
Jakub Prochazka, as played by Adam Sandler, is nearing 189 days into a mission to explore the mysterious Chopra cloud surrounding Jupiter. He seeks to be left alone as his personal life has spiraled out of control, again further amplified by the fact that his mission has already exceeded its time limit. His pregnant wife, Lenka, is the sole thing weighing heavy in his heart perhaps, even more than the mission considering the state of a broken aircraft stuck in the confines of space and time. Although two people in Command Control, Peter (Kunal Nayyar) his physician, and Tuma (Isabella Rossellini) a poor character in the story, attempted to keep away his anxiety, Jakub was aware that everything was not right. When a spaceship of primordial size and shape named Hanus appears in the airplanes, he does not know whether the object is real or a product of weariness. He believes that if these two forms of universes should combine, great secrets may be revealed then.
A film worldwide premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival called Spaceman directed by Johan Renck featuring Adam Sandler in space doesn’t seem bad at all.
The films, Ad Astra and First Man are about two men both stoic who undertake a journey to the far reaches of the universe mainly to avoid dealing with their children or their father’s problems. Some men prefer the company of a giant spider in space to visit a therapist. With Hanus, Jakub does begin a sort of therapy, as he recalls all of his unfavorable childhood memories and presents vulnerabilities in a rather dull space drama that is nevertheless very gentle.
The first half of the song Spaceman however is boring, in fact very boring. Most of the time, we are stuck in the tiny confines of the spacecraft, the only time we come out of its claustrophobic shell is when Hanus tries to work out Jakub’s psyche in an attempt to figure out why this oh so lovely skinny human as he likes to refer to him is eternally grumpy. These flashback sequences are, for some reason, shot by DP Jakob Ihre through the subjective lens of a spider, creating nauseatingly static perspectives that could have provided us with unusual compositions that would have been more informative than the equally brittle conversations. No matter what kind of ethereal score is trying to sell them, the images of space are quite boring and look like purple sludge clouds rather than breathtaking flashes of the remnants of the genesis of the galaxy. The dialogue throughout the film barely has any original lines apart from what Jaroslav Kalfař’s sci-fi novel Spaceman of Bohemia has given us. At some point, it sounds as if Mulligan’s only lines will be Where you go, I go. But then, the film picks up its pace.
In fact, Sandler is a very different person here than even in his more dramatic turn in something like Uncut Gems or The Meyerowitz Stories. The presence of loud yells or moments of unrestrained aggression is basically non-existent.
Sandler has always had a rather impressive mastery in finding unabashed hearts from an emotional core. It is, therefore, somewhat inexplicable to witness that hammer, in a figure of speech, being so frayed. That pall fatalism, as it has been called, is intentional. Jakub is not a character that elicits any sympathy. Still haunted by his perceived role of witnessing the death of his communist informant father as well as the fact that nearly the entire space team is supposedly Czech, he seems unable to service Lenka’s thoughts. Sandler’s haggard eyes, his weary body language as well as his tense posture somehow convey the character even whilst it remains a mystery as to why would Lenka have fallen for him in the first place if ever she did.
There is a deserved levity in Spaceman that cuts the heavy darkness of the subject matter. To explain, one has to understand that it’s Sandler’s film and whenever he is on screen, jokes are always to be expected. There are a few rolls in the aisles with the notion that Jakub is such a sad bastard that the spider also gets sad and this drives it to eat snacks in the middle of a massive depression. But other funny moments are of course provided by Dano’s low-key delivery.
The sheer weight of his being, as with a spider who may have originated at the time of the cosmos, is not hard to imagine. But there is also an endearing fragility and altruistic quality about the character, which endears him to Jakub, and the audience also. Two reticent beings, a man and a spider, who find companionship in each other, make an appealing pair the other, and the other, induces both warmth and laughter when the two embrace each other.
A lot can be said against Spaceman. Mulligan’s character has little backstory we know little of her career or whether she harbors any personal hopes or ambitions, and these perhaps are points some people might wish to make. But the slender script does expect a considerable amount of effort from the actress that would fall apart in the wrong hands. In the case of Mulligan, there exists a tangible interiority despite the material. Others may find the overall say too drowsy, too melancholic, and perhaps even defeatist. But I love the way Sandler sounds in this mode. At this point, it no longer comes as a shock when he delivers a strong, well-grounded, and unforgettable dramatic performance. This has simply become the expected standard.
In a reflective art film like Spaceman where the theme revolves around letting go, loving another person, and self-reinvention, it is quite appropriate that one does not treat the idea of a Sandman in space as simple taglines but indeed as something that actually and meaningfully is going to happen.
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