You just begin.” This line, at the end of The Martian, released 11 years ago and packing in the kind of repeat-value watch few films have managed to over the last decade, struck home then and is particularly resonant in the times we live in. It was part of a speech that Mark Watney (Matt Damon) delivered to a roomful of aspiring astronauts when asked what kept him going alone in a capsule on Mars when almost all hope had faded away. Watney’s speech, and the film’s optimistic message: that you just get to work, solving one problem after another, figuring it out step by step until you have finally changed things for the better — feels relevant in every step of the world we live in now.
It is this warmth and buoyancy that is also the wind beneath the (spaceship) wings of Project Hail Mary. It is no coincidence that this Phil Lord-Christopher Miller-directed film is based on an Andy Weir novel, much like Ridley Scott had adapted another Weir read into The Martian, and ran with it.
Heart, humour, sprawling canvas and intimate vibe lie at the heart of Project Hail Mary, carried almost singlehandedly by Ryan Gosling, whose inherent charm, leading-man screen presence and deadpan humour make the film one of the most uplifting outings in recent times.
A certifiable box-office smash — it has opened bigger than any other Hollywood film this year — Project Hail Mary stars Gosling as Ryland Grace, who joins the canon of unlikely heroes one cheers for in a film where the viewer buys into the stakes without being overwhelmed by its sci-fi technicalities.
The story begins with an utterly confused Grace waking up from years of induced hyper-sleep — alone — on a spacecraft. He is not an astronaut — “I put the ‘not’ in astronaut,” the screenplay flashbacks to Grace telling his no-nonsense recruiter Eva Stratt, played by the indomitable Sandra Huller. An erudite microbiologist, Grace, before his space escapade, is a middle-school science teacher who has been reluctantly inducted to unlock the mystery of the solar parasite Astrophage, a single-celled micro-organism that is devouring the energy of stars, most prominently the sun.
That is explained in a flashback, with Stratt making it clear why Grace is the chosen one — his radical, once-rejected biochemical research is the unorthodox key to earth’s survival. Only the distant star Tau Ceti somehow remains immune to Astrophage and, as his spaceship traverses space, Grace discovers that he has got company — in the form of a vessel with an alien life form from Erid in a different solar system, but with a similar mission: to save its own planet.
Calling the non-humanoid, five-limbed entity Rocky (no Sylvester Stallone was harmed in the process), Grace comes up with a translation device for communication and Rocky devises a solution to their incompatible atmospheric requirements, with the plot melding into an oddball buddy movie that will have you crack a smile and break into a tear in equal measure. Rocky and Grace, over the course of their shared adventure, have a close encounter of the deepest kind, their interactions often turning poignant and whimsical. As a social media user pointed out: “Rocky aur Ryan ki prem kahaani”. We are all for it!
What will make most viewers instantly buy into Rocky is that he is not CGI, but a sophisticated puppet who was on set interacting with Gosling, voiced and maneuvered by master puppeteer James Ortiz. That gives Rocky a tactile physical presence, and a palpable chemistry with Gosling that, safe to say, wouldn’t have been felt even with the most sophisticated visual effects. Grace and Rocky’s friendship forms the emotional core of the story and Gosling needs to be given a lot of credit for bringing in the kind of emotive impact he does with only a puppet as his co-star. Their interactions will, more often than not, remind you of the daily equation between Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) and his football-face companion Wilson in CastAway.
Project Hail Mary’s biggest win lies in the fact that it strikes a unique balance between being a heartfelt comedy between two surprisingly similar personalities and a sci-fi romp portraying a wider message on the perseverance of humanity. The sci-fi, as is Weir’s trademark, has an edge of warmth and humour that keeps even non-fans completely invested.
What also works is the film’s use of visual effects, which gets the memo of being dazzling but without muzzling its humanity. It plays out like a mixtape of the genre’s recent biggest hits. There is the sunshine-y optimism of The Martian, the alien-language decode element of Arrival, the civilisational-generational sweeping threat of Interstellar and the lonely anxiety phenomenon of Passengers.
At a time when we are being asked to not only shun but viciously come down on all things alien — and by that I don’t just mean extraterrestrial beings, but just about anything that seems different from us — Project Hail Mary talks about the power of inclusion, of adjustment and about looking after each other.
The film feels like a return to form for Hollywood. It is a visual extravaganza that doesn’t forget what its storytelling core is — it shows what it means to be human, to make mistakes and, most importantly, to overcome them together. We could all do with a little bit — or much more — of that.
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