Ad Astra

I don’t like very much films that want to look deeply smart, but then pull out a scene that looks like something out of a B-movie. Bugger! There are films where the hero jumps at the last second into a rocket taking off, or builds a shield out of a solar panel and flies through the rings of Neptune from one spaceship to another and then there are films that philosophise about human existence, but they should not be mixed. I must admit that Ad Astra looks and sounds amazing, that it has several scenes with great atmosphere and that in the first half I was quite excited. But then the annoying bits of nonsense start piling up to the point that they fundamentally distract from the experience and become impossible to ignore. Everything is underlined by Brad Pitt's voiceover, which is just too much. The film would make a lot more sense if the inner monologues weren’t there, because the actions of the hero would’ve explained things more convincingly. But as it is, it’s like an averagely intelligent person who wants to give the impression they are a genius. They can say a few smart sounding words, but the message as a whole lacks a deeper coherent meaning, and in the end all we are left with is a banal YOLO. A film that tries very hard, but can’t make it. (21/09/2019)

A beautifully filmed show of tasteful gibberish and persistent utterance of everything. In addition, culminating in a B-movie, which fully reveals how, despite the burden of beauty, Ad Astra is actually an internally simple movie that ostentatiously wears the robe of spiritual science fiction. I would have made it all about the monkeys. Space Baboons. (21/09/2019)

Ad Astra is a film that is easy to shoot down or mock with a withering catch-phrase, but which nevertheless hypnotically draws in the viewer and long afterwards smoulders in one’s mind. It is impossible to avoid the impression that something is simultaneously missing and excessive, whether monologues, action scenes or pulpy elements thatturn contemplative absorption into amused mockery. Like a cosmic Heart of Darkness, Ad Astra gives the impression of being abridged, as if a full range of other stops on the road to the destination have been bypassed. Glimmers of the film’s world give the sense of a well-thought-out future and colonisation of the solar system. Director James Gray's film comes across asa several-hour miniseries that has been edited down and promises the possibility of not only seeing more of everything but, primarily, getting everything in a more sophisticated, dramaturgically refined and, above all, more slowly flowing form. I very much would have liked Ad Astra’s runtime to be twice or even three times as long, with proportionately more stops in space and some motifs more thoroughly developed. In its actual form, it is a sort of Reader’s Digest, the fragments of which do not conceal the masterful filmmaking and give a sense of an epic vision. (05/01/2020)

If the movie consisted only of the shots of the Universe and those from outside the Earth with the grandiose music, it would make the most beautiful documentary about the Universe that has ever been made with that unbelievably beautifully filmed moon-action which was at the top level. But as it is now, the movie has a story with Brad Pitt in it and neither of those things add to its quality. It might captivate you with its visual, for example, in iMax but from the screenplay point of view you can’t wait for it to end. (07/10/2020)

A more intimate version of Interstellar, with similar formal opulence, musical arrangement and philosophy, but less ambitious artistically and script-wise, without a climactic finale or even highlight scenes. A cosmic father-son relationship drama and a story about making the right life choices and decisions that doesn’t take place exclusively on planet Earth. Brad Pitt is again fantastic. (24/09/2019)