Okay, I'll admit it: I've never
watched a single episode of MacGyver. I'm almost afraid to do it at this
point, considering how deeply woven into my code the ethic
of the show has become. I'm worried that the 80s cheese will taint that Mojo of Inventive Improvisation that so guides my
approach to the problems that can so pretzel up my days.
Indeed,
there have been times when, in the process of tackling one of those
problems, I have arrived at a "MacGyvered" solution, using available
materials (Madame 'Cyte frequently...errm...laments the heaps of bric-a-brac
that I keep around, expressly for its utility as a pool of raw materials
for such projects...till the moment when they allow me to construct --like a Master
Builder in Lego World-- a Fix)...only to find a purpose-specific tool
for the job...and experience actual disappointment over that, and the sudden obsolescence of my jury-rigged solution.
If that Moment rings any kind of bell in you, then you are just the sort of person who will groove HARD on "The Martian."
The novel --the first by engineer Andy Weir--
had sat in my Kindle queue for a couple of years, after it had been
recommended to me by someone who'd read and enjoyed (and written a lovely review of) my novella, Night Music.
She'd said that it bore strong affinities to my book, in its scrupulous
attention to technical detail, its inventive use of technology, and its
celebration of the human mind as a problem-solving engine. Naturally, I
was intrigued (and more than a little flattered/honored to have communicated so successfully that she so
clearly Got what I was going for).
Finally
read it over the Summer (before I found out that it had been optioned
as a film, let alone that it was nearing completion....with Ridley-Freakin'-SCOTT at the helm!)....and immediately re-read it as soon as I was finished (and I almost never do that). I was even MORE flattered/honored at the comparison!
As for the film....Yay. Just Yay.
As
I say, this is not a movie that will speak with too loud a voice to
those with not even a whisper of tech-geek in their souls. It is very
faithful to the book, though with some notable exceptions which are all
in service of making it work better as a film (successfully. The "Iron
Man" beat comes most vividly to mind). It moves at a deliberate pace.
It explains many things (usually via the protagonist, Mark Watney's
video log). It sets up problems, establishes the stakes, and walks us
through the solutions (and setbacks. OY! Such setbacks!).
The situation is that Watney --played superbly
by Matt Damon-- finds himself left alone on Mars after his fellow crew
members on an exploration mission need to abort very early, due to a
terrible storm that jeopardizes the crew's ability to leave safely
(gotta give a Mulligan here; the actual atmosphere on Mars is so thin
that even a hurricane-speed wind would exert little more dynamic force
than a stiff breeze at Earth-level atmospheric pressures. But whaddya
gonna do; gotta tell a story here). While trudging to the MAV (Mars
Ascent Vehicle) to evacuate to orbit, Watney is struck by a fragment of
the high gain antenna and hurled into the Martian night, very plausibly killed in the process.
But, it turns out, he is not dead....but will be if anything breaks down, and when the food supply runs out.
So, as the trailers say, he's gotta "Science the shit outa this!"
And
Science he does! It is a JOY to watch him attack problems, inventorying his assets and liabilities (rather bigger column, that one), apply
scientific principles in solving them, fail to be defeated by the
odds and the obstacles, and maintain a wry, profane sense of humor
about the whole affair (wait for the whole "Space Pirate" thing..).
All Hail Duct Tape. 'Nuff said.
One of the characteristics of Scott's films that most stands out is his eye for breathtaking
visual design. This film is no exception. The surface of Mars is
rendered with heart-stoppingly stark, majestic beauty. Being something
of a Mars Geek, I was impressed at how precisely the color palate of the
4th rock from the Sun is reproduced. "You Are There" doesn't begin
to cover this! The space scenes are stunning, conveying the brain-melting vastness of
the distances in every direction, while also preserving the
paradoxically claustrophobic quality of hurtling through that Vastness in a succession of pressurized tin
cans.
Probably
set in the early 2030s, the technology is marvelously realistically
designed. Things are functional and plausible, treated in the
matter-of-fact way that tech is treated by real people (when was the last time that you
described your computer as a "silicon-CPU information processing node?"). It was the little things: the big outboard thermal radiator vanes
on the aft end of the mothership, Hermes, glowed orange while the ion engines
were active (and those low-but-constant-thrust engines glowed a
realistic arc-blue-white, with no dramatic flares like you'd see with
chemical rockets). Also, things fell on the Martian surface at rates and on trajectories that
accurately depicted what it would look like at .38-gee. Most folks
wouldn't notice these things consciously, but the dividends in
verisimilitude pay off quite nicely in the hind brain.
All
of this visual and technological wizardry, however, would fall flat
without recognizable people in its midst. The character work in this
film is highly effective in its deft, understated clarity. These
characters come across as real individuals, into whose lives we have dropped
at a critical time. Jessica Chastain's Cmdr. Lewis is someone who takes
her job very seriously. She is wracked by leaving
Watney behind, even as she clearly knows it was the only responsible
choice. The conflict of these realities is at times heartbreakingly
manifest in her performance.
The unfolding relationship between Kate Mara's Johannson and Sebastian Stan's Beck comes across in a series of sweet, almost-imperceptible little beats. Michael Peña's
Martinez is a good-hearted, wise-cracking natural counterpart to
Damon's Watney. The Earth-bound cast plays out the politics and
practicalities of this extraordinary situation with a recognizable
Truthfulness that makes no one the Villain (even Jeff Daniels' NASA
Director has defensible motivations for choices that might otherwise
have been turned into a stock "Gutless Bureaucrat" cartoon in a lesser
script). Honorable mention goes to Donald Glover's Rich Purnelle, the
brilliant, quirky, socially inept astrodynamics savant; his description
of his rescue plan during the "Project Elrond" meeting (One does not
simply walk to Mars...) was high-LARIOUS!
And Damon. Ah, Damon. He simply LIVES in Mark Watney. It's like how I will never again read LOTR without seeing Viggo as Aragorn. He inhabits that character with such an unforced, real-to-the-marrow way that his voice will sound in my head when I eventually (inevitably) re-re-read The Martian. It's clear (as it actually wasn't in the book) that the wise-cracking persona is a defense against the Dread and Despair that it only very precariously holds at bay. His humanity is a stand-in for our own, speaking to the best aspects of how we might manage any analogously dire situation in which we might find ourselves.
Final
note: Of all the things I love about this film, perhaps the one that
lies closest to my heart of hearts is the degree to which it
non-preachily extols the virtues of learning and critical thinking as
the means by which we can deliver ourselves from the atavistic Fears
that lie within us. Lateral, creative thinking, fueled by an intelligent
deployment of well-learned lessons about how things work in the 'verse
are what allow us to transcend the shadows all around us. The bootstraps
by which we can lift ourselves from even the deepest of pits are
composed of well-tempered strands of neural fiber, honed by exposure to
and flexible recombinations of the DNA of knowledge and logic, informed
--but not dominated-- by emotion, intuition, and Love.
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