October 14: The Martian (2015 – Ridley Scott)

★★★

One key to understanding The Martian is Mark Whatney’s potatoes.  After he’s stranded, the film imbues them with centrality and importance.  The movie can’t move on without the potatoes, and we’re as concerned about them as we are about Mark himself for one depends on the other.  despite the film's dwelling on them on imbuing them with importance, they suddenly exit after an accident, but rather than The Martian ending at this point, the loss of this vital element is hardly a speed bump; in fact, it becomes the springboard for more action.  In this film, Mark Watney’s potatoes are just a device to keep the story running, and their fate highlights that the focus of the film is action and narrative suspense; The Martian isn’t a movie of complex characters or deep insight but rather a pleasurable way to spend a few hours in the cinema.

This film’s reliance on melodrama and suspense is almost out of the silent era.  As early as the storm that strands the hero, The Martian moves from high-risk situation to high-risk situation with occasional melodramatic gestures bridging the highs.  The Chinese provide a helpful (and secret) rocket; a young, braided, African-American analyst finds a path to Mars before Mark runs out of food; the NASA crew supervisor disobeys orders and sends information about a dangerous rescue opportunity to Hermes.  Melodramatic event follows melodramatic event in keeping us plugged into the action here, and this melodrama works as well here as it does in stories like Frank Borzage silents.

A lot of good cinematic technique also keeps us in the movie.  The Martian could easily have bogged down under all the detail and plot twists, for example, but economical editing compresses the action and story so well that, despite the film’s 140-minute length, the narrative engine doesn’t falter.  And many of the visuals suggest cherry-picking of effective sci-fi gestures that have engaged us in the past.  Seen from the outside, the Hermes spaceship recalls the vessels of 2001 with its slender body and rotating rings, and inside Hermes, we watch characters pop down into compartments like they do on Kubrick’s Discovery.  Astronautic bumping around during EV activity recalls the visceral suspense that distinguishes Gravity, and Scott even applies some of his own characteristic film-making with the landscapes here.  The magnificent views of Mars with the tiny lights of Mark’s vehicle barely visible recall scenes from Prometheus and even Noah.  The editing and the visuals link up with melodrama to make this film fun.

The Martian is primarily competent.  Its story touches and moves us.  We worry at every one of Mark’s failures and feel happy with every success.  We rejoice with the world as he is finally rescued.  The film’s contrivance sometimes feels overly market driven -- for example, the multi-ethnic cast feels like it wants to include every potential audience, and there’s an especially clear gesture to the Asian market – but the suspense and melodrama of this story carry us past these.  This market orientation might explain the altogether unsatisfactory ending of the film, though the closing credits are among the wittiest and best integrated into a recent Hollywood movie.  When we part company with Mark, he's delivering truisms about his experience is a profoundly cliched setting.  Thankfully, the end credit segment gives us a more satisifying, occasionally bittersweet final experience with the rest of characters.  Simultaneously identifying the actors and showing us the characters' condition in life after thier return, this segment is one of the most original and effective in the film.  But The Martian is a fun, solid, Hollywood vehicle as it hums along and generates lots of pleasure for the audience.