Ad Astra: Attachment Theory Takes Us To the Edge of the Solar System
This piece contains plot spoilers for Ad Astra.
Attachment Theory explains the base, most instinctual behaviors that dictate the way we live our lives. As communal beings, we are formed within social structures and in relation to other humans. Relationships form our early sense of self and we continue to develop in connection to others. Attachment theory helps us uncover the reasons why we act and react in certain ways, provides comfort in the understanding, and leads us towards healthier connections with others.
The foundational theory, that many different therapeutic modalities are built upon, was pioneered by John Bowlby (1907–1990). His work helped us to understand the profound role that early relationships play in making healthy human beings. His insistence upon the important role of the care-giver(s) to the child relationship brought him skepticism and even mockery from some.
As I watched Ad Astra, I found myself intensely pulled into the painful and severed attachment the main character had with his father. This epic space thriller was one giant case study of Attachment theory and how it binds humanity. It was a somber look at the damage caused by the inability to form healthy attachments to the people close to us. In the midst of being enthralled and excited about the idea of commercial flights to the moon, my heart ached for the loneliness depicted in the characters. While immersed in a futuristic world wherein humanity continues to fight over resources and create consumer francises in space, I saw the story was about the importance of human connection more than anything else.
Set in the near future, we begin a story of emotional pain and strained connection through the main character, Roy. Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is a highly skilled astronaut who has followed in the footsteps of his celebrated and brilliant astronaut father, Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones). Roy has risen through the ranks due to his ability to compartmentalize and remain regulated during the most extreme and dangerous situations. It is noted that his heart rate has never risen about 80bpm. We soon realize his detached nature, seen as a critical attribute of a successful astronaut, is the direct result of the neglect and abandonment from his father and has made Roy into a man who is dissociated.
Clifford has been absent from Roy’s life for many years after he left him and his mother to go on an expedition to Neptune in search of extraterrestrial life. He set out on the Lima Project when Roy was a boy and never returned. Clifford was obsessively driven to find life in the deepest and darkest reaches of space and we find he goes mad chasing after it. Roy is called upon by the government to try to covertly make contact with his father after it is discovered a series of power surges threatening to destroy life on earth are originating from Clifford’s Lima Project. The hope is to locate Lima through a communication signal Roy will send from Mars. The ultimate goal is to destroy Lima via nuclear bomb, but Roy is unaware of this goal at the onset of his mission.
After a harrowing journey involving multiple deaths of characters assisting in the mission, Roy finds himself headed to Mars alone. After much internal processing the audience is privy to through Roy’s narrated inner dialogue as well as his mandatory psychological evaluations required throughout all stages of the mission, Roy grows determined to face his father. He is still fearful to confront his father, but is compelled to do so from both a sense of duty and personal responsibility and a deeper emotional longing. That longing seems to come from his desire to reconnect with his father and return him to earth. In his message sent out into space, Roys genuinely and generously says “I would like to see you again.”
Roy bravely manages to make it to Mars with the help of Lantos, a Mars-born woman whose parents were crew members on Lima whom Clifford murdered during a mutiny. By telling Roy the truth about his father, she enables the last bit of scaffolding holding up the false idea of the benevolent father to collapse in Roy’s mind. This information sparks a responsibility to take care of the mess that is his father, but it also gives him the courage to push past the fear the boy inside him still holds at the thought of more rejection from his father.
The trip to Neptune takes months and we get to see the darkness of his isolation and the battle in his memories over the truth of his life. We see glimpses of his painful realization of pushing his wife away. There are flashbacks of his childhood where we see the lonely boy who only gets to see his father on the nightly news. This trip to Lima nearly breaks Roy and is a clear display of both the literal and emotional isolation he has lived with since boyhood. Alone in space, he seems to admit and let go of his anger at his father in order to connect with him once more.
He finally enters the spacecraft and faces his father for the first time in sixteen years. After a manic narcissistic rant where Clifford makes it clear to his son he has, in fact, never cared for him, Roy still responds with a desire for attachment saying “I still love you, Dad.” All his worst fears are met with the reality that his father is incapable of love and that has made him incapable of attachment and intimacy.
Roy continues to cling to the unhealthy attachment. He has traveled to the literal edge of our solar system because humans are wired to connect and both the healthy and unhealthy attachments we form in childhood are strong enough to take us there. The journey can be dangerous, it can include death and darkness, and it could take years but we will chase after them at all cost because it is how we are made. When some of us try to attach to someone who refuses we find ourselves, after failing to form attachments to anyone else, going crazy all alone in outer space.
Clifford then commends his son for his bravery and begs Roy to not let him fail, saying they must continue to search for extraterrestrial life together. Even after Roy explains that all the data concludes there is no life out there to discover, Clifford goes on manipulatively saying that he missed an opportunity to partner with his son. It is clear he doesn’t desire a relationship with his son, but a capable partner who can help him get the job done. Clifford cannot accept the failure and, in an attempt to assuage his distress, Roy utters what is arguably the most important line of the film, “Now we know, we’re all we’ve got.”
Roy’s instinctual need to cling to any kind of connection with his father leads him into a literal wrestling match in deep space. Roy and Clifford are tethered together making their way back to the ship to return to earth when Clifford propels them out into space and tries to disconnect with Roy saying, “let me go!” This tether that Roy has worked, nearly to death, to attach to his father is immediately clawed at by his father who cannot be tethered to his son or anything other than his search. He would rather die than face the truth.
After much struggle, Roy lets him go. He finally untethers him and proceeds to make his way back to his ship. With a redeemed sense of self and survival, he makes the brave ascent back to earth propelled by the nuclear explosion that destroys Lima. He makes it back to earth. Once there, he heals and reflects on the realization he must form healthy attachments with those closest to him, namely his estranged wife, Eve. In the end scene we see him sitting and Eve coming to meet him and we are left with a feeling of hope for them. He promises in his final psychological report, “I will live and love. Submit.”
