Shades of Gray

When I absolutely loved The Lost City of Z, I thought I was finally over my yo-yo relationship with director James Gray.

Then came Ad Astra.

The Lost City of Z had redeemed Gray after the last film of his I didn't care for, The Immigrant. Which I was expecting to like because I liked his previous film, Two Lovers, so much.

I guess Gray is destined to be an on-again, off-again filmmaker with me.

I haven't seen his film 1994 feature debut Little Odessa or his 2007 film We Own the Night, but I started off in a lukewarm place with Gray with 2000's The Yards. But then came Two Lovers, redeeming that film, and kicking off an every-other-film pattern that goes to this day.

For many viewers, it seems that Ad Astra was two in a row for Gray, assuming they liked The Lost City of Z, which not everyone did. Who knows, maybe there are others who are on an every-other-film pattern with Gray that's opposite mine. Astra actually explores similar thematic territory to Z, examining man's thirst for exploration and willingness to sacrifice everything (like a relationship with family) to embark on adventures that could cost them a minimum of several years, and a maximum of their lives. Astra has an 80 on Metacritic, giving some indication of the breadth of its support among critics.

But Astra is more akin to The Immigrant in terms of its sheer narrative clumsiness. Although I don't remember The Immigrant that well, I do remember there's this scene where Joaquin Phoenix is trying to stab Jeremy Renner and he's trying to defend himself with a pillow. If not exactly that, something similarly absurd, and the staging is laughable. There are a couple laughable moments like that in Ad Astra, scenes where Gray failed to comprehend the tone that was inadvertently undermining his earnestly intended direction. I won't go into too much detail because I imagine most of you haven't seen it yet, but the "car chase on the moon" scene certainly qualifies.

Especially in retrospect, these scenes are conspicuous by their absence in The Lost City of Z. Every scene plays out with the exact vibe Gray intended, and as a result he successfully wrestles with the restless spirit of, and personal costs to, the explorer. The subtlety on screen in Z is so different from the thematic hammer strikes in Ad Astra (as exemplified in the cringeworthy voiceover) that the films simply don't seem to be made by the same person.

It's the voiceover that really undercuts Gray. He's proven himself capable of communicating his themes through visuals and dialogue, so why belabor all that with voiceover? It's tempting to reward Ad Astra for its striking visuals, yet Gray saps them of their power by redundantly explicating them through the voiceover. He should have known better.

If we're examining the validity of the "shades of Gray" metaphor -- which is not just a clever play on words in this case -- you can attain the color gray as a filmmaker by making a lot of wishy washy films that linger in kind of a murky middle ground. It seems a little less common to alternate between two extremities of color, of quality, that average out to the color gray. I really don't have any idea why James Gray sees things so clearly sometimes, and then sometimes, can't seem to see anything at all.

However, the pattern I've been on does mean I should look forward to his next film, I Am Pilgrim (if that title sticks), which IMDB lists in pre-production. Maybe I'll have occasion to give thanks for that one.