Every now and then I want to say “Just go see this film” and let the discovery of each revelation be the adventure it was meant to be. PROJECT HAIL MARY, based on Andy Weir’s novel of the same name, presents that problem. If you want my advice, then suffice to say that this life-and-death journey to Tau Ceti presents tantalizing questions about sentience, camaraderie, and stepping up even when you think you can’t. I’d add that Ryan Gosling, who is in virtually every frame of the film, has never been more charismatic, endearing or emotionally immediate as the civilian astronaut plucked from teaching middle school to saving humanity. If you stop reading now, no harm, no foul, and I envy you seeing it for the first time.
For the rest of you, Gosling is Ryland Grace, a brilliant molecular biologist fallen from, ahem, grace in academia for daring to posit that water isn’t a necessary building block for all forms of life. And for taking a shot at the recognized leader in his field with a well-crafted insult. The former is precisely why Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) thinks he’s perfect for Project Hail Mary, a multinational effort to discover why the stars, including our own sun, are dimming. Specifically, she wants to know about the dots, a peculiar substance that, thanks to something dubbed the Petrova Line, has leapt from the surface of our sun to Venus. Grace, a man who has subsumed his resentment into a self-deprecating humor, leaps at the chance to prove his ci-mentioned posit correct, not to mention the gloating rights involved.
Fortunately for Grace, who is still learning how to pilot the Hail Mary, as the craft is dubbed, his isolation comes to a jarring end when he reaches his destination. Warned by the ship’s computer that there is a blip, he is flabbergasted to see another craft also in situ. One that dwarfs his and that seems intent on following him. From there, the story adds a new dimension in the character of an alien on the same mission, which provides the chance for Grace to, in a phrase from Weir’s THE MARTIAN, to science the crap out of how to communicate and work together for a common cause.
The film cuts between how Grace was recruited for a one-way mission to discover why Tau Ceti is the only star not dimming, and how he is coping alone after the other two members of the crew have died. The concurrent tracks provide context but keep the full story on each track a mystery until the suitably explosive end with plots twists that maintain adrenalin-rushes of surprises until that end. Along the way there an engrossing examination of effective non-verbal communication with an entity equipped with different sensory inputs, handled with tense humor as Grace faces the unknown with only his wits and imagination to guide him. Starting with mathematics and ending with the voice of puppeteer John Ortiz emerging from a computer interface, conversation ensues, with the alien dubbed Rocky because of his stone-like body, Following a different body plan (faces are overrated per Grace), Rocky proves to be spunky, upbeat, and a little too excitable. Rocky also proves to be a crafty engineer, providing a counterpoint to Grace’s biological expertise. From shock and a soupcon of disgust, Grace, and we, soon forget how different Rocky looks and become, I don’t use this word lightly, captivated by his unique charm. Even when the close quarters begin to wear on Grace.
For all the science, and there is much here to savor presented as it is with the excitement of a treasure hunt, this is a first-rate character study of people, I include Rocky, who make us want to know more about them. From Grace’s bemusement at his situation (his awkward but determined struggle to put on a space suit in zero gravity is a small gem and a précis on what makes him tick), to Rocky’s startling lack of boundaries, to Stratt, a, ahem, stone-faced functionary with either a total lack of irony or humor, or a highly refined sense of both. Yes, the special effects with their nod to 2001, sweep us into interstellar space; yes, the whip-smart writing never lags and never lacks momentum; but it’s those characters and the death sentence hanging over them, that are the hook. That confluence of story, writing, arresting visuals that don’t overshadow the action, a sublime sound design, and direction that finds every salient beat to create suspense, tension, and wonder at not just discovering the unknown, but in also understanding it.
PROJECT HAIL MARY is intelligent, but never pedantic. Kudos, too, for the democratization of the scientific method that allows one of Grace’s government minders, a particularly laconic one, to figure out a problem that has stumped Grace and his Ph.D. As insightful about human nature as it is unconventionally imaginative in its narrative, this is film that delights, instructs, and makes use of absolute silence in a way that shocks the system while also letting us catch our collective breath. There is never a dull moment in this cracking good time at the movies, or one that doesn’t catch your heart.
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