Spaceman opens in select theaters February 23, and premieres on Netflix March 1. This review is based on a screening at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival.
Aesthetically accomplished, but emotionally dull and philosophically banal, Spaceman is a science- fiction misfire. Despite a stellar dramatic performance from Adam Sandler, and numerous ideas that ought to have worked, the end result is the tale of a man lost in space, who finds nothing and learns even less, even though the movie gestures towards some phantom poignancy that never materializes. He does meet an ancient arachnid being along the way (voiced by none other than Paul Dano), but whatever this creature represents is likely to end up forgotten, once the film dovetails into schmaltzy self-parody.
Much about the story works on paper. Adapted by writer Colby Day from Jaroslav Kalfař’s 2017 novel Spaceman of Bohemia, the movie drops us halfway through the solo journey of Jakub Procházka (Sandler), the first astronaut of the free Czech Republic, as he arrives at a mysterious, purple cosmic cloud that’s located near Jupiter and large enough to be visible from Earth. He’s been gone six months, leaving his pregnant wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan) behind, and his isolation has left him weary and delirious – setup for an equally tired depiction of a marriage on the rocks. So, when he begins hearing a disembodied voice, which eventually takes the form of a giant spider aboard his craft (which Jakub dubs Hanuš, after a fabled Czech clock maker), the reality of the scenario is a secondary concern. Jakub isn’t quite sure if he’s losing his mind, and the film’s presentation of this multi-legged, giant-eyed being – who waxes poetic about the origins of the universe and psychically probes the astronaut’s memories – is amusingly frank.
At the outset, each new development is intriguing to look at. The way Chernobyl alum Johan Renck shoots Sandler on his space voyage has a disorienting quality: The camera never stops floating and spinning, even subtly, adding to Jakub’s inability to tell up from down. Back on Earth, when the movie follows Lenka or the folks at mission control (led by Isabella Rossellini and Kunal Nayyar) trying to thwart her communication with her husband, a stillness and silence consumes the frame, as people wait patiently for Jakub to figure out the nature of the enormous violet-colored phenomenon hovering in the far reaches of the solar system. Whenever Jakub gets lost in daydreams and memories, these flashes are presented through a distorted lens, as though a nearly-360 degree image had been compressed into a rectangular frame or distorted by gravity. This fisheye perspective depicts a hazy past and begins to illuminate feelings of remorse, as Jakub reflects on leaving his wife half a year ago, and growing distant from her well before that.
These shifting visual modes are the film’s most powerful trick. Unfortunately, it’s the only gimmick Spaceman really has. Before long, even Sandler’s frayed, exhausted performance and stilted delivery end up in service of Jakub and Lenka’s distinctly two-dimensional estrangement. He is no one except “aloof husband,” just as she is no one except “long-suffering wife.” Were it not for the extraneous dialogue between Jakub and Hanuš, there would be little sense that the movie involves any sort of self-reflection on the character’s flaws and misgivings either. It’s all “tell” and no “show.”
Spaceman ought to be watched on mute, or perhaps stripped of its dialogue track. Its textured atmosphere and its retro-futuristic designs (when the movie is set, beyond “sometime after Czech independence in 1993,” is something of a mystery) are gorgeous to look at. Even Hanuš – a creature that seems to change size between shots and feels like the product of malformed CGI – is the right kind of uncanny, with vaguely human eyes and a semi-visible mouth. His cadence, reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000, would be worth listening to on loop, were it not for the fact that his function is to first and foremost explain Jakub’s mental and emotional state to him, and to the audience.
Comparisons to other, better space films like 2001 are unavoidable: the vast isolation embodied in James Gray’s Ad Astra, the sense of yearning for home captured by Claire Denis’ High Life. Spaceman can’t help but feel like a facsimile – even though none of these other films feature giant, possibly -imaginary spider therapists – because Renk seems to borrow philosophical and emotional questions from each of them. (Throw in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris and its Steven Soderbergh-directed remake, and baby, you’ve got a stew going). But that’s also the movie’s biggest problem: it can’t wrestle with any answers, because it’s never able to fully articulate its own questions. All it does is crib from other auteurs’ cosmological visions, resulting in something far less personal and interesting. Even its one semi-original idea – Jakub projecting videos and images on the walls of his ship, turning its interior into a distinctly cinematic space – fails to conjure anything meaningfully reflective or reflexive.
Despite what works about Spaceman, there’s no saving it beyond a point. Its devolution into empty gesticulating in its disengaging final act feels all but inevitable the moment it starts to over-explain its musings on love, humanity, loneliness, and the mysteries of the universe. When it finally begins to confront those mysteries, its visual artistry – which goes to great lengths to establish mood, and uneasy emotional equilibrium – is swiftly laid low by its dependence on the literal, nullifying whatever abstractions its sci-fi premise might come to briefly represent.
