With echoes of Apocalypse Now and 2001, James Gray´s spectacular epic dispatches Pitt on an interplanetary mission to find his missing fatherBrad Pitt never looked more beautiful than in this mesmeric, flawed, superbly photographed and designed space adventure from director and co-writer James Gray. Pitt plays an astronaut in what is tantalisingly described as the `near future` and Gray´s camera traces the scorched and incised surfaces of distant planets with the same awe that it travels across Brad´s face, savouring the lattice of tiny wrinkles around the eyes, and the discreet harvest of his one-day stubble.Gray´s direction, like Pitt´s performance, is fiercely intended and intricately controlled and the resulting movie has some of the epic and Conradian qualities of his last film, The Lost City of Z - though with a more satisfying structure and story arc, and with more exciting set pieces. It is, perhaps, a little derivative and maybe finally fudges the dark mystery of the quest´s end point. But this is a film with thrilling ambition and reach. Continue reading...
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