Spaceman: When was the next time you last appreciated the beautiful enumeration of the synonyms of ‘baffled’? There are quite a few of those in English considering the language’s possible permutations and combinations: puzzled, nonplussed, discombobulated, flummoxed, stumped, fogged, wildered, buffaloed. They are scrumptious, charming, dense with consonants and productive of a singular emotion: one is faced with something which on the face of it should be simple, but for some reason one is unable to fathom it.
I would like to thank the film for the occasion for one of my bouts of word nerdery: Spaceman with Adam Sandler. I wouldn’t say it is a particularly jarring movie by itself partly because, let’s face it, we have seen this type of movies before: a spaceman lost in deep space goes crazy and gets clearness about his past lifetime on earth. The point is that, it is not in the question what sorts of things do we expect to see in “Spaceman,” but rather in which narratives does that story exist.
Some bad movies were going to be any good and “Argylle “ is such a movie. Some other bad movies did not even try to be and “Madame Web” is such a movie. But Spaceman that is uniquely in the rare third way, and in the extreme. One forlornly expected that it would be a very bad movie, with all its production elements suggesting just that.
I cannot imagine any other conclusion, even if the work is not the greatest of masterpieces, it is a very interesting genre experiment. It is Sandler, the under-appreciated actor himself, in the leading role as Jakub the Spaceman, a character caught in drama. We also have the brilliant Carey Mulligan who is nominated for Best Actress, playing Lenka, who is his distant, pregnant wife. It has been composed by the ever-present Max Richter.
Its director Johan Renck also made a renowned mini-series called “Chernobyl” which is arguably one of the better television shows in the previous decade. And even though it’s Colby Day’s debut in bringing out into the big screen a script for feature film, it draws on Jaroslav Kalfar’s novel of great science fiction pedigree and appreciation, Spaceman of Bohemia.
I have no preconceived ideas from reading Kalfar’s book but there was a reviewer from The Guardian who likened it to a ‘Solaris’ with laughs, which makes me suspect of possible problems. There’s some ‘Solaris’ swimming around inside ‘Spaceman’, and also some ‘Gravity’, some ‘Interstellar’, some ‘First Man’, some ‘Ad Astra’. What there aren’t are laughs.
You may think that I am complaining because it’s Sandler that you’re actually supposed to be laughing at but — no, look, here’s the thing. There is no need to further assist now without revealing too much of the film, so if somewhere this bothers you, look away. What Are Everybody Advices For Their Concerns?
Fine. So Jakub, the commander of this ship around which there is only one occupant – himself, is apparently the central character who spends after halfway through the film most of the time rattling inside this janky turd of a spacemobile hurling abuse at a broken toilet and sweet talking a gigantic space spider voiced by Paul Dano. This cosmo-rachnid has a pair of luscious main eyes with a set of four petite ones directly above.
You know, too many limbs on those spiders (and I think I counted 10, which is biologically incorrect, but I’m most certainly not going to tell outer space how to build a spider). It is full of philosophical ramblings regarding the question of what is the purpose of existence. And it continually refers to Sandler — excuse me, Jakub — as ‘speak skinny human’, focusing on the first sound of the hissing. Sssssskinny human.
This kinda should be allowed to be funny because it is undeniably funny. Picture Adam Sandler, all wide-eyed earnest makeup but a drawn haggard face bent on nearly 200 days of space, walking out to discuss with a giant spider. That, my dear friends, is funny.
Despite the excitement of further deep space explorations, nearly all that Jakub wishes to do is to reminisce about his previous life — focusing mainly on his wife, Lenka (Mulligan), who he knows is at the bottom of the planet, discontent and pregnant with the willing to walk out on him – through clumsy epiphanies assisted by what appears to be a figment of his mind.
Jakub has been a terrible father, and the space spider whom he calls Hanus explains the reasons why, and how makes them entirely comprehensible. In effect, this is a story of a guy who’s been a jerk and a loser and has even hired a therapist professor spider to help him get the better of himself, with a fair anticipation of ending up being a normal, stable man.
In addition, Jakub too is high up with the space spider because for four years there has existed on the sky over the earth a purple cloud from which a portion of the spacecraft has come. Jakub on the other hand has been given an uncommon task – to learn about the events surrounding why this is on a vessel named after Hus the revered and martyrized sage of the Bohemians, which in turn is a program spearheaded by the present leader of the Czech republic, Tsuma Isabell Rosselini.
He is a Czech gentleman Jakub, so is Lenka and both Sandler and Mulligan attempt lightly and dreadfully to East European accent faux, and result is a part in real performance – they all have memorized lines.
No one knows we are in what year and the only other space program well directed towards the purple cloud area is that which comes from S. Korea for puzzling reasons, this one is the South Korea all too obvious trouble, this movie emphasizes many times. None of this is elucidated and, indeed, appears to be outside the scope.
That may sound fun-bad to you. It is not fun-bad. It is bathos-bad, effort-bad and also simply bad-bad. If it’s fun-bad meditations on psycho-parent issues and spider grapple-horror you’re looking for, you’d be able to watch ‘Madame Web’.
Much as one laughed off the “sssskinny human” thing said by Hanus when things were seemingly all serious, it was quite interesting considering how many people would click on it when it pops out on the Netflix page. “Why did I walk into that doorjamb yesterday? Did I have a concussion?”
“Spaceman” doesn’t have anything particularly smart regarding people and their relations and it doesn’t display particular preoccupations with the complot, even though it doesn’t even reach the status of memeably tragic which is really disappointing. what a waste of resources.
Given some room for breathing space, a layer of seriousness could have been wiped off the premise without losing itself in stomach and thinking. It is not obligatory to be clinically insane or artistic to explore the human condition in the film. But ‘Spaceman’ at the end manages to remain as mysterious as a purple cloud floating in the sky, which is more than even a wise spider-psychologist can fathom.
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