost imagine Martin Sheen doing this narration and then what you have is whilst this kind of you know serious in inverted commas cerebral science fiction story about a journey to the dark heart of mankind by going out to the outer reaches of the solar system is playing out its regularly broken up by episodes of you know action interstellar action you know lunar shootouts crazy encounters that plot spoilers you know prevent me from from spoiling although I have to say that the trailer is already spoiled some of them these strange action things that that happen that appear to be much closer to the kind of the logic of you know but Rogers or Flash Gordon or any of those sort of serials but in the end ended up inspiring the original romping tone of Star Wars and when I watch the movie I was saying you know it's it's bizarre because firstly I've heard read some really brilliant reviews of it and I've heard people call it a masterpiece it isn't a masterpiece it is it's a film that's very full of itself and it is a film that has some really wonderful things Max Richter score I think is terrific there's additional music as well but Max Richter score I think is really really great it looks wonderful it looks really impressive and it has that kind of you know serious science fiction thing going on that for what I'm a sucker but in terms of films about loneliness in outer space I don't think it has the invention of something like an ER ax in terms of being that inner outer space thing that you get in Solaris I don't think it's up there with Clare Deniz highlight which of course starred Robert Pattinson it was in Lhasa which I thought was actually a kind of superior film and then these sort of strange action set pieces that kind of looked like you know like a different movie colliding now you may have heard that there has been some debate recently about whether or not one of the second unit directors who was responsible for some of the you know the action sequences how much the thing is a singular vision how much it was it is actually the film the director apps that you wanted to make how much it's to do with the sort of negotiation about what audiences would want and what the director would want and I don't you know I die neither know nor care to speculate about what the truth behind that is all I can say is that when you look at the movie it looks like it's pulling in two different directions it looks like it's going one way on this kind of you know 2001 II Solara see heart of darkness thing and then boom it'll suddenly go over here and it'll do a kind of bit of an action step and then it will go back to the other thing also the sub terrence malick ii voiceovers i am less impressed by them perhaps i was meant to be partly because you know we have heard a lot of that you know i'm uh nice elated and insulated and i have father issues stuff we have heard it before and i don't think that i needed to have it all verbalize but the other thing is that behind it all when people talking about the films to which this owes a debt and they be saying solaris mm and what an incident even while i'm saying this and i'm hearing myself say it I'm not saying it's not an enjoyable film with some really great things in it is an enjoyable film with some really great things in and some really great set pieces and some moments of war but the film it owes the biggest debt to his event horizon and it's funny it's a shame that Jason isn't here anymore because event horizon was made in you know the 1990s and they had a it was slightly compromised towards the end of its edit when the studio needed it finish faster than it should have been finished there was a slightly longer version that was rather more fleshed out and the version of the film that finally came out was not the perfect embodiment of what the director had wanted but I think that ad Astra's biggest debt is to event horizon which is a story about a spaceship going in search of another spaceship that went out to Neptune that one was powered by a black hole whereas the Lemur project is powered by an antimatter drive and there is a kind of Conrad Ian thing going on about what you know what have they discovered when they've gone out there to the outer reaches of the solar system into the abyss into the heart of darkness you know when you go out that far what do you actually come face-to-face with so I think in the end for me firstly I was slightly surprised because having seen some of the responses from other you know from greater critics and I who have literally said this is a great masterpiece it's not it is a slice of entertaining but uneven hokum which whose greatest debt is to event horizon which was a film that was very very overlooked when it first came out but has increasingly become one of the most influential science fiction pictures of the last 50 years i I think lost city of Z was never as good as you thought it wasn't but also okay I seem to remember in in that film as well you're getting used to this kind of explorer thing when and suddenly it's bricky goes over there and it's a world war 1 film so some of them so some of the faults that you'll see I haven't seen it yet know some of the things you're saying about ad astra you could say about his absolutely and that's why I say it is it is perfectly possible that the film as it is was entirely you know a singular bit well of division of the director and his you know and his co-writer as opposed to anything else but it is a film that has dear changes in it that looks like it's pulling in two different directions it looks like it's trying to serve two different masters and there is one particular sequence in it in which by literally thought no come on really you know and it did look to me like the kind of sequence which was there because somebody thought you know we need a bit of we need a bit of spicy action now can you just can you just go and put that bit in over there and it it's weird because if you have a film that that is so full of its own intellectual heft it's existential angst it just seems to me strange when you have those other sequences which basically just go well we're not really you know we're not really interested in that stuff we were interested in obviously it's crowd-pleasing and I don't doubt for one minute then it will it will I mean they're off I like science fiction and I like the or and spectacle of it and I like the way it looks and there's much that I admire about it but it did feel like it was explaining itself to me every step of the way and that you know it it was the opposite of show don't tell

Channel: kermodeandmayo

Views: 214,266

Keywords: James Gray, Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Ad Astra, Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review, BBC, 5live

Id: 82DNMo54rYY

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 20 2019