A plot summary of “Ad Astra,” in which Brad Pitt plays an astronaut who travels into space to try to avert a cataclysm, makes it sound like the kind of movie J. J. Abrams or James Cameron might have directed. But its creator, James Gray, is a very different kind of filmmaker, known for intimate, small-scale dramas, many set in the outer boroughs of New York City, where he grew up. When Richard Brody first heard about the film, he worried that the plot was taking Gray too far afield, but now he says he needn’t have. While the film is hardly autobiographical, “ ‘Ad Astra’ is very personal to me,” Gray tells Brody. “Obviously, I’m not going to Neptune. So it’s really about . . . what you’re dealing with under the surface.”
While beloved by many top actors, Gray’s work has often proved too idiosyncratic for the studios he has worked with. He tells Brody that some of his career travails have cost him confidence. “I’ve always felt that I’m trying to salvage what I can from an experience,” he claims, “as opposed to moving triumphantly to do the next great movie.” After “Ad Astra,” larger opportunities could open up to him. But “this was a very, very hard movie to do,” he says. “It took years out of my life. And I don’t know what I want to do next. I just don’t.”
