Ad Astra is a wonder to watch and it's a movie that tells you it's intensions right from the start, then fulfills them in a genius way. For me personally, it was the first new movie I saw after a long hiatus from being able to go to a theater and watch a movie, and I'll admit it was still a relativily physically painful experience to sit in a chair and watch it, so it meant everything to me that was worth my time and THEN some! It is the kind of movie the theaters were made for, a beautiful mix of what came before from the fantastical journeys of Apocalypse Now and Intersteller to the personal relationtionship family dramas of director James Grey himself. Its like Grey had been leading up to this movie his entire career.
Brad Pitt has had quite a year, for an actor of 55 years of age. He also had an amazing Quentin Tarantino movie several months prior to this one. His muted but focused performance here is a culmination of his whole career, something quite different for him but also very natural. His quest to find his father (played by Tommy Lee Jones) leads him to make decisions that endanger lives and the fate of planet Earth itself. It begs the question, are we destined to become what we fear the most? How much of our life is pre-determined and how much is purely genetics? Are we driven mainly by fear or by the design to do what is right?
I'm not sure why some people have had an adverse reaction to Ad Astra, but Ifound it the perfect mix of contemplative and mesmerizing. It enthralled me the entire time and I was never bored. I was experiencing the aftermath of a painful surgery when I saw it in theaters, so maybe that made me appreciate Pitt's character's yearning to cross the galaxy to find his father even more? For whatever reason, the journey to Neptune and beyond made me think about my entire life and existence, and there are so many layers and surprises in this movie I will not discuss the plot more. But , I cannot wait to watch this movie a second time because I know for a fact (I watch wayyyy to many movies for sure) that few movies get things this perfect. Ad Astra is a poem to the universe made by human beings who are not afraid too wander the stars.
