Johan Renck
Netflix
CZECH astronaut Jakub Proch谩zka (Adam Sandler) is dying of loneliness, six months into a solo space mission to visit a mysterious purple cloud. His wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan) is pregnant and, being already a lot lonelier than Jakub (who has been a wholly unsupportive husband), she decides to leave him.
Mission controllers keep the news from Jakub, but he knows what is going on. It is his sense of despair that draws in help from beyond in the shape of a telepathic spider who can pass through walls but is otherwise as real and solid as anything on Jakub鈥檚 spaceship (a sort of inside-out junkyard full of believably outdated but serviceable machinery, ducts, keyboards, lights and a toilet pump that won鈥檛 stop screaming).
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Spaceman is directed by singer-songwriter turned film-maker, Johan Renck, now better known for the docudrama Chernobyl, for which he won a best director Emmy. It is an assured, deliberate experiment in pacing that will frustrate many, not least because it is delivered at a single, trance-like speed. While this is entirely right for a story that appears to be about a man losing his grip, the plot is, in fact, rather the reverse. Jakub must come to terms with what reality actually turns out to be 鈥� extraterrestrial clouds, telepathic spiders and all. 鈥淭he universe,鈥� his strange companion assures him, even as they both face extinction, 鈥渋s as it should be.鈥� And here鈥檚 the kicker: the spider is right.
Spaceman is monotonous only in the sense that time itself is monotonous, and the film鈥檚 transcendental aspirations are well served by Hans Zimmer鈥檚 shimmering, shuddering score. This is more sound art than music, and easily as powerful as anything he wrote for Denis Villeneuve鈥檚 Dune films 鈥� which is saying a lot.
Since playing the lead in the crime movie Uncut Gems, Sandler the serious actor has little left to prove. Here, he embodies Jakub鈥檚 terror, melancholy, anger and self-hatred with absolute commitment and truthfulness 鈥� five years ago, who would have bet 鈥渆goless鈥� and 鈥淎dam Sandler鈥� could ever appear in the same sentence?
Paul Dano voices Jakub鈥檚 arachnid companion with a poetic pathos that would be cloying in a more regular movie, but it works superbly well here, almost as if his every word were a prayer. Yet in its effort to be spiritual 鈥� more mass than movie 鈥� Spaceman simplifies the already fairly simple plot of its source material, Jaroslav Kalfa艡鈥檚 novel The Spaceman of Bohemia. This is a mistake.
Jakub is lonely. So is his wife. She leaves him. Counselled by his spider friend, Jakub gets in touch with her (a neat trick, using a goofy, faster-than-light phone called CzechConnect and a purple fragment from the beginning of the universe). They speak, and Jakub begins his long return.
At which point, I woke from my trance and thought, why does the story of a man trying to make up with his wife six months into a work assignment require a space mission, a strange cloud, quantum telephony and a telepathic spider?
Spaceman has many virtues, but when you come down to it, the film is about someone trying to fix his work-life balance, and doing so in the most expensive, portentous manner imaginable. He鈥檚 lonely? Boohoo. She鈥檚 leaving him halfway into a solo flight? That鈥檚 a lousy, selfish thing to do. Bang their heads together, I say, to hell with the limitations of space-time!
And this, just to spoil it, is pretty much what happens.
Simon also recommends鈥�
Dark Star
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Tough-minded British businessman Ryan is on his way to Barnard鈥檚 Star to restart humanity after the collapse of civilisation on Earth. Or so he thinks鈥�
Simon Ings is a novelist and science writer. Follow him on Instagram at @simon_ings
