THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER23, 2019 73
NEWYORKER.COM
Richard Brody blogs about movies.nudge us into reflecting on those whom
we love or lose; on the other hand, one
great advantage of infinity is that it pro-
vides a welcome break from mortal gripes.
No doubt the McBrides have unresolved
issues, but Neptune does seem an aw-
fully long way to go for family therapy.
It is also, be warned, strictly man-to-
man. In the past, Gray has granted solid
roles to actresses such as Faye Dunaway,
in “The Yards” (2000), and Gwyneth
Paltrow, in “Two Lovers” (2008), but the
women of “Ad Astra” are given astro-
nomically short shrift. Ruth Negga ap-
pears briefly as the boss of a Martian
base, and Liv Tyler, as Roy’s estranged
wife, barely utters a word. Not that the
guys are alive with glittering backchat;
McBride’s most faithful interlocutor is
the nameless voice that talks him through
his psychological evaluations. What Gray
yields to here, as Damien Chazelle did
in “First Man” (2018), is the alluring (and
dramatically useful) idea that astronauts
are instinctive ruminators, whereas, as
any student of the space program can
tell you, the opposite is true. If you don’t
believe me, read “Carrying the Fire,” the
autobiography of Michael Collins, who
swung around the dark side of the moon,
in 1969, while Armstrong and Aldrin
paced the surface. No one has ever been
more alone than Collins, and no one
has been saner or more good-humored.
Anyone prone to anxiety wouldn’t have
been allowed within a quarter of a mil-
lion miles of such a quest; anyone, that
is, like McBride, who gazes at his fel-
low crew members and muses, in voice-
over, “They seem at ease with them-
selves. What must that be like?”
“Ad Astra” is Gray’s most formida-
ble paradox to date, liable to leave you
awed, confused, and sad. It is a work of
calculated grandeur, and, if you get the
chance to catch it in IMAX, and thus to
revel in the breadth of its beauty, do so.
But there’s something small at the mov-
ie’s core—the smallness of cramped and
dissatisfied souls, who don’t like where
they came from and aren’t sure how far
they should go. Never is the story more
startling than when a spaceship, with
Roy on board, changes course, in mid-
journey, to answer a distress call from
another craft. That’s pretty much what
the spaceship does in “Alien” (1979), too,
except that what happens there plants
the squirming seed of everything else
that unfurls in the rest of the film. In
“Ad Astra,” by contrast, the diversion
leads nowhere. It’s creepy and well staged,
but its only function is to make poor,
brave, and beleaguered McBride freak
out just a little bit more. I hate to say so,
but I reckon Roy has the Wrong Stuff.W
olf, Dog, Lady, Smurf, Bigfoot,
Rambo, Swede, and Boom-
Boom. These are not the heroes of a
haywire cartoon on TV, or the whim-
pering occupants of a rescue shelter, but
the principal characters—rural guer-
rillas, male and female—in “Monos.”
Though too old and too brutalized to
be children, they lack the constraints of
adulthood. They carry lethal weap-
ons, which they treat like toys. They are
trained by a grownup teacher, who is
half their size. They lark around in mud,
like truants from school, yet they also
surrender to animal lust, and two of
them even undergo a form of mock-mar-
riage. It doesn’t last.
“Monos” is the third film from the
Brazilian director Alejandro Landes.The setting remains unidentified,
though the language is Spanish, and
your thoughts may turn toward the Co-
lombian rebels of FARC, a number of
whom have recently resumed opera-
tions. The use of juveniles as soldiers is
more commonly associated with Africa
and the Middle East, so where on earth
are we in this movie? In no man’s land,
I would say, much of it mountainous,
and so lofty that we look down on seas
of cloud. There are images in “Monos”
to rival anything in “Ad Astra,” and mo-
ments when we have to remind our-
selves that Wolf and the gang belong
not to another world but to ours. The
extraordinary score, by Mica Levi, re-
fuses to leave our nerves in peace.
The second half of the fable takes
us to lower altitudes, and there, it must
be said, some of the magic evaporates.
We are now at jungle level, and the
focus shifts to a woman referred to as
Doctor ( Julianne Nicholson), who, hav-
ing been kept as a hostage by the young
warriors, is bent upon escape. Her plight
is desperate but, for moviegoers, not
wholly unfamiliar, whereas the dynamic
among her captors—to whom any po-
litical cause feels ever more remote—
is discomfortingly new.
What Landes has done is to revise,
and to render yet starker, the premise
of “Lord of the Flies.” The inhabitants
of “Monos” do not gradually shed the
skin of civilized behavior; rather, they
are all but skinless to start with. Why
else would the film begin in failing light,
with the kids playing soccer in blind-
folds? Darkness is their home.THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2019 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
VOLUME XCV, NO. 28, September 23, 2019. THE NEW YORKER (ISSN 0028792X) is published weekly (except for four combined issues: February 18 & 25, June 10 & 17, July 8 & 15, and August
5 & 12) by Condé Nast, which is a division of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: Condé Nast, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. Chris Mitchell, chief business of-
ficer; Risa Aronson, vice-president, revenue; James Guilfoyle, executive director of finance and business operations; Fabio Bertoni, general counsel. Condé Nast: Roger Lynch, chief executive officer;
David E. Geithner, chief financial officer, U.S.; Pamela Drucker Mann, chief revenue and marketing officer, U.S. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. Cana-
dian Goods and Services Tax Registration No. 123242885-RT0001.
POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO THE NEW YORKER, P.O. Box 37684, Boone, IA 50037 0684. FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS, ADDRESS CHANGES, ADJUSTMENTS, OR BACK
ISSUE INQUIRIES: Please write to The New Yorker, P.O. Box 37684, Boone, IA 50037 0684, call (800) 825-2510, or e-mail [email protected]. Please give both new and old addresses as
printed on most recent label. Subscribers: If the Post Office alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. If during
your subscription term or up to one year after the magazine becomes undeliverable, you are ever dissatisfied with your subscription, let us know. You will receive a full refund on all unmailed issues. First
copy of new subscription will be mailed within four weeks after receipt of order. For advertising inquiries, please call Risa Aronson at (212) 286-4068. For submission guidelines, please refer to our Web
site, http://www.newyorker.com. Address all editorial, business, and production correspondence to The New Yorker, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. For cover reprints, please call (800) 897-8666,
or e-mail [email protected]. For permissions and reprint requests, please call (212) 630-5656 or fax requests to (212) 630-5883. No part of this periodical may be reproduced without the consent
of The New Yorker. The New Yorker’s name and logo, and the various titles and headings herein, are trademarks of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. Visit us online at http://www.newyorker.com. To sub-
scribe to other Condé Nast magazines, visit http://www.condenast.com. Occasionally, we make our subscriber list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services that we believe would
interest our readers. If you do not want to receive these offers and/or information, please advise us at P.O. Box 37684, Boone, IA 50037 0684 or call (800) 825-2510.
THE NEW YORKER IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RETURN OR LOSS OF, OR FOR DAMAGE OR ANY OTHER INJURY TO, UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS,
UNSOLICITED ART WORK (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND TRANSPARENCIES), OR ANY OTHER UNSOLICITED
MATERIALS. THOSE SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, ART WORK, OR OTHER MATERIALS FOR CONSIDERATION SHOULD NOT SEND
ORIGINALS, UNLESS SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED TO DO SO BY THE NEW YORKER IN WRITING.