Ad Astra Review: Paying For The Sins Of The Father

Full disclosure here; don’t go into Ad Astra with the notion of it being an Interstellar or Gravity replica. This James Gray-directed film isn’t really bothered about exploring grandiose technicalities of space travel nor unravelling the epic mysteries hidden deep in the cosmos, although elements of those are peppered in the film.

Instead, Ad Astra (Latin for “to the stars”) endeavours to contemplate a more intimate tale about the impact stemming from the connection between a child and his father, albeit on a more ambitious scale than any film of its ilk has managed before. Therefore, the film’s deliberately paced and sparse with action-fuelled thrills – something that many might groan at in theatres given how the film was perceived when deceptively marketed to the masses.

I knew what I was getting into when I decided to watch Ad Astra – a moving character study of a man’s personal odyssey in search of his father and the meaning of his inner demons. Space is merely a physical metaphor for the vast void between father and son; a void that’s as much about their estranged relationship as it is the unfathomable distance needed for Brad Pitt’s Roy McBride to reach his missing father, decorated astronaut Clifford McBride, stranded on the outer fringes of our solar system.

Space is merely a physical metaphor for the vast void between father and son.

It’s a cosmic journey that takes Roy into the darkest recesses of his psyche as the closer he gets to his father, the deeper he plunges into a state of mental chaos as he slowly begins to tear down the layers shielding his father’s true legacy that forces Roy to question his own disposition towards space and, more consequentially, the importance of human connection. You see, Clifford’s absence in search for intelligent life in the cosmos gave birth to Roy’s emulation of his father’s devotion towards space travel and cold disposition towards human intimacy. It was the only way Roy knew how to satisfy the psychological need to become closer to his dad.

The film might come off as pretentious to some (Roy’s monologuing even struck me as mildly exaggerated at times), but Brad Pitt’s stunningly ruminative and emotionally conflicted performance, which this film largely hinges on, helps ground the film’s ambitious narrative to some extent. While I would say Ad Astra failings mainly spring from certain logical fallacies imbued in its depiction of space travel, those don’t really matter when it comes to assessing the heart of the film’s story – a son’s intimately haunting journey to the stars as he deconstructs and ultimately breaks free from the sins of his father.

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‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ Review: Tarantino’s Visceral Meditation On Hollywood’s Golden Age

Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A Changin’” would have been the perfect theme song to describe director-writer Quentin Tarantino’s latest cinematic escapade, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (not to knock on Tarantino’s masterful selection of classic tunes in his 9^th film; proliferating the 60s vibe buried in the heart of Los Angeles).

Yet that song would have been too on the nose in highlighting the film’s portrayal of the inevitable tragedy of classic cinemascape. I feel Tarantino made the right choice to instead showcase this era of Tinsel town in all its unbridled glamour (embodied by Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate) while mixing into it the unhinged career identity crisis embedded in showbusiness (exemplified through Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton) with a dash of classic Steve McQueen-esque coolness that was all the rage during that period (personified by Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth).

It’s a more ambitious narrative undertaking for Tarantino (picture Pulp Fiction but with a bigger budget) and so if the pacing feels off during your viewing, just know that it was a deliberate decision straight from the director’s chair in order to compensate for the massive scope of following three separate lead characters in their respective journeys.

More than any other film he’s done before, Tarantino’s cinephilia is finally let loose in this film, to my extreme delight. From subtle references to spaghetti westerns (a guilty pleasure of mine) like The Mercenary and Navajo Joe to playful cameos of era-specific radio commercials and film classics like The Wrecking Crew, I was giddy as a school kid because I felt truly transported into this surreal recreation of classic Hollywood. The film’s runtime of almost three hours was just a tad too short.

All in all, Tarantino successfully injects his signature visceral story-telling prowess into a beautifully-crafted rumination about the dying days of Hollywood’s golden age of cinema.

P.S. MINOR END-CREDITS SPOILER: I loved the classic Batman and Robin radio commercial plastered at the end-credits. I feel it’s Tarantino’s way of acknowledging the roots that gave birth to the current landscape of modern cinema that’s now dominated by big budget superhero films – the final nail in the coffin of Hollywood’s Golden Age.