As we wade through a spring of grim world news, what a treat to experience an effusion of old-school American can-do at its most inventive and most humane. The first great blockbuster of the year sees Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the eccentric talents behind the Lego Movie and the Spider-Verse flicks, wrestling Andy Weir’s galaxy-spanning Project Hail Mary into a sentimental treat for all but the hardest of hearts.
There are unmistakable reminders here of Ridley Scott’s take on The Martian, Weir’s first novel: plucky inventive hero in space, fretful boffins on Earth. But this is an altogether more transcendent affair. Daniel Pemberton’s varied score swings from fairground jaunt to baroque sweep. Greig Fraser, Oscar-winning cinematographer of Dune, finds abstract magic in the aura around distant planets. If it were not for an unfortunate outbreak of too-many-endings syndrome – a hangover from the book – we might have had a classic for the ages. It is still pretty darn strong.
Sometime in the near future, a strain of alien microbes – identified as Astrophage – is discovered to be eating away at a various celestial bodies, including our own dear sun. The scientists discern that one star, Tau Ceti in the Cetus constellation, is resisting the infection (if that’s the word) and elect to send a spaceship to find out why. There are, as anyone with basic physics will agree, a few improbabilities here, but Astrophage will make everything, including interstellar travel, believable enough for matinee fun.
When the spaceship reaches its destination, only one crew member, an overqualified science teacher named Ryland Grace, is left alive to save the earth (and a few other planets). Ryan Gosling enjoys himself enormously in the role: bumbling at first, then more confident, eventually an unlikely aw-shucks hero. Jimmy Stewart beyond the asteroid belt.
READ MORE
Any sense that Grace is still within his comfort zone evaporates when he encounters an alien ship piloted by a stone-textured being he christens Rocky. It feels briefly as if the film-makers are going to create something creepily unknowable from the creature, but, as the two develop an understanding, Rocky settles into cute mode. No matter. This is $200 million entertainment, not some variation on Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, and the relationship between pink fleshy beast and ambulatory tor proves genuinely touching.
There is a suggestion of a decent gag as we flash back to the research centre and Grace’s often tense relationship with Eva Stratt, head of the project. Sandra Hüller makes something believable of a flinty European whose dry sense of humour clanks against Grace’s all-American sincerity. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that he finds it easier to have a relationship with an alien than with a German woman.
Those scenes in the research centre are imbued with genuine poignancy as the scientists struggle to cope with too many horrific realities. We soon learn that Gosling and his crew cannot carry enough fuel to return to Earth. The plan will probably fail; even if it succeeds – and solutions are beamed home – the heroes will all die.
Hüller gets to encapsulate the sadness in a tremendous karaoke performance that, as well as reminding us of her take on Greatest Love of All in Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann, provides her with a perfect clip when, in 11 months’ time, she gets an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. (You heard it here first.)
And yet. It is such a shame that momentum is allowed to sag as the film shuffles through six endings when either of the first two would do nicely. To that point, Project Hail Mary is a model of high-class popular entertainment. An explicit tribute to a Steven Spielberg classic in the opening third feels like no great overreach.
In cinemas from Thursday, March 19th
