Ad Astra

Since the glorious finale of Stanley Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey, science fiction films involving outer space have been disappointing.  By this I mean that the films are thematically disappointing.  Even films like First Man stand for the proposition that there's nothing but lethal emptiness in outer space.  The space program was an expensive boondoggle -- outer space is just really a very expensive place to die.  James Gray's melancholy Ad Astra (2019) is characteristic of this genre, portraying human exploration of the far reaches of the solar system as, more or less, pointless.  The picture is beautifully made, although its script is a meretricious mess, and the film gestures toward important themes -- it's worth seeing if only for the superb special effects and the excellent performance by Brad Pitt as an imperturbable astronaut confronted with various unearthly horrors.

Although the film nods toward 2001, featuring a space voyage in search of extra-terrestrial life to the rings of Neptune (viewers will recall 2001's climax among planetary alignments in the orbit of Jupiter), the film's real precursors are Apocalypse Now and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.  An explorer occupying a remote and dangerous post has gone mad -- he methods (if he even has methods) are threatening the colonial imperialist power.  And, so, the rulers launch an expedition upriver to terminate the renegade "with extreme prejudice".  This is a time-worn plot and always effective until its climax.  Captain Kurtz never turns out quite as fearsome and remarkable as he is made out to be.  Therefore, the sort of disappointment thematic to outer space movies is intrinsic to this primitive, but gripping, plot -- you can pretty much count on a disappointment when the hero comes face to face with Captain Kurtz and he turns out to be...a very fat Marlon Brando, or here a very elderly Tommy Lee Jones.  Tommy Lee Jones (McBride Sr.) is somewhere near Neptune searching for intelligent life.  He has apparently gone mad and slaughtered everyone in his space station.  When the film begins, he is launching attacks on the earth (apparently) using anti-matter.  These attacks create huge power surges that, in turn, seem to cause explosions.  (All of this is pretty vague).  At the start of the film, McBride Jr. (Brad Pitt) is laboring atop a ten-mile high antennae set up to collect signals from the ETs.  A big explosion catapults him off the antennae and he falls about 8,000 feet before pulling the ripcord on a parachute that he is conveniently carrying.  This is a fantastically well-filmed scene and pretty terrifying, but it's a cheat -- the hero was never in that much trouble:  he has a secret parachute in his gear.  (I assume the half-dozen other poor bastards hurtling like meteors out of the exploding antennae's penthouse also had parachutes and landed safely -- but who knows, these falling bodies are just window-dressing.  The blast was caused by an anti-matter power surge launched by McBride Sr. and, so, the powers-that-be dispatch the hero to Mars where he is supposed to send a message to his dad.  He flies to the moon on a Virgin-Atlantic space-shot that's not nearly as nice as the Pan-Am cruiser that took the hero of 2001 to the moon.  The moon turns out to be a war zone where pirates are competing over mining rights.  On the way to the place where the space-ship aimed at Mars is located, there's a cowboy-and-Indians battle between moon buggies of pirates that Mad Max-style attack the caravan of good guys heading for the launch base.  This is also filmed with tremendous conviction and very exciting but a non sequitur.  The terrifying ride to the launch base causes the elderly Donald Sutherland to have a heart attack -- I'm not sure what he's doing in the movie anyway:  he doesn't look well and his complexion is like that of poorly resuscitated corpse.  McBride Jr. makes the launch for Mars but, once again, trouble ensues.  Answering a May Day from a Norwegian medical research satellite, the hero and a couple of astronauts tour the empty space station and, then, are beset by an astonishing and savage adversary.  (This plot twist is totally unexpected and so I won't reveal it.)  After some gory combat, McBride Jr. gets  back to the Mars rocket and makes it to the Red Planet.  All is not well on Mars and it appears that McBride Jr. is being used as a pawn by the sinister officials in an effort to destroy his father -- there's lots of ambient paranoia but it makes no sense.  What did McBride Jr. think was his mission?  Obviously something has to be done to stop Dad from murdering everyone on Earth with surges of anti-matter energy.  McBride Jr. now goes renegade himself and with the help of a disconsolate woman who has lived all her life on Mars (she's like one of Zola's mine ponies who never see the light of day), he makes his way to the rocket launching for Neptune.  Somehow or another, he stows away in the rocket but when discovered there's a bloody battle and McBride Jr. kills everyone else on board.  Now, he's all alone.  He flies to Neptune where he disembarks his rocket to travel to Dad's space station.  There he encounter Captain Kurtz in the form of his Dad and Tommy Lee Jones gets a chance to use his sad eyes and ravaged face to illustrate a couple of long speeches.  Dad kills himself ultimately and the hero, somehow and rather implausibly, makes his way back to Earth.  Science Fiction often relies upon a red lever or a red button -- here it's a red button-like lever.  This button triggers a mighty explosion of anti-matter which hurls McBride Jr. back to Earth.  In the end, the hero is even reconnecting with his estranged wife -- it's supposed to be a happy ending.

But, in fact,the movie is a torrent of Stygian gloom.  Tommy Lee Jones has been driven mad by the existential loneliness of outer space.  His son notes that he has discovered all sorts of wonderful planets -- places that look tessellated like mosaic floors, planets with volcanoes and rifts and wonderful-looking fissures and cracks in them -- there are planets like Kandinsky canvases and other worlds that look like they were painted by Rothko. McBride Jr. tries to console his Dad that he didn't do all that badly and who cares that he didn't find life in outer space -- but Dad isn't convinced and neither are we: the viewer would gladly exchange all of these gorgeous planets with their simmering, brilliant surfaces for one outer space gnat or ET wood tick.

The film is so imposing and strikes such an intense mood that the viewer doesn't have time to consider the innumerable narrative problems that 'plague the movie?  Where is the crew on the Norwegian space ship?  Why does the hero have to swim through a vast underground reservoir of murky water to reach the rocket aimed from Mars to Neptune?  Why does he have to go to Mars in the first place to send his message to Dad?  Why can't he send it from Earth?  What's going on with the bursts of anti-matter?  Is Tommy Lee Jones shooting them at earth for some odd reason or are they just noisome space farts -- it seems that they may be just space farts. Why doesn't the huge blast of anti-matter that propels the hero back to earth ravage the home planet and destroy everyone there?  And, most baffling of all, why is the fabulous Natasha Lyonne (Russian Doll) on Mars in a single scene where she seems to be some kind of brassy space secretary and, then, (to my great disappointment) is never shown again?  These are all insoluble mysteries.