
Dir: James Gray. Starring: Banks Repeta, Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Jaylin Webb, Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Sell. 15, 115 minutes.
I’m convinced James Gray makes films not out of desire, but out of compulsion. Behind the thorny intimacy of Two Lovers (2008) or the cobwebbed dreams of dead explorers in The Lost City of Z (2016) lies a desperate search for answers to ugly questions. In Ad Astra (2019), Brad Pitt’s astronaut travels to the furthest reaches of the solar system in order to find his father, only to be told to go home and leave papa be. How does someone even start to process a rejection that profound?