Midtown Blogger/Manhattan Valley Follies: Prague Post- Review- "The Martian"

Movie review: The Martian

Category: Cinema

Published: 01 October 2015

Written by Raymond Johnston

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Matt Damon in 'The Martian.' Courtesy photo

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Tale of survival in harsh conditions is most realistic space opera in a long time

We’ve all missed our transportation connections or somehow been left behind. It is inconvenient but usually it can be solved in a few hours or days.

Being left behind on another planet is something no human so far has faced. Ridley Scott’s latest film, The Martian, tries to take a fairly realistic look at how somebody might deal with such a situation.

Rating ****
Directed by Ridley Scott
With Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Sean Bean, Kate Mara

The setup is crucial in a disaster film. If the filmmakers lose the audience at the start, it is hard to get them back.

The reasons leading the rest of the crew to abort their mission and leave someone behind make sense enough. The sudden now-or-never situation left them little choice.

As the stranded astronaut, Matt Damon gives a solid performances as Mark Watney.

While the story could easily tip over into a self-pity party, Watney manages or stay upbeat by keeping a video diary and taking some joy in finding solutions to his problems of limited food and and resources while he plans to find some way to get off of Mars alive.

A running joke throughout the film is that the only music left behind by Watney's fellow astronauts was a collection of disco songs from the captain, Melissa Lewis (played by Jessica Chastain).

Watney truly dislikes them but seems to enjoy playing them for his video diary just so he can criticize each song. At one point he even declares he refuses to “turn the beat around,” as one song urges.

The film isn't a one-man show, though. Parallel plots develop on Earth as US space agency NASA tries to do public relations damage control over the botched mission and as the survivors of the crew make their way back to Earth.

As NASA head Teddy Sanders, veteran actor Jeff Daniels gives us a character who is a politician first and a scientist second. He is more concerned with hiding negative information from the public — and more importantly from the US Congress, which funds NASA — than with what is best for the stranded astronaut and returning crew.

This creates conflicts with the scientists under his control, such as Mitch Henderson, played by Sean Bean.

Rather than seeming like contrived plot points to build tension, the arguments between Sanders and Henderson are among the more believable parts of the film.

Director Ridley Scott has tackled science fiction many times before, being the man behind both Blade Runner and Alien, and more recently Prometheus.

This time he wanted to make a more realistic film. Novelist Andy Weir helped get NASA to work with Scott on the scientific aspects.

To a layman watching the film, everything that happens seems plausible.

The result should fare better with scientists than the film Gravity, which was roundly trashed by pop science guru Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

There are a few somewhat clumsy moments in the storytelling though, such as when someone on Earth mentions the possibility of an unforeseen disaster, followed seconds later by such a disaster on Mars.

It also takes forever for people on Earth to figure out what seems like the most obvious rescue plan from the beginning, but the delay does help to build suspense.

Still for Scott the film is a return to form after the bloated Bible drama Exodus: Gods and Kings.

As a film topic, travel to Mars has had a fairly dismal record so far, from campy 1950s efforts like Red Planet Mars to more box office recent disappointments like Mission to Mars (2000), Red Planet (2000) Ghosts of Mars (2001), John Carter (2012) and Last Days on Mars (2013).

The Martian seems set to break the decades-long Mars curse.