Every Easter, I watch a movie with themes of the season. Over the years, I’ve looked at films like Silence, Signs and First Reformed. This year, I didn’t have to look very hard to find the next film, it dropped itself right on my lap when I went to watch Project Hail Mary this weekend.
In the movie, earth is plagued with an annihilation level event. There are space dots on the sun, and they seem to be consuming it, which has severe repercussions for our life on earth. Dr Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a molecular biologist turned Science teacher is recruited to help identify what kind of life form the space dot is (they call it astrophage). After simulating the events on Venus to figure out why the astrophage is drawn to that planet, Grace discovers how the life form reproduces. This is the circumstances that lead to him being a part of Project Hail Mary – a rather on the nose name to represent how dire things are for humanity.
The narrative moves between Grace’s past and his present. In the present, he is the lone astronaut that survived the trip to Tau Ceti, while the past moments help us figure out how he ended up going to space in the first place. Much like The Martian, also a movie adapted from an Andy Weir book, Project Hail Mary needed a charismatic leading man to anchor the film. This type of material is what Gosling does best. He’s effortlessly funny, so the humorous parts of the film really land well, but he’s also an actor who can handle pathos. It’s hilarious that so many are thirsting over Gosling after they watched the movie, but it’s easy to understand why when he looks so goddamn charming even when he’s doing something ordinary, like watching Sandra Hüller’s Eva sing Sign of the Times. The styling for Gosling is also great – that fox cardigan, all the witty wordplay t-shirts. He’s credible as the everyman, but also oh-so-dashing.
Where the movie fails a little is not building enough of a narrative reason to explain the switch between past and present. Initially, the transitions to the past seemed like it was due to Grace slowly regaining his lost memories, but as the film wears on, it becomes clear that this isn’t the case. The trips to the past start to feel arbitrary, and at times, the film cuts away when we’re in a rather emotional scene, so we don’t get to really sink into the pathos of the moment. The movie leans a bit too quirky that the urgency is never quite felt, and while the movie’s message is more about hope than despair, it can sometimes feel a bit too sappy in the way things are executed. Project Hail Mary is too feel-good at times, and lacks the grit necessary for this type of film.
Project Hail Mary brings the heart through the relationship Grace forms with a fellow space traveller Rocky. Grace and Rocky soon establish a way to communicate, and they decide to join forces to save their respective planets from the star-eating astrophage. While many sci-fi films have taught us to fear alien life forms, Project Hail Mary does the opposite. Rocky and Grace share many honest conversations, about the lives they led on their planets, the people they loved, and what motivates them to carry on. It’s beautiful and affecting, especially when it becomes clear that both would willingly sacrifice for the other. Massive kudos to James Ortiz, who voiced Rocky and did the puppeteering for the character as well.
The production design is fantastic, and it’s clear to see the amount of research and effort that went into constructing sets that look like real-life space ships. There’s a certain contrast the movie builds between the moments on earth and the moments in space. In space, the colours feel more saturated and vibrant, less bleak and dull like the colouring on earth. That space walk scene with Gosling surrounded by dazzling hues of pink is transcendent and will probably be the closest thing I have to a spiritual experience in the cinema this year.
The movie is genuinely life-affirming and is a representation of the resilience of the human spirit. I asked my brother after the movie: how could Captain Yao (Ken Leung) go to space on basically a suicide mission when he had children? But that’s exactly why he would, to give his children a better future. We live for others just as much as we live for ourselves. This is what makes Eva such a fascinating character. She’s pragmatic, efficient, all her decisions driven by what’s best for humanity, discounting her own sentiment and at times morality. Hüller is incredible as she allows us to see beneath this cold impersonal surface. She shows us a woman who clearly cares and feels, but is driven by her responsibilities to push this all aside in order to do what’s right for humanity. She believes wholeheartedly in Grace’s potential and ideas, yet she also cruelly betrays him.
Project Hail Mary made me think about my relationship with God, and that sense of betrayal I sometimes feel when I am forced to go through a challenge or something I did not want to do. As human beings, we yearn for lives that are as smooth-sailing as possible, for happiness more than rain. But suffering and tragedy is unavoidable, and sometimes we will have to do things we never wanted to, or didn’t think we could. Maybe it makes us stronger, maybe it breaks us and we have to rebuild, maybe we splinter into a million pieces and never recover.
Or maybe, just maybe, we discover that we are braver than we thought possible.
REVIEW SCORE: 4/5
