by Bennett Campbell Ferguson
The first scene of Ridley
Scott’s new film “The Martian” is a haunting one. With steely control, the camera stares down
at Mars, then fixes its gaze on a cadre of astronauts spearheaded by Melissa
Lewis (Jessica Chastain). They’re
collecting data, joshing, showing off their shiny orange spacesuits…until a buffeting
dust storm forces them to rocket back into space and abandon their
presumed-dead comrade Mark Watney (Matt Damon), who is buried in martian sand
and very much alive.
Save for a sappy shot of Mark’s vacant chair, these early
moments of the movie coalesce into a delicious inferno of jovial teamwork, otherworldly
vistas, and stinging loss. Yet once Mark
is left in solitude, “The Martian” surrenders its emotional vigor. Mr. Scott may tell the tale with the brisk bravado
of a veteran assembler of Hollywood entertainments, but his film is
frustratingly hollow and even boring—much less exciting, in fact, than the
recent proclamation that the real NASA has discovered water on the real Mars.
Mr. Scott, of course, didn’t learn that in time to change
“The Martian,” so Mark has to make do with a towering, metallic
water-manufacturing contraption to stay the affects of dehydration. He keeps the device inside a crinkly white
shelter where he harvests potatoes, while waiting over a year to hear the
trumpets of a rescue party that may never touch down. “I’m going to have to science the shit out of
this,” Watney wryly declares, proving that in times of duress, a spacefarer’s most
potent gadget is their sense of humor.
Or is it? As the
days pass and Mark ventures further across the Red Planet’s dusty plains, he
appears strangely immune to despair. Or
any emotion, for that matter. “The
Martian” is based on a novel by Andy Weir, who explained in a recent New York Times interview that he bristled
against the possibility of plunging into the gloom of exploratory loneliness, choosing
instead to zero in on Mark’s adventurous bravado and scientific know-how. The film follows his lead, to its detriment.
In
fact, “The Martian” commits itself not to dramatic storytelling, but to
rattling off a string of painfully unfunny quips. At least three times, Mark mocks the disco
music Melissa left in his martian hut, as if hoping that repetition will
improve the joke (it doesn’t). What’s
more, Mark’s oppressive jocularity even infects the film’s capsule-spinning
climax, in the midst of which he cheekily says that if he punches a hole in his
spacesuit, he’ll “fly around like Iron Man” (which is the sort of grating pop
culture reference that might show up in, well, “Iron Man”).
In
Hollywood movies, space has long been a laughter-friendly zone (as the
delectable wordplay of J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek” movies has reaffirmed). But making a space epic that isn’t attuned to
the rush of wonder and loneliness that an outstretched starry canvas of can’t
help but stir is like strapping on a spacesuit with no oxygen tank. Lest we forget, it was the isolation of
Sandra Bullock’s stranded Ryan Stone in “Gravity” that made her survival so
exhilarating; her despair primed us perfectly for the joy of her triumph.
It’s a shame that “The Martian” couldn’t do the same, and
that it offers a multitude of cinematic stumbles to nitpick (including Mr.
Scott’s distracting and ludicrous choice to flash the names of every NASA
character’s name and rank onscreen when they first appear). Yet there are fleeting moments when the movie
coheres into something wondrously diverse.
Not only are Mark’s would-be rescuers are of, respectively, American,
Latino, and German descent, but the action on terra firma is spurred by the
resourceful NASA techies played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Donald Glover, and
Benedict Wong. Towards the end of the
film, we even see people across globe gathering in public to pray for Mark’s
return.
Somehow, the struggle of one inspires the transcendence
of borders.
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