58 Time September 30, 2019
Cohn: brilliant and unethicalPitt can handle outer space, but not his own feelings, in Ad AstraJames Gray’s sTranGe, hypnoTic
space adventure Ad Astra is set in the
near future, when humanity has decided
to look to the stars for intelligent life,
evidently finding the cupboards bare at
home. To reveal whether or not that life
is found would give away too much, and
it would be missing the point, anyway:
this story is as much about the alien life
inside us as it is about space exploration.
Sometimes our feelings can be like for-
eign invaders, unwelcome in the narra-
tive we’re trying to write for ourselves.
That’s certainly true of Ad Astra’s
hero, stoic astronaut Roy McBride,
played by Brad Pitt. Roy is descended
from spaceman royalty: his father Clif-
ford (Tommy Lee Jones) was part of the
first team to make it to Neptune, and
when Roy was just a kid, he died there—
or at least that’s what the U.S. govern-
ment suggested to Roy and his mother,
leaving them to feel bereft and aban-
doned. Roy strives to be the best astro-
naut he can be, carrying off even the
most nerve-jangling tasks with aplomb.
It’s his own feelings, particularly toward
his father, he can’t handle. His existen-
tial torment intensifies when the gov-
ernment taps him for a mission that’s
both dangerous and emotionally com-MOVIES
In space, man’s search for meaningplex: Clifford, it turns out, may not be
dead after all, and it’s Roy’s job to locate
him somewhere out there in the inky
blackness of space.
At times, Ad Astra is way too obvi-
ous about its aims, reflected in Roy’s
riffs about how little he needs other
human beings, on this planet or any
other. But the movie’s power sneaks
up on you. Nearly every minute is gor-
geous to look at: Gray and his cinema-
tographer, Hoyte Van Hoytema, used
Kodak images from Apollo missions 11
through 17 as inspiration—the movie’s
visuals are halfway between dreams of
space and the silvery, shivery majesty
of the real thing. And Pitt makes Roy’s
particular brand of self-torture effort-
lessly believable. Pitt seems to be grow-
ing more weathered, and more beauti-
ful, with each role, and Gray and Van
Hoytema make the most of that beauty,
bringing the camera in close to survey
his cheekbone contours, his haunted-
lake eyes, the vegetation of his blondish
beard whiskers, as if they were mapping
the geography of a new planet. He sur-
vives the scrutiny, and he helps guide
Ad Astra to a landing you don’t quite
expect, a place of self-forgiveness that
feels earned. —s.Z.DOCU MENTARY
There was a
crooked man
A rabidly anti-communist
lawyer who helped engineer the
McCarthy hearings, a bulldog
attorney for clients including
Mafia thugs and Donald Trump,
a closeted gay man who used
his influence to obtain the
experimental AIDS treatment
he needed in the 1980s,
even as he chummed around
with—and made money off—
individuals who’d do anything
to keep those drugs from the
masses who needed them:
that was Roy Cohn, the subject
of Matt Tyrnauer’s raggedly
shaped but informative docu-
mentary Where’s My Roy Cohn?
The title is a direct quote
from our 45th President, who
in early 2018 lamented that he
didn’t have the right associates
to protect him from the Russia
investigation. It’s no secret that
Cohn has always been Trump’s
dream lawyer, and Tyrnauer’s
documentary convincingly
presents him as a kingmaker
who would stop at nothing to
exonerate, and even elevate,
his most knavish clients.
Unfortunately, Cohn—who died
in 1986, just weeks after he’d
been disbarred for a host of
ethical violations—was also
brilliant. And though he never
fulfilled his youthful dream of
holding political office, Where’s
My Roy Cohn? makes the case
that his smeary fingerprints are
all over the political landscape
today. —S.Z.
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