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At its center “The Martian” a Ridley Scott film featuring an astronaut ingeniously staying alive on a barren planet, is a classic story of a shipwreck, which just happens to take place in the form of a science fiction adventure. But while the overview is predictable, it’s the specifics and the mood that come across as novel.
Just like with all adaptations of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and even in the movie ‘Robinson Crusoe on Mars’ and ‘Cast Away’, this movie features a man, Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, who musters all of his intellect and tenacity to survive a situation that seems impossible. If you have watched any film at all, you know that deep down, things will turn out alright for Mark. No studio is going to spend on a visual effects-loaded epic film, featuring a likable and intelligent castaway who dies in the last five minutes. In addition, we are all aware that there is a reason the filmmakers chose to cast Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain as the captain of the mission and it was not so that she could rush back to Earth with her crew in the first ten minutes and not come back.
Just like that, your knowledge hits home that NASA needs to form a rescue plan irrespective of the issues faced with the endeavor. Moreover, it’s clear the “Jean Daniels” character captures a strong dislike to the idea. And as typical, NASA never forms a question like what needs to be done. They only concern themselves with “how” they will go about it.
Scott and Goddard along with Weir do a superb job of detailing “how” processes need invention. For example, it’s important to consider “what would happen if the face plate on your helmet cracked” and how could one expect to have food on a planet that can’t support plant life. To that basic and short answer that follows, “duct tape” and “enclose the partially broken head with a potato that has happens to be fertilized with excrement and other waste from the crew.” Mark chose to take on the role of a quiet character and had an equally strong shadow. Unlike in life where one is required to behave exceptionally to be despised. Mark is depicted as thinking out loud through a video diary. Naturally, those watching his records become his audience. So why is the scene where he attempts to help himself by pulling the doors together from the basement full of food miracles so captivating? In short, it’s simple realism and optimism.
I would like to presume “The Martian” is a predictable film. Even with the predictable nature of the film, it greatly succeeds as a whole. The film’s approach to handling its predictability, instead of trying too hard to fight it, is all the more interesting. No one has, at least, to my knowledge, captured a feeling like that at this scale of budget and in the genre. Among the plethora of films about astronauts dealing with the aftermath of a disaster, such as “Mission to Mars”, and the visually superior and far more aggressive, if rather melodramatic “Gravity” which is more of a self-help parable with religious overtones “The Martian” is certainly the most relaxed, warm, and funny. Like Scott’s groundbreaking 1979 thriller “Alien” and his follow-up “Blade Runner”, “The Martian” gives us a glimpse into the future, which is both astounding and banal. The world surrounding the characters, despite its splendor, is simply reality, the time and space in which these characters are living.
Sometimes it feels like the film’s greatest work of art does not stem from a previous novel or movie, but rather the second act of “ 2001: A Space Odyssey” that contains some of the most delightful illustrations of Dr.
Like a businessman taking a red-eye from Los Angeles to New York, Mr. Floyd was fast asleep on a Pan Am flight to an orbital station while reading the instructions on a zero-gravity toilet. The soundtrack in the movie is rather funny as it consists mainly of disco music, the only kind available to Mark through his captain’s left-behind laptop. The combination of Scott’s sweeping red-brown landscapes, Damon’s filthy, stubbly face, and the 1970’s “Turn the Beat Around, Hot Stuff, ‘Rock the Boat’” is pure magic. They give the impression that Mark’s problem is a better version of a really boring but important job like roofing or garage painting. It just seems to be the case that hard work is easier when you turn up the music.
An episode of a reality television series featuring an individual on a separate planet would closely resemble ‘The Martian.’ With a hint of self-help, Scott and Goddard’s narrative exhibits some combination of both fiction and reality. Mark takes us through his inner dialogue, and self-instructive monologue as he journeys on the processes to achieve self-created goals, for example, rehydrating excretions and blending the combination with Martian dirt, where he then plants cut potatoes in the soil and patiently awaits the emergence of a green sprout. Everything is weighed through reasoning and judgment, like Mark’s decision on whether or not to keep the cockpit heater on while he travels hundreds of kilometers in his rover to retrieve equipment left from an older Mars mission. He came to the conclusion that he would prefer comfort above all, and chose to keep the heater on, even though it would cut his functionality.
Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Dr. Vincent Kapoor, head of NASA’s missions to Mars, wishes to bring Mark back home out of honor and responsibility. All the other characters, including Chastain’s Capt. Melissa Lewis, Daniels’ Teddy Sanders, and Sanders’ morally outraged right-hand man, Mitch Henderson (played by Sean Bean, who is the best actor to portray a man of principles) are more or less on the same page. It is not a question of who wants to perform the crowd-pleasing and heroic act, but whether it can be done. It takes time to establish radio contact with Mars, and you cannot simply send a spaceship like you would a birthday present by next-day delivery. Prep and payment is necessary for sending a spacecraft over. That could take up months or years. At one point the NASA people wonder whether they should skip safety checks on an unmanned flight in order to satisfy a specific deadline.
While calculations are written on whiteboards and concerns of money, fuel and safety matters are raised, the NASA technicians, scientists and managers work against the clock, but mostly they speak to one another in a collective voice devoid of hysteria. Some of them tend to overstep and have to apologize. The jokes are cracked. A few of the interactions border on office humor. Much of Scott’s reputation relies on his capacity to imagine and portray beautiful images of savage tales, so one forgets how adept he is at community and witty exchanges (see “Thelma and Louise” and “Matchstick Men,” for example). He fuses these parts of his talent better than any film he has directed. At its best, it has the tranquil confidence of a Howard Hawks chummy romp in which no situation is so perilous that it cannot still contain a spot of good-natured fun.
The characterizations feel a little vague and flat to begin with but seem to deepen with little details.
Even minor characters who appear for a scene or two, like Donald Glover’s Rich Purnell, have a pulse. Purnell is a brilliant but eccentric young scientist who’s so deep inside his head that he doesn’t even know the name of the director of NASA. One of the best scenes from the movie is where Kapoor and communications specialist Mindy Park (played by Mackenzie Davis) are deciphering the tone of Mark’s drastic typed response to a plan to save him: “Are you kidding me?” Kapoor is desperately trying to convince himself that Mark was trying to show excitement at NASA’s bold move, but he knows all too well that deep down, that is not the case.
The film features its most prominent counter-intuitive sequence during a music montage near the climax. Rescuer actions are interrupted in order to show the astronauts on Mark’s old spaceship contacting their loved ones through satellite video. The astronauts show their husband, wife, and father a record album bought for their birthday as kids delight through the spaceship’s interior in zero gravity. Billions gathered on live TV at the end to watch the rescue, but there aren’t any indications that suggest people other than Mark are dawdling. We can assume that it is life or death for Mark, but there is bound to be a lot of time when the public chooses to forget that he’s stranded. The most significant recurring visuals in the film are chunks capturing sprigs that are sprouting from the potatoes that Mark buried in his greenhouse. Life goes on.
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