Spaceman Movie Review: A rewarding sci-fi film with a unique take on lonely astronaut syndrome

Early in director Johan Renck’s Spaceman, a little girl asks Adam Sandler’s astronaut Jakub whether he is the loneliest man in the world. Sandler hesitates slightly before letting the girl know that he is not lonely and that he will come back to his family after completing his mission. But his hesitation tells a different story entirely. Jakub is on Jupiter to find out the origins of the particles that constitute the Chopra Cloud. He is light years away from home. His pregnant wife Lenka, played by Carey Mulligan, is eagerly waiting for his comeback, and he too is counting the clock down.

Director: Johan Renck

Cast: Adam Sandler, Paul Dano, Carey Mulligan, Isabella Rossellini, Kunal Nayyar

It does not take long for director Renck to thrust the audience into the spinning space vessel of Jakub and explore the isolation and loneliness that envelop his mind. Of course, you expect nothing else from the man who helmed Chernobyl before this.

Spaceman is an existential sci-fi film, but unlike most such genre affairs, it has an interesting writing choice that almost subverts the usual lonely astronaut syndrome template. The director presents portions of Jakub’s hallucination like reality but shows moments from the astronaut’s real life like figments of his memory. At some point in the story, a giant spider visits Jakub in his space vessel. It tells the astronaut that it comes from galaxies and light years beyond in search of solace. Is the spider real? If so, how did it even get there? Or is it a manifestation of Jakub losing touch with reality? We never quite figure this out, although we are utterly fascinated.

Paul Dano lends his voice to the spider that often serves as a haunting throwback to the sentient computer HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The actor uses such good diction, economy of words, and depth of voice to make his character’s interactions with the astronaut so meaningful. The way Dano says the spider’s lines makes you feel that it is Jakub’s conscience speaking, shaking up the very roots of his existence.

Renck intercuts the interactions between the giant spider and the astronaut with blurry visions of his past moments with his wife. Through DOP Jakob Ihre’s hypnotic frames, Jakub’s reality plays itself out like a hallucinatory chapter from his life. The cinematographer and the director render these portions like a lucid dream, with echoes of Emmanuel Lubezki and Terrence Malik’s work for The Tree of Life.

Spaceman takes its time to tell its story about loneliness in outer space while exploring themes such as how an astronaut tries to balance work and family without compromising either, and how much ambition is too much for him. It is not the first film to explore these themes. Everything from Solaris to Alien to The Right Stuff to Gravity to Interstellar to the Martian to First Man explores them at varying levels of complexity. But Spaceman is unique in its own way and one of the few such films to flip the usual lonely astronaut narrative.

The film is based on Jaroslav Kalfar’s book ‘Spaceman of Bohemia’ and written by Colby Day. Mulligan and Sandler effortlessly convey their characters’ sense of desperation and yearning for each other as the sands of time wash away under their feet. At about 100 minutes, it is a slow-burning sci-fi film that requires patient viewing, but your time and investment get duly rewarded.