That this is Roy’s father, whom he hasn’t seen
since he was a youngster, adds significantly to
the implications of the journey.
Pitt’s astronaut is a solitary figure, taciturn and
cool under pressure. Much of the charisma he so
effortlessly displayed in “Once Upon a Time ... in
Hollywood” has gone into hiding, replaced with a
more pensive and subtle performance. His space
voyage comes in contact with a handful of colorful
figures, all of them underused (Donald Sutherland,
Natasha Lyonne, Ruth Negga, a pair of rabid space
baboons). But Roy’s chiefly in dialogue with himself
and the old video transmissions from his father.
In copious amounts of voice over and frequent
confessional-like psychological evaluations, Roy
narrates his psychological voyage through the
stars. “I will not allow my mind to linger on that
which is not important,” he says early in the film,
pledging his devotion to the mission. It’s a line
that will come to mean something else to Roy
as he gets further and further from home (he
leaves behind an ex-wife, played by Liv Tyler),
and goes deeper and deeper into his — and his
father’s — obsessions. The nature of ambition
gets deconstructed. Grandiosity gets toppled by
elemental humanity.
Gray, of course, is only the most recent master-
filmmaker to seek existential truths in the
remoteness of space. There was Claire Denis’ “High
Life” earlier this year and Christopher Nolan’s
“Interstellar” in 2014. The latter bears some similar
DNA with “Ad Astra.” But Nolan lingered much
more on the life and family left behind by its space
traveler (Matthew McConaughey). Gray, a more
restrained director, gives us little of Roy’s earthly
life, something that dulls the movie’s emotional
arc when Roy begins to look backward.