Ad Astra: the 2001 of the 21st Century (So Far)

What better time to see Ad Astra than now, at the end of the second decade of the 21st century, when we still have made but a pittance of progress beyond our landing on the Moon in 1969?

In the "near future" of Ad Astra, we're established on the Moon and Mars - not well established, by any means, but good enough - and the story concerns Roy McBride's (Brad Pitt) trip to Neptune to find out what happened to his father, Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones).  Clifford was the first man to reach Jupiter and then Saturn, but he got hung up around Neptune, and most people don't know if he's dead or alive. 

Roy thinks he's alive, and he's right, which leads to the bigger story: is it worth leaving Earth, permanently, in the quest to find some alien intelligence, that Clifford is sure must be out there? Clifford's so sure that he begs Roy to let him float away in space, to die, rather than return to Earth with Roy.   In the decisive scene, Roy lets his father go, and Roy returns to Earth.  Because, having discovered there's likely no other intelligence out there, Roy wants to return to his home.

It's not the ending I wanted, but the movie was nonetheless powerful, and the ending was emotionally satisfying.  Indeed, Ad Astra was so good a movie, so different in the combination of individual personality and grand scale, that I'd say it's the 2001 of our 21st century, at least so far.

As to what I would have rather seen at the end: that would have been Roy refusing to let his father go, bringing Clifford back to Earth, where Roy could have unpacked, savored, and assessed his father's immense knowledge gathered over thirty years at the furtherest our species has ventured from Planet Earth.  Yes, Roy speaks of great stores of knowledge in the records his father kept, but there's nothing like actually talking to the person who made and kept the records to get the deepest and fullest picture of what he (or she) learned.

Nonetheless - great acting Brad Pitt, great movie by James Gray, see it.

                                             Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time

                                                      Touching the Face of the Cosmos

Interstellar: 2001 meets Time for the Stars, with a Touch of Frequency

I just saw Interstellar in IMAX in New York City, in what the theater announced to be the second biggest IMAX screen in the world (the largest is in Sydney, Australia). Was the movie up to the theater?  Well, until the last 30 or so minutes I'd say it was - a masterpiece in many ways.   But the ending - or, at least, the science of the ending - just didn't do it for me.

The two best parts of the movie - in addition to the powerful story of an astronaut taking a ship through a black hole near Saturn, to save the human race from ecological disaster - was the computer on the ship, and the way that going in or near a black hole slows down time, so the astronaut and crew age at at a normal rate while the people back on Earth, aging at their normal rate, age much more quickly, where hours in space equal years and decades on Earth.

The computer - TARS by name - was a worthy homage and successor to HAL of 2001, smart-talking, funny, sage, and brave.   It - the computer doesn't want to be referred to as "he" - looks good as a walking rectangle with a pair of wide stilts for legs.   There have been lots of computers on spaceships over the years - including Star Trek - but TARS is far and away the best.

The aging effects were beautifully done, with Matthew McConaughey putting in his best work in this movie and indeed right up there with his riveting performances on television and in the movies in the past few years.  Jessica Chastain is also excellent as his daughter who becomes the same age as her father - at the same time as her father - as the plot progresses.   All of this was reminiscent of Robert Heinlein's classic juvenile science fiction novel, Time for the Stars, except Interstellar situates these personal paradoxes in a much grander story.

So far, so great.  The special effects were also outstanding, and better in many ways than previous state of the art movies in space like the second Star Wars trilogy.   The science, too, was good, and made Interstellar, until this point, a fine hard science fiction movie - one, moreover, with real heart.

But then came the ending, which hinged on father/daughter communication across time.  In this case, I saw this done far better in the father/son communication across time via ham radio in Frequency, a very well controlled, tight little movie.   In the case of Interstellar, the time travel depends upon a murky interpretation of quantum mechanics, which not only verged on the mystical, as quantum mechanics always does, but withdrew the strong mix of hard science and human emotion which worked so well in the rest of the movie.  Instead, we got superb emotion, but situated in an unclear, metaphysical base.

Nonetheless, I'd strongly recommend Interstellar, for the first two-and-a-half hours the movie, which were exceptional science fiction and movie-making indeed.