Spaceman Movie Review: Sandler’s Excellent Performance And Overall All It Takes To Become An Excellent Product
Cast: Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan
Director: Johan Renck
Where to Watch: Netflix (from 1st March 2024)
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars)
The review of Spaceman, the new Netflix film starring Adam Sandler presented at the Berlin Film Festival. Presented as a world premiere at the seventy-fourth edition of the Berlinale, in the out-of-competition Berlinale Special Gala section, and available on Netflix from March 1st, Spaceman marks yet another collaboration between the streaming giant and the actor Adam Sandler. After comedies, dramas, high-voltage films, and his recent foray into animation, the star now lends himself to science fiction in what is a journey toward the boundless depths of the unknown… human. The supervisor at the head of the mission, played by the always excellent Isabella Rossellini, knows this well, determined to protect him and not pass on to him the message from his wife Lenka who intends to leave him. With the usual peaks of dramatic depth to which she has accustomed us, the actress Carey Mulligan, nominated for an Oscar for Maestro, gives voice and depth to a woman in crisis, pregnant and exasperated by the selfishness of a man who has always preferred ambition.
A man who finds himself hopelessly alone, with his nightmares and his hallucinations, his remorse and melancholy memories of love replayed through dreamlike and poetic flashbacks. When everything collapses, the only hope is the other, in this case, the other: a giant hairy spider, with the deep voice of Paul Dano (we highly recommend viewing it in the original language!) and ancient wisdom, typical of a thousand-year-old civilization that knows the dynamics – even emotional ones – of the universe inside out. He will be the shoulder to cry on, the secret companion, the alter ego with which to share fears, desperation, and guilt. As personal as they are inherited from his father: he bears the specter of torture perpetrated during the communist regime on his shoulders.
Spaceman Movie Review: The Story Plot
Jakub Procházka (Adam Sandler) is an astronaut who has been conducting a mission in total solitude for several months. Dispersed in the celestial vault, man is engaged in the search for a mysterious stardust. The journey also proves to be an opportunity to realize the great desire that Jakub has harbored since he was a child, namely that of coming into contact with the vastness of the Universe and making peace with the traumas of the past. The price to pay, however, is to see his life on Earth fall apart: his wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan) is no longer willing to see herself neglected due to her husband’s great ambitions and is intent on asking for a divorce. As if that wasn’t enough, Jakub will meet a giant alien spider with whom he will talk about life, love, and philosophy. The man is not sure whether the monster is real or just a fruit of his imagination, but with him he will retrace his entire past, questioning his life and making the space mission overshadow.
Director Johan Renck is famous for having worked on the direction of numerous successful music videos (Madonna’s Hung Up and David Bowie’s Blackstar, just to name a couple) or on some episodes of television series of the caliber of Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead or Chornobyl, now takes its cue from the 2017 novel Spaceman of Bohemia, written by Jaroslav Kalfar, to tell a “classic” training journey aimed at destabilizing any certainty of a protagonist who is only apparently granitic and aware of his life choices. Thus, the film fits perfectly into the most intimate and philosophical trend of science fiction, which finds its illuminating beacon in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and which has recently seen very prominent authors such as Alfonso Cuaròn try their hand at or James Gray, who with their respective Gravity (2013) and Ad Astra (2019) contributed to fueling this very particular subgenre.
Spaceman Movie Review and Analysis
The starting material is certainly fascinating and magmatic. Just like the look adopted by Renck, who prefers not to skimp on the spectacularization of the journey, while always working only to restore a very profound humanity. Between contemplative images and an enveloping soundtrack, Spaceman soon becomes an audiovisual concert in which the forced solitude to which the protagonist is subjugated becomes, inevitably, a psychological cage that leads to an impressive stream of consciousness. In all of this, Adam Sandler does not spare himself, dedicating body and soul (the work on physiognomy, the decline of the physique, and the trace of time in the wrinkles and dark circles of the unfortunate astronaut are notable) to a project that always sees him on stage, from the first to the last minute.
It’s a shame then that the film struggles to take off completely, remaining in a comfort zone from which it would have been better to escape instead, especially given the connotations and the chords touched by the story. It almost seems that Renck is afraid of taking the risk of biting off more than he can chew, keeping within consolidated and controlled lines without ever really letting his heart speak. Everything is contained, precise, calculated and, unfortunately, didactic. It is some extremely explicit passages and some lines of dialogue between Sandler and the alien (voiced, in the original, by Paul Dano) that make the outcome of the operation less convincing. It is therefore no coincidence that the best moments are those of the silent and (sidereal) distant confrontations between Jakub and his wife (a poignant Carey Mulligan), while it is precisely when one feels the burden of having to communicate and dialogue with a vast international audience (that of streaming) that the film convinces and involves decidedly less.
This is a problem that, upon closer inspection, has been gripping Netflix productions for some time, starting with the most recent ones such as Lift by F. Gary Gray (2023) and The Kitchen by Daniel Kaluuya (2023). The ideas are all there, the project has ample potential and the creative team chosen to take care of the development has all the guarantees and qualities useful to the cause. It is therefore a shame to have to realize that we are rarely faced with something truly complete, thoughtful, or completely successful, instead feeling the stringent imposition of an understandably coherent and constant editorial line which, however, in the long run, risks suffocating the creative streak of those who get involved. Something is intriguing in certain glimpses of Spaceman: the images of Jakub’s daily life (from mood medications to the treatment of excrement), the landslides of the room which even in the terrestrial scenes suggest a continuity with those in the spaceship.
The appearances by Isabella Rossellini who in the role of the cosmonaut commander is as authoritative as she is ambiguous (she gives the key line: “the silence is the point”), Hanuš’s fatal eyes and knowing to smile well matched Dano’s tender voice. However, Spaceman is an absolute mess. There is a problem of tone, from the humor contracted to the spider that does not emancipate itself from the written page – thus ending up proving dystonic – to the lack of balance in the dosage of humanist science fiction and cosmic melodrama. And above all there is a problem in the direction, which in the terrestrial sequences sometimes chases certain suggestions of Soviet cinema, sometimes transcendental Malick-style atmospheres, while in the orbital ones, it unleashes botched lysergic fantasies that almost seem to hint at free-range craftsmanship. In such a situation, Sandler and Mulligan must do it alone: he, who is always extraordinary in drama, tries to measure melancholy in the absurd; she, aware of being a bit ancillary, plays it professionally without overdoing it. Will it be a sculpture?
This is the profoundly Sandlerian lesson of Spaceman. Yes, Johan Renck does his best in constructing an original visual system, in which memories become anamorphic images, sudden distortions of the soul. He manages to restore a world in which temporal and spatial coordinates are lost. What year are we in? Is the Czech setting, this Eastern European climate, really credible? As if we were faced with an ambiguity, a misunderstanding from a Lubitsch film. Projected in the wake of many other inner sidereal journeys, from Solaris to Astra… the enormous heart of Spaceman is, without a doubt, Adam Sandler. Which confirms that he is the greatest actor in the world if any were needed. He responds to Carey Mulligan’s exemplary intensity with an entirely instinctive depth of subtraction, opening up an entire universe with a simple expression on his tired face.
But even more, it reaffirms his clarity as an author, capable of creating a coherent line film after film. It doesn’t matter if dramatic or vulgar, if brilliant or idiotic. Just take a title at random and you will find the fundamental reasons. The importance and mystery of the father figure, the difficulty in managing one’s emotions, the need to let go, the discovery of feeling, the return to life, and the warmth of contact. Vast and silent like deep space, Spaceman sets itself the significant objective of paralleling and comparing the emptiness of the cosmos with what Jakub carries inside. To tell the difficulties of love, and life, through galactic hallucinations and cosmogonic illuminations. Renk puts on the screen a world with a lo-fi, post-Soviet charm, in which the narrow spaces of the spaceship on which Jakub travels alternate, the endless and complex ones – deformed by the perspective – of his memories, the ones in which moves Lenka to Earth.
What we see on the screen is almost sweetly lysergic, but rather than a trip, we can perhaps talk about a dream. A dream that resembles a nightmare. The nightmare of a man left by the woman he loves but was unable to love, forced to deal with loneliness, pain, guilt, and the responsibilities of his omission of hers. The alien spider brings Jakub back to reality, gives him the chance to atone for his sins, and transforms the nightmare back into a dream. The dream of reconciliation. There are visually very strong moments in Spaceman. Some of its perspective deformations, some of its chromatisms, and certain strange magic of it bring to mind soap bubbles: evanescent, fragile, volatile, but capable of a fascinating surface and a fascination that is not (never, at all) just childish. A coherence based on feelings, sensations, introversions, and extroversions that are the same as in this film, and human nature.
Spaceman Movie Review: The Last Words
Spaceman is the new Netflix film starring Adam Sandler and created by Johan Renck. Despite interesting source material, Sandler’s excellent performance, and overall, all it takes to become an excellent product, the title never really takes off, suffocated by the ambition of having to please the widest possible audience. Inside those bubbles all the emotion of the film is hidden: a particular emotion, compressed, and therefore extreme without seeming so. Indeed, seeming cold and perhaps even uncertain. Spaceman wants to work on feelings slowly and constantly, tapping almost imperceptibly on deep and, all in all, never banal strings. Where perhaps Renck does not arrive, comes the interpretation of a Sander who continues undaunted, from film to film, an ideal design of him, even an authorial one, which has an evident coherence.
Spaceman Movie Review: Sandler's Excellent Performance And Overall All It Takes To Become An Excellent Product - Filmyhype
Director: Johan Renck
Date Created: 2024-02-23 18:13
3.5
Pros
- Adam Sandler's performance: Sandler's dramatic turn as the troubled astronaut, highlights his vulnerability and introspection. Some even call it his best dramatic performance yet.
- Unique premise: The film's blend of sci-fi, philosophy, and humor is praised for its originality and thought-provoking themes about isolation, regret, and the meaning of life.
- Visuals and soundscape: The film's depiction of space and its atmospheric score are said to be immersive and captivating.
- Moments of humor: Despite its serious themes, the film retains some of Sandler's signature humor, providing some welcome levity.
Cons
- Pacing and tone: The film is slow and melancholic, which might not appeal to everyone.
- Underdeveloped characters: While Sandler's performance shines, other characters, like Jakub's wife, are said to be underdeveloped and lack depth.
- Predictable plot: the story predictable and lacking in surprises.
