A romantic affair or a psychological collapse?
Johan Renck is a Swedish director/producer whose career was born and evolved in the field of music videos.
In 2019 he achieved moderate success by directing 5 episodes of the "Chernobyl" series but, for the rest , there are no notable works and this “Spaceman” represents, in fact, his first feature film.
Adam Sandler, very famous American actor of comedies and comedy films, plays here the absolute protagonist role, the Czech astronaut Jakub Prochazka who is sent on a mission, beyond Jupiter, to investigate a mysterious purple nebula, called Chopra, which has been visible from Earth for years and whose composition and effects are unknown could cause on our planet.
A single astronaut on a distant spacecraft, a single country (the Czech Republic) that believes in the feasibility of the mission (in reality we will discover that there are two countries because South Korea also sent its own spacecraft, a few months after the departure of Jakub's) which appears much more complex and significant than it may appear...
Actually in the film there is a co-protagonist named Hanus who has the features of an arachnid, a decidedly very large spider (more or less half the size of a human being), a creature who, initially, manages to contact Jakub telepathically (speaking same language) and that the astronaut will then find themselves inside the same spacecraft where they will find themselves talking verbally.
Hanus has a decidedly friendly behavior although his figure is somewhat monstrous and can instill fear in humans, although its presence appears to be physically real, until the end the doubt will remain whether it is not a creation of the altered mental state of Jakob, who has been alone inside the spacecraft for months.
< 1>
Chopra seems to be, in some ways, a sort of macguffin, a pretext to give importance to the true narrative fulcrum of the film: the romantic relationship between Jakub and his wife Lenka (played by Carey Mulligan who we have already seen in " Public Enemy”, “Wall Street” and “Drive”).
An astronaut who sacrificed his marital relationship to dedicate himself, body and soul, to the mission and a (pregnant) wife who , left alone and disappointed by her husband's decision, no longer wants to know about him and the mission.
Jakub, however, is psychologically very stressed by months of solitude and would like to talk to his wife but she he refuses and this could cause the entire mission to collapse.
Hanus is a sort of "conscience" of Jakub and he too, according to what he says, was sent by his people to study the earthlings but came across Jakub's spaceship and decided to choose it as an element to study.
Hanus knows that Chopra is a sort of "door", not to Infinity but towards the Beginning: it seems in fact that the microscopic particles that make up the nebula are composed of photons dating back to the Big Bang, at the beginning of everything, at the beginning of Space and Time…
< 0>The film is decidedly static and slow, almost purely verbal where Jakub, again with the help of Hanus, will begin to retrace and review the main phases of the story with Lenka where the latter, in the meantime, on Earth tries to forget the past and dedicate himself solely to the birth, now a few weeks away, of his daughter.
Although the final part is quite fascinating and mysterious ("2001" always sets the example...) it must be said that the film it fails, much, to capture the viewer's attention because, mainly, one realizes that the story is almost a sentimental drama rather than a Science Fiction film and some may be disappointed.
I won't post photos since the film is currently showing.
