Film review: Brad Pitt in AdAstra
tumbling from a burning tower, the lonely gleam of a spacecraft against a fathomless field of stars. Yet of all the film's eloquent visuals, cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema lights nothing with more care than Brad Pitt's eyes. Zero-gravity fistfights notwithstanding, those baby blues are where the action is. They're the movie's highest-impact special effect.
But while less is more for the actor, that's not necessarily the case for the movie, which tends toward the obvious and often feels adrift in a suspense-free void. Writer-director Gray's handsomely crafted planet-hopping drama is by turns vividly eventful and deliberate in its uneventfulness, and it feels caught, somewhat awkwardly, between stark simplicity and violent leaps into hyperdrive.
He's become an esteemed astronaut in his own right, but he feels like a hired hand. The honchos at SpaceCom, a government agency with a somewhat privatized sheen, value him for his unflappable cool. Why wouldn't they? His pulse has never topped 80, and they can't hear that angry voiceover. Though Roy has a number of encounters on his travels from Earth to the Moon to Mars and beyond, his is essentially a solitary journey, a fact that's underscored in Van Hoytema's fluent layering of reflection and shadow, in the outstanding sound design by Gary Rydstrom, and throughout Kevin Thompson's production design, which has a lived-in, unshowy emphasis on practical, rather than digital, artistry.
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