ASTRONAUT

Stars: Richard Dreyfuss, Lyriq Bent, Colm Feore, Krista Bridges, Art Hindle, Richie Lawrence, Graham Greene, Mimi Kuzyk and Colin Mochrie.
Writer/director: Shelagh McLeod

Distributed in Australia by FilmInk Presents; available to stream on Apple TV, Fetch TV, Foxtel Store, Google Play and YouTube.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Despite a premise that requires a suspension of cynicism as vast as the Universe itself, Shelagh McLeod’s feature debut soars as a heart warming/breaking study in those dreams that won’t dissolve and the memories that carry us forward. As the widowed engineer whose ageing body is failing just as his mind re-engages with life, the remarkable Richard Dreyfuss delivers one of the most moving performances of his long career. That the manic young man who won an Oscar for The Goodbye Girl should have evolved into this refined yet fiercely determined elder statesman of cinema is testament to one of the great acting talents of all time.

Dreyfuss is Angus Stewart, a 75 year-old retiree who could once oversee the construction of highways but is now home alone, prone to dizzy spells and left in debt by his late wife’s spending (she was conned into a donkey farm in her final years). Angus has lived a long life consumed by a passion for the cosmos, a dedication to staring skywards shared by his grandson Barney (Richie Lawrence), tolerated by his daughter Molly (Krista Bridges) and dismissed by his son-in-law, Jim (Lyriq Bent).

When billionaire Marcus Brown (Colm Feore, oozing Elon Musk-iness) offers one lucky winner a commercial space flight, Angus begins to dream of galactic travel in earnest. But while his imagination is scaling new heights, his body is ailing and his family are trying to get him settled into aged care. McLeod gently spins the narrative focus from what dreams may come to what worth wisdom holds; come the stirring denouement, Angus’ past as a civil engineer is afforded as much honour as any imagined future as a septuagenarian astronaut.

Unlike the jaunty adventure Space Cowboys (2000) or the sci-fi fantasy Cocoon (1985), Astronaut is more interested in the humanity of its elderly characters than it is in serving the conventions of a genre. Accepting that our elders have legitimate longings and ambitions, even as their physical strength wans, is key to McLeod’s script. It also speaks to the fear we succumb to when we are faced with ageing parents, and how that fear can cut shorter their quality of life as much as ours.

One added bonus for viewers of a certain age is the reminder Astronaut provides that, forty-odd years ago, Dreyfuss played another working class family man for whom space held an unshakeable allure. There is much warmth to be shared in comparing Angus’ yearnings with those of Roy Neary and the close encounters that led him to first Wyoming, then farther afield.