It seems like a lifetime ago when James Gray was the indie filmmaker behind gritty little New York stories such as We Own the Night and Two Lovers. That director is gone, replaced by one who ventures into far off lands with The Lost City of Z, and now this awards season’s space drama Ad Astra. While family remains a core theme in all of Gray’s movies, it’s clear that his scope has expanded considerably.
A new teaser for Ad Astra has been released prior to its debut in Venice, offering another look at the epic drama led by Brad Pitt, and centers on an astronaut who ventures on a dangerous mission to find his long-lost father. You can see the influence of Stanley Kubrick everywhere, but this is definitely bigger and more action-intense than anything we’ve seen from Gray before. The film also stars Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland, Liv Tyler, and Jamie Kennedy.
Here’s Gray’s statement released from Venice: I’d read this quote from Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey: “Either we’re not alone in the universe, or we are, and both are equally terrifying.” And I thought, well, I’ve never seen a movie about us being alone. The idea of space travel is both beautiful and horrifying at the same time. I’m hugely in favor of space exploration, but sometimes exploration is also just a means of escape. This led me to a personal place, a father/son story. I hope people understand that at some point it is incumbent on us both to cherish exploration and to cherish the Earth. The Earth and the human connection are worth preserving at all costs.
Ad Astra opens in theaters on September 20th.
