The summer of 2019 brought us James Gray’s somber sci-fi Ad Astra and Lulu Wang’s touching family dramedy The Farewell, two movies that would hardly appear to make a natural double feature. And yet, these two movies both give us rich impressions of what it means for people to carry emotional burdens in their lives. The key difference between these stories, though, is in the degree that the burden is shared between others. Together, they make a stirring argument for the value of emotional vulnerability in the face of overwhelming personal challenges.

Ad Astra’s Roy McBride, played with reserved sadness by Brad Pitt, has spent his whole life burying his emotions deep within. Although on the surface a decorated astronaut, McBride lives with the ghost of his father Cliff in his constant rearview. Years ago, Cliff left his family for the mysterious “Lima Project” to find signs of extraterrestrial life in the outskirts of the solar system. Roy is left a teenager with a sick mother as Cliff and his crew reach all the way to Neptune, with transmissions becoming more and more irregular until they cease completely. At the outset of the film, Cliff is presumed dead, and Roy is dealing with his grief in solitude, with a barely-touched upon marriage collapsing. When the military receives transmissions from the Lima Project, the first in decades, it is the first inkling of hope that Cliff may be alive after all. Roy is the man for the job - it’s on him to make the dangerous journey, and he can tell no one.

What follows is a journey through the cosmos that takes Roy from planet to planet and to the edges of Neptune, where hope lies for an unlikely father-son reunion. Director James Gray frames Pitt among the awe-inspiring vistas of the cosmos, putting him in the pockmarked surface of the Moon, the harsh red sands of Mars, and in the rocky rings of Neptune. Roy is a man of relatively few words, which makes him a curious narrator. He muses about his father and the journey he undertakes without passion, and his sad eyes rarely evoke an emotion greater than repressed pain. The narration is so unspecific that it can seem dry and unnecessary. But Roy’s withholding is the most crucial aspect of his character.

There are a series of fourth-wall breaking moments where Roy has to undergo a psychological test during his mission by way of a “biometric scan”, seemingly to ensure he still is stable enough to get the job done. On each leg of the journey, he reports feeling good, and focused on his mission. We get the impression that Roy has gotten very good at faking this stability - usually some sort of traumatic event precedes the test, such as the death of a traveling companion or an unexpected ambush. These events would rile up any person, let alone someone who has experienced as much loss as Roy. But Roy is determined to remain stoic, even on his immensely personal journey.

Roy’s mission eventually takes him to Mars, where the government has him read a prewritten message to send out to the Lima Project, in hopes that it may provoke a response. It is like all of his sanity tests: dry, unfeeling, and completely absent of the pain he carries. Even his room, more a prison cell than a bedroom, plays along with the artifice. Projections of Earth flash on the glass panes all around Roy, trying to distract from the red death of the Mars surface. It is only when Roy goes off script and gets personal, recalling stories from his childhood and the lessons his dad taught him, that there is any signal from Lima. For the first time, Roy has been rewarded for emotional vulnerability. 

The final leg to Project Lima is fraught with peril, as Roy learns that the government plans to destroy Lima and any trace of his father to keep the truth of the project’s failure from reaching Earth. He commandeers a space shuttle by force, forced to kill the crew in self-defense, and is left alone on the 79-day trip to the rings of Neptune. With no immediate objectives to occupy his mind, now all Roy can do is reflect - reflect on his dad, on his failed marriage, and on the ominous last video communications from Project Lima. Images of Tommy Lee Jones’s Cliff flash across the screen, his dark eyes and sunken skin suggesting an interstellar Colonel Kurtz. “I am doing God’s work”, Cliff proclaims on a recorded message. But Roy isn’t out to meet God. 

The long awaited confrontation between Roy and Cliff is restrained, but bouncing with tension. Floating in zero gravity in the ruins of Project Lima, Cliff rambles about finding his “destiny” among the cosmos. For Cliff, finding a purpose was well worth losing all the people he ever cared about. He even claims that he never really cared for Roy - him and his mother were worthy sacrifices in Cliff’s pursuit of his destiny. Cliff sees all aspects of his life selfishly - what can they do for him? “Imagine what we could have accomplished together”, he tells Roy without a hint of irony. In none of Cliff’s rambling is what Roy has been searching for: emotional validation. Roy has carried the burden of his father’s abandonment for decades, robbing him of closure. Though Roy’s sparse narration never tells us directly, we imagine that the least he was hoping for was some remorse from Cliff, an acknowledgement of the pain he has wrought. Instead, Roy gets to hear the ramblings of a madman with an urge to play God. Like the surveillance video recording Cliff’s staticky transmissions, Cliff sees Roy as an empty vessel to project his lofty desires onto. But Roy wasn’t seeking a prophet - only a father.

In direct contrast to Ad Astra’s chilly portrait of decaying family bonds, Wang’s The Farewell, based upon Wang’s real-life experiences, exudes warmth, even among its often heartbreaking subject matter. Awkwafina’s star-making role as Billi, a young writer living in New York, is defined by her close family ties, frayed though they might be by distance and cultural differences. When Billi hears word that her Nai Nai (paternal grandma) in China is sick with terminal cancer, she is heartbroken. Nai Nai has been a constant source of support to Billi throughout her life, offering her lighthearted advice and unconditional love despite the thousands of miles that separate them. Billi is further shaken when she hears a plan she hardly believes is real: the family won’t be telling Nai Nai of her diagnosis. Not only that, but they will stage a wedding in China as an excuse for the whole extended family, now spread all over the world, to come and say their goodbyes. 

In structure and in tone, The Farewell is nearly Ad Astra’s opposite. Zhao Shu-Shen’s effortlessly charming Nai Nai is so beloved by her family, such an instrumental positive on their lives, that they keep from her a diagnosis that means certain death. Wang is smart not to make the movie a depressing affair, though, and plays the inherently awkward premise for some unexpected laughs. Scenes with Nai Nai are cast in warm light, with wide angles and a generally stationary camera capturing the subtle joys of every family interaction. Naturally, Billi and her whole family are all particularly attentive to Nai Nai during all the wedding prep. Nai Nai, in blissful ignorance, often seems annoyed at the attention more than anything. After all, isn’t this about the happily married couple? In a particularly cringeworthy scene, Nai Nai calls the shots as she directs the husband and wife in their wedding photos, who (purposefully) have the least chemistry of any couple in modern times. “Can’t they act like a normal couple in love?” Nai Nai quips, “That girl is unaffectionate. Nothing like our family”.

Behind the curtain with the rest of the family, things are a little different. These scenes are often more dimly lit and take place in cooler environments, like hospitals and dark hotel rooms, as the family discuss the difficulty the secret brings them. Billi in particular finds it hard to keep a secret - some of her relatives suspect that her Western upbringing makes her the biggest risk to spill the beans. Further playing into her guilt is her own insecurity as the outsider; Billi feels very culturally disconnected from her family, and can’t help but partly blame her parents for displacing her. Her parents even told her not to come, so worried that the prickly morality of the secret would overwhelm her. It’s not as if they are having no trouble themselves; Billi’s father turns to smoking for the first time in years to ease his stress, to the dismay of Billi and her mom. Her mom opines that it’s not the cancer that could kill Nai Nai; it’s the “fear”, if she finds out. Her uncle warns her that “In the East, a person’s life is part of the whole - family. Society.” In her uncle’s estimation, Billi telling Nai Nai the truth would only ease her own guilt. “You want to tell Nai Nai the truth...because you’re afraid to take responsibility for her,” he says. “We’re not telling Nai Nai...because it’s our duty to carry this emotional burden for her.” This reframes the guilt that Billi feels for the deception as a selfishness - nothing could be more different than Roy’s emotional isolation than this collective grief, borne out of the love and loyalty that Roy so desired from his dad. This terrible secret both draws Billi and her family closer while threatening to push them apart, but at the center of it all is a deeply committed love. Even if the secret remains unthinkable to us as audience members, the sincerity of Billi’s family at least helps us understand.

In the centerpiece scene of the movie, the wedding receptions take a turn for tragicomedy once the family all get a couple drinks in them. Billi’s uncle gives his wedding speech, taking most of his time to express his heartfelt love for Nai Nai with tears flowing. Billi gets in on the action too, telling her family how hard it is to be in America and how happy she is to be back to celebrate. The groom starts sobbing uncontrollably on the sidelines. The secret is splitting at the seams - but Nai Nai, overjoyed with the celebration, is mostly just confused by the collective tears. In the end, they take a family picture, Nai Nai beaming at the center.

This brings us back to Ad Astra, and Roy’s final realization. Roy had spent his life chasing an idea of his father, repressing emotional attachment to all others to avoid acknowledging his hurt. By finally bearing witness to what his father had become, Roy realizes that his years of emotional dishonesty have done him no good. “We need to find what science tells us is impossible. I can't have failed.”, says a broken Cliff. Roy takes a moment. “Dad, you haven't. Now we know. We're all we've got.” They may not have found life out in the lonely cosmos, but Roy has found his purpose. To share life with others, to share its ups and downs, its love and its loss. Embarking on his journey back to our tiny Pale Blue Dot in the universe, Roy has one more biometric scan to pass. Immediately, his tone of voice is different. He wears relief on his face. “I will rely on those closest to me,” he says, “and I will share their burdens, as they share mine.”

In the end, Billi too decides to share the burden. She decides not to tell Nai Nai the truth, and says an emotional goodbye that only one of them realizes will be the last. Billi returns to bustling New York, walking the busy street alone and holding back tears, a stranger among the uncaring crowd. It has all the makings of a soul-crushing ending. But then, a wry smile. Billi thinks back to Nai Nai and her goofy exercise routine, one she was happy to teach Billi while she was visiting. And right there on the street, Billi breaks out Nai Nai’s routine, echoing her joy. We fade to black, and a final credit rolls - the real Nai Nai, Wang’s grandmother, the woman on which this incredible true story is based, is alive and well. More incredibly, the secret is still safe.

Gray and Wang have both crafted mesmerizing stories of familial burden, and above all else the love that drives us to withstand it. Although Roy and Billi have little in common, they have both experienced the pain of emotional repression and the relief to be found in confiding it in the ones who care about them and can understand. If nothing else, we can glean from these movies an appreciation for emotional vulnerability. Pain doesn’t need to be private - it’s only human, and we can always lean on each other for help. As Roy tells us, we’re all we got.