Ad Astra (2019) aimed contemplative psychological sci-fi film and failed. Watching Hollywood mainstream trying to be philosophical is like watching a constipated toddler getting potty training: It's cute but very gross. There are a lot of deep focus and long takes - - but in space, so sometimes it looked like a Discovery channel video buffering. You can get up, take a bathroom break and come back to the same scene. But you can't really leave because Brad Pitt, in a husky voice, keeps on mumbling something in the voice over constantly. But you'll soon understand that whatever he's saying, you already knew that 15 minutes ago.
Yes, Brad Pitt. And Tommy Lee Jones. These are the two reasons I started watching the film in first place. I have this idea that if you put two good actors together then a film will work even if it fails at everything else including the script. But this film proved me wrong. Though I believe that t2o good actors interacting and acting off of each other is the best way to make a film work. But in this film Brad and Tommy Lee stay apart from each other for 90% of the film. They meet only for a few minutes and those were really intense minutes of the film.
The plot was daddy issues meet heart of darkness ending in a nuclear blast. (Oh! Now I have spoiled it for you. Good.) For how long Western Christian civilisation will keep searching for their father only to kill them?
This film reminds me of the trauma of watching a very bad Hollywood take of Tarkovsky's 'Solaris' starring George Clooney. I mean the guy is beautiful but I just couldn't watch a masterpiece being piecemeal destroyed on screen.
This film lacks logical connection or natural progression through causality: hence, the long monologues in voice over in Brad Pitt's husky voice. Well, even that couldn't help the drowning script which is overwhelmed by daddy issues as I mentioned earlier.
The trajectory of Daddy issues go somewhat like this:
Daddy is a hero, you love daddy. You are what you are because of your daddy. Daddy is dead, you follow his footsteps. But daddy is absent, so you are dead inside. Daddy is alive, so now daddy is deadbeat. You cannot be a daddy because your daddy left you and that is why you don't know how to be a daddy. But you want daddy: people stop you, so you kill people and go on searching for daddy. You find daddy but daddy tells you that daddy doesn't love you but you still want to save daddy. Daddy tries to kill you, you try to kill daddy and now daddy wants to die. You let daddy die. Finally, daddy gives you validation. You come home ready to be a daddy.
Matt Damon would have better suited the character. He has been rescued so many times in films that he should start rescuing people from now on. Brad Pitt was a murderous waste in this film.
Why are they even making this firm in 2019? If the entire aim of the film was to make Brad Pitt's character, Roy a suitable family man in a heteronormative structure then why bring in futuristic space fantasy in it? If it is to make it spectacular, then let me tell you, it wasn't. Space didn't play a role in the story. It was just a backdrop. Anything odd or illogical was explained (read excused) in the monologues. I wonder how they still sell these scripts: to the audience, to the studios, to the actors. The women in this film could be replaced by a lampshade and no one would even notice. Why would you hire an actress like Liv Taylor and not give her a line, one single line even? If any of you have seen this film, can you please tell me the point of all this? Because from where I see it, the film is about a privileged upper class white Christian man trying to find purpose in his life. Finally, that purpose comes down to mating with his wife and producing more confused creatures like himself. This could be a crisis, (doesn't seem like it) this could be a struggle (against what odds) but this film has severely failed to show it like that.
Anyway, I need to watch Apocalypse Now and Solaris (the Russian one) cleanse my system.
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